Sometime in last year, I had somewhat of an epiphany, and while working through it with my psychologist, I lamented how far down the “wrong track” I was, overly focused on how old I am. And my stage of life. All she said to me was, “You’re never too old to go down the right path”.

Age is a social construct.

You are as young as you feel.

Age ain’t nothing but a number.

These may be platitudes, but if we don’t want to live with regrets, we cannot continue to live with the belief that life ends at 25. You’re not Leonardo Dicaprio. There is a whole lot of growth and self-awareness that can only happen after 25. Our frontal lobe is only fully developed at 25. So life doesn’t end at 30 or 40, it just changes. Just like it changed when you turned 5, or 13, or 18, we cannot stop ageing. But if we don’t want regrets when we’re older, we cannot let ageing stop us.

Allow yourself to be who you are. Respect the fact that having 30 years of knowledge of yourself gives you a wisdom that you didn’t have at 18. So if you want to change careers, study again, start a sport, do ballet… why not?

Why spend more time going down the wrong path? No matter how far you are down the wrong path, you can always turn back. I read that quote when I was in High School, and I’ve tried to always live by it. For me, realising I’ve gone in the wrong direction, means that I have new knowledge, that I cannot ignore. Do I want to spend the rest of time going down the wrong path? Or do I want to turn around, and actually go down the right path? And spend the rest of time there? Isn’t that preferable?

My psychologist reminded me that I could live my life with regret that I didn’t make a change that was deeply needed, and I could continue to believe that I was too old to live the life of my dreams. Or… I could change paths.

Imagine you were driving along a road, to a friend’s birthday party, and when you’d been driving for 30 minutes you realised that you were going in the wrong direction. Would you continue along that path because hey, you’d been driving for 30 minutes, and now you would waste 30 minutes to go back and change directions? I’m sure any one of us would go back and change directions because you are not going the way of your destination.

Our lives are no different.

You can always start over. And even if that relates to something like a depressive episode, or difficult period of life. That’s why it’s called an episode – it’s not the whole series. It’s a period of life, meaning there could be a new period on its way.

Right now, what you are going through could feel like it’s never ending. But we have the ability to start over. To make it end. To start something new.

And even in the moments where we feel like we are trapped, and we are unable to live the life we want, for whatever reason, know that you are empowered to make that change. Sometimes it’s small, like choosing to consume uplifting content and not comparing yourself to social media lives. It could be something big like quitting your soul-sucking job.

Most importantly, we need to believe that we are empowered to do these things. Especially in the moments when we feel like we are not.

Only you are holding yourself back from starting over. Starting to be content. Starting a new job. Starting therapy. Starting a new hobby. Starting to study. Starting to be a you that is grateful and brave.