Last Updated on September 20, 2026 by Michelle
We are living longer.
And I’m not sure our idea of how to live has caught up.
For much of our lives, there is a fairly clear path in front of us.
We go to school.
We get a job.
We build a career.
Some of us get married. Some of us have children. We buy homes, raise families, work towards the next promotion, save money and build a life.
There are milestones everywhere.
I knew what I was supposed to be doing at 20.
I knew what I was supposed to be doing at 30.
At 40, there were still obvious things to work towards.
And then something interesting happens.
Somewhere around midlife, the map starts to disappear.
The children grow up.
Our careers mature.
The mortgage gets smaller.
The milestones that occupied so much of the first half of our lives begin to fall away.
And somewhere in the distance sits this thing we call retirement.
But increasingly, I find myself wondering:
Is that really the plan?
Work for several decades, retire, and then figure out what to do with the rest of our lives?
Because for many of us, the rest of our lives could be a very long time.
Perhaps the more interesting question isn’t:
When can I retire?
Perhaps it is:
Who do I want to become for the second half of my life?
Living Longer Is Not the Same as Living Well
I don’t simply want a long life.
I want a good long life.
And I suspect most of us do.
Of course, what constitutes a good life will be different for each of us.
My version of a wonderful life at 70 may look completely different from yours.
Perhaps you want to be surrounded by grandchildren.
Perhaps you want to run a business.
Perhaps you want to teach.
Perhaps you want to paint.
Perhaps you want to travel.
Perhaps you want to live quietly near the sea.
Perhaps you want to remain in the city, surrounded by ideas, people and work that stimulates you.
There isn’t one correct version.
That’s the point.
We have to decide what a good life means to us.
And I think we need to make that decision much earlier than we realise.
Because there is something I have increasingly come to understand:
Most of what I want at 70 cannot be bought at 69.
The Things That Matter Most Take Time
Imagine wanting to be physically strong and independently mobile at 70.
You cannot decide at 69 that you would like the body of someone who has exercised consistently for decades.
You can start then, of course.
But the stronger position is to have started much earlier.
Imagine wanting a loving 40-year marriage.
You can’t create 40 years of shared history at 69.
Imagine wanting adult children who still enjoy sitting around a table talking to you.
That relationship is being built now.
Imagine wanting old friends who know your history, understand your quirks and have travelled through several versions of life alongside you.
Those friendships require years.
Financial freedom works the same way.
So does knowledge.
So does expertise.
So does confidence.
So does purpose.
So does trust in ourselves.
Some of the most valuable things we can possess later in life are not things we can acquire quickly.
They are things that compound.
We understand this intuitively when it comes to money.
Invest a small amount consistently for decades and compounding can eventually create something surprisingly large.
But I increasingly think our entire lives work this way.
A workout compounds.
A conversation with your child compounds.
A book compounds.
An investment compounds.
A promise you keep to yourself compounds.
A friendship compounds.
A skill compounds.
An evening spent talking to your spouse compounds.
A habit compounds.
Individually, none of these moments looks particularly important.
But repeat them for twenty years and they begin to determine who we become.
So I Started Thinking About My 70-Year-Old Self
I’m 48.
Which means 70 is no longer an abstract age somewhere impossibly far away.
It’s a little more than twenty years from now.
And instead of thinking about aging as something that will simply happen to me, I’ve started thinking about the woman I would like to meet when I get there.
What is she like?
I don’t mean what does she look like, although I hope she’s healthy and strong.
I mean:
How does she spend her days?
What does she do on an ordinary Tuesday?
Who does she have lunch with?
What does she talk about?
What is she still learning?
What is she exceptionally good at?
Does she have work that feels meaningful?
What does money allow her to choose?
What is her relationship with her husband like?
What is her relationship with her adult children like?
Who are her close friends?
What does she contribute to other people’s lives?
And perhaps one of my favourite questions:
What is she looking forward to?
I don’t want my 70-year-old self merely to be alive.
I want her to be interested in being alive.
I want there to be something next.
A project.
A dinner.
A conversation.
A trip.
Something she wants to learn.
Someone she wants to see.
Something she hasn’t done yet.
I want her to wake up and still have anticipation ahead of her.
And when I picture that woman clearly enough, something changes.
She stops feeling like a stranger.
She becomes someone I know.
Someone I admire.
My own role model.
Meet Her in Your Imagination
Maybe this is something we should all do.
Close your eyes and meet yourself twenty years from now.
Don’t meet the version society tells you that you should become.
Don’t meet the wealthiest version.
Or the most impressive version.
Or the version that looks good on Instagram.
Meet the person whose life you would genuinely want.
Spend some time with her.
Walk through her home.
Look at her calendar.
Watch how she moves.
See who calls her.
Notice what she reads.
Listen to the conversations she has over dinner.
See how she spends a Tuesday afternoon.
Ask what gives her energy.
Ask what she is still curious about.
Ask what she is proud of.
And then ask her something else.
What did I do over the last twenty years that allowed you to become this person?
I think her answers might surprise you.
Then Work Backwards
If my 70-year-old self is physically strong, I need to look after my body now.
If she has financial freedom, I need to build it now.
If she has deep relationships, I need to invest in those relationships now.
If she has expertise that is useful to other people, I need to learn and create now.
If she is curious at 70, I need to remain curious at 48.
If she has meaningful work, perhaps I need to start building that work long before my current career ends.
If she has something to look forward to, perhaps I need to practise creating anticipation in my life now.
Suddenly, the future becomes much more practical.
The question is no longer:
What do I want my life to look like in twenty years?
It becomes:
What does that future require from me today?
That is a very different question.
Because today is something I can do something about.
Becoming Happens on Ordinary Days
This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand life design.
We imagine that changing our lives requires big decisions.
Sometimes it does.
But much of the person we eventually become is being created through remarkably ordinary actions.
Going to the gym.
Saving some money.
Calling our parents.
Having dinner with our children.
Reading.
Learning.
Writing.
Walking.
Keeping a promise to ourselves.
Making plans with a friend.
Trying something new.
Doing it again tomorrow.
None of these things feels transformative while we’re doing them.
That’s the nature of compounding.
For a long time, almost nothing seems to be happening.
Then one day you look backwards and realise you have become someone different.
I have experienced this myself through habits.
I didn’t start logging my expenses years ago thinking it would change my identity.
I didn’t start learning languages thinking it would teach me something profound about myself.
I didn’t begin exercising because I had some grand philosophy about aging.
They were simply things I wanted to do.
But doing small things consistently changed something.
I started trusting myself.
When I said I was going to do something, I increasingly became someone who did it.
And that trust eventually gave me confidence about much bigger things.
If I can do something small consistently for years, perhaps I can build something meaningful over decades.
But There Is a Paradox
The more I think about my future self, the more I realise that the objective isn’t actually the future.
It’s today.
I don’t want to spend the next twenty years sacrificing my life so that one day, at 70, I can finally enjoy it.
That would miss the point entirely.
The purpose of designing a good life twenty years from now is to help me design a good life today.
If I want strong relationships at 70, spending time with people I love today isn’t a sacrifice.
It’s part of the good life.
If I want a healthy body at 70, moving my body today can make today better too.
If I want intellectual curiosity at 70, learning something interesting today already enriches my life.
If I want financial freedom later, watching that freedom gradually grow can give me satisfaction now.
If I want anticipation at 70, I can put things on the calendar that I’m excited about today.
This is perhaps what I am coming to believe more than anything else.
A good life isn’t something waiting for us at the end of good life design.
The process itself has to be good.
Because ultimately, what is a life?
It’s thousands of ordinary days.
Tuesday morning.
Saturday lunch.
A conversation with your mother.
Coffee with a friend.
A workout.
A book.
Dinner with your family.
Something on the calendar you’re excited about next month.
We spend so much time thinking about the big life that we sometimes forget that the big life is simply the accumulation of these small ones.
We Cannot Design Everything
Of course, there is another truth.
Life will not follow our design.
Things will happen that we didn’t choose.
People we love will become ill.
Careers will change.
Relationships will surprise us.
Bodies will age.
Plans will fail.
Opportunities we never imagined will appear.
Recently, I heard Oprah Winfrey express an idea that stayed with me: we are not responsible for everything that happens to us, but we can consider how what happens might ultimately be for us.
I found myself thinking about that for days.
Perhaps intentional living isn’t about controlling life.
Perhaps it’s about having a direction while remaining willing to change the route.
We imagine who we want to become.
We take actions in that direction.
Life happens.
We accept.
We learn.
We adjust.
And then we continue becoming.
There is something freeing about that.
I don’t need to know exactly what my life will look like at 70.
I probably shouldn’t.
I simply need to know enough about the woman I want to become to make a few better decisions today.
Be Your Own Role Model
For years, I have used a sentence to guide many of my decisions:
I don’t make decisions as the person I am. I make decisions as the person I’m becoming.
I’m beginning to understand more deeply what that means.
Maybe we don’t need to look outside ourselves for the person we want to emulate.
Maybe our most useful role model is waiting twenty years ahead of us.
Your role model doesn’t have to be someone you follow.
She can be someone you create.
Meet her in your imagination.
Get to know her.
Understand how she lives.
Ask what she needed from you.
Then come back to today.
And begin.
You won’t become her tomorrow.
You shouldn’t.
You have twenty years.
Let the workouts compound.
Let the investments compound.
Let the conversations compound.
Let the learning compound.
Let the friendships compound.
Let the small promises you keep to yourself compound.
And while you’re doing all of that, don’t forget why you’re doing it.
Not simply to live longer.
But to live well for longer.
And perhaps, twenty years from now, you’ll meet the person you once imagined.
Only by then, she won’t be your future role model anymore.
She’ll be you.
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