You want to start working out, but you’re 40.

You want to build a business, but other people have been doing it for years, and you have no background in it.

You want to become a parent, but you’re wondering if you waited too long.

So you ask: Is it too late?

I could tell you about hundreds of people who started businesses at 60 or found fitness at 45. I could tell you about couples who became parents in their forties. But I don’t think someone else’s story can answer the question that’s keeping you up at night.

Because what hurts is personal: I wish I had started sooner.

This is such an important question because, once it comes up, you have two paths. You can drown yourself in distractions because the regret feels too strong, carry on the same way for another decade, and face the same question again. Or you can start thinking differently.

Here’s what I want you to consider when it comes up for you.

Imagine you had started early. Imagine you got fit and strong in your twenties, built a business, or became a parent at the age you once pictured.

Would you be free of every regret?

You might have children and wish you’d had more time to build a career first. You might have the career and wish you’d tried for a baby sooner. You might have both and wonder where you went in the middle of it all.

There is always another path you didn’t take. Another version of your life that looks easier from a distance.

But at the end of the day, life isn’t only about reaching a goal. Goals can guide you, sure. But it’s mainly about what you gain as you move toward them.

If you begin your fitness journey at 40, what friendships might you make? What will you learn about your strength? What goals will you dare to set next year because you started this year? How will your mindset shift about life? What might fitness look like for you ten years from now, when you turn 50? And what might happen if you don’t start?

The same goes for business. The same goes for starting a new relationship. The same goes for parenting.

Those questions don’t erase the grief of wishing you had begun sooner. You’re allowed to feel that grief. Just don’t let the life you imagined at 25 convince you that the life you can build from here has no value.

Action will always have value. The only thing that adds absolutely no value is dreaming big and doing nothing about it. So the question isn’t “Is it too late?” The question is “When are you going to start?”