How To Decide What Matters Most To You Now
In Summary: As you get older, the things that matter to you can change. Work, money, achievement and other people’s expectations may become less important, while health, relationships, time, freedom and experiences start to matter more. Deciding what matters most isn’t about finding one perfect answer. It’s about paying attention to what you value now and making more room in your life for the people, activities and experiences you don’t want to miss…
At some point, you start to realise that the things you used to care about don’t have quite the same hold over you anymore.
It can happen gradually. You notice that another promotion doesn’t excite you like it once did. Making more money is still useful, but it doesn’t feel like the answer to everything. You may even find that you don’t care quite so much about what other people think.
Some of the goals you spent years working towards can start to feel strangely distant, and that’s when a different kind of question can creep in: What actually matters to me now?
It’s a simple question, but it’s not always an easy one to answer. For most of adult life, there’s usually something telling you what matters. Work needs doing, bills need payin, children need looking after, the mortgage needs paying off. There are targets to hit and responsibilities to deal with, and you don’t necessarily have to think about what matters because life is already telling you what to do next.
Then things begin to change. The children get older, work becomes less central, retirement starts appearing somewhere on the horizon, you have more awareness of your own mortality, and you may suddenly have enough space to ask yourself whether the life you’ve been building is still the life you want.
The Things You Wanted At 35 May Not Be The Things You Want At 55
This can be one of the stranger parts of getting older.
You can spend years working towards something and finally get it, only to discover that the feeling doesn’t last very long. Perhaps it was a certain position at work, or a particular income number, a bigger house, nicer car, and in general the feeling that you had finally made it.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. They may have been important to you for good reasons, but people change, and what seemed incredibly important twenty years ago can look very different when you’ve lived a little longer.
At 35, you might have wanted more responsibility. At 55, you might want more freedom.
At 40, you might have wanted to prove what you were capable of. At 60, you might simply want to enjoy your mornings.
Neither version of you is wrong. You don’t have to keep chasing an old definition of success just because you spent years trying to achieve it.
You May Have Become Very Good At Putting Yourself Last
A lot of men are surprisingly good at knowing what everybody else needs.
Your family needs you to be reliable, your children need support, your partner needs you to show up, your employer needs you to perform. There is always something that needs fixing, organising, paying for or dealing with. So you deal with it, and that’s what you’ve always done.
The problem is that after years of living this way, you can become so used to responding to other people’s needs that your own become difficult to hear. You know what needs doing, but do you know what you want?
Those aren’t the same thing, and sometimes it takes getting older before you realise just how long you’ve been answering the first question and ignoring the second.
Being Needed Can Become Part Of Your Identity
For many men, being needed feels good. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing everyone depends on you.
It gives you a role, and that role can give life a lot of meaning, but what happens when the role starts changing? When your children don’t need you in quite the same way, your career becomes less demanding, or perhaps you begin thinking seriously about leaving it.
The people who once depended on you start making their own decisions, and suddenly, there can be more empty space in your life. That can be unsettling, and you may find yourself thinking: “What am I supposed to do now?”
Perhaps there’s another question worth asking: “What do I actually want to do now?”
The first question looks for another responsibility. The second gives you permission to think about yourself.
Your Priorities May Have Changed Without You Noticing
Sometimes the change is so gradual that you don’t notice it happening.
You start valuing your time more, become less interested in status, or rather have a quiet evening than spend another night somewhere you don’t particularly want to be.
A good conversation with an old friend can feel more valuable than another business connection, and being healthy enough to travel, walk, play with your grandchildren or enjoy a day without feeling exhausted can suddenly seem far more important than it did ten years ago.
You may also start valuing peace, and not having to explain yourself, constantly rush around, and worry about whether you’re keeping up with everybody else.
These aren’t necessarily signs that you’ve lost your ambition, but maybe you’ve simply become more selective about where you want to spend your energy, and that’s an important distinction.
Start With What You Don’t Want Anymore
Trying to work out what matters most can feel like a big philosophical exercise. It doesn’t have to be.
Sometimes it’s easier to start by asking yourself what you no longer want. Do you really want to spend every evening exhausted? To keep saying yes to things you don’t enjoy? To maintain friendships that leave you feeling worse rather than better? To spend another ten years trying to impress people you don’t even particularly like? To keep working simply because you don’t know what you’d do without work?
These questions can be surprisingly revealing. You may not know exactly what you want yet, but you might know what you’re tired of, and that’s a start.
Once you become clearer about what you want less of, you have more room to think about what you’d like more of.
Pay Attention To The Things You Miss
There’s another question worth sitting with: What do you miss?
Not what you think you should miss, but what do you actually miss?
Maybe it’s having time to read, playing guitar, fishing with an old friend, working in the garage on an old car, playing sport, having long conversations that weren’t about mortgages, work or family problems.
Sometimes we dismiss these things because they don’t seem important enough, but they can tell you something. The things you miss often point towards parts of yourself that have been pushed into the background.
You don’t have to go back to being the man you were at 25. You can simply bring some of those interests into the life you have now.
Look Honestly At Where Your Time Goes
There’s also a very practical way to find out what matters to you. Look at your week.
Not the week you imagine you have, but the one you actually have. Where does your time go? Work, household jobs, running errands, other people’s requests, social obligations, worrying about things you can’t control.
If you looked at your calendar, would you see much of the life you say you want? That can be an uncomfortable question, and it can also be useful.
You don’t need to turn your life upside down, but perhaps you just need to notice that the things you care about are getting whatever time happens to be left over, and maybe they deserve more than that.
Your Health Should Probably Be Higher On The List
When you’re younger, it’s easy to believe there’s plenty of time to sort yourself out. You can get fit later, sleep better later, lose the weight later, deal with that bad habit later.
After 50, “later” starts to feel a little different. Your health affects what you’re able to do with the rest of your life, from travel and sex, to walking and hobbies, to time with grandchildren and your overall independence. Even simple things like getting through a normal day without feeling completely drained.
Looking after your health isn’t just about trying to live as long as possible. It’s about having enough strength and energy to actually enjoy the time you have, and that makes it worth taking seriously.
A Few Good Relationships Can Matter More Than A Lot Of Them
Getting older can change your social life too.
When you’re younger, people are everywhere. Work gives you colleagues, children create connections with other parents, and there are parties, clubs, neighbours and endless reasons to be around people.
That can change as the years go by, as people move, friendships fade, children become independent, work eventually becomes less important, and you may realise that having lots of people around you isn’t necessarily the same thing as having people who really know you.
A few good relationships can be enough. Someone you can call without thinking twice, laugh with, or sit with when things aren’t going well. Someone who knows the person behind the job title and the responsibilities.
Those relationships may become more valuable as you get older.
Not Everything You Enjoy Has To Be Useful
This can be difficult for men who have spent most of their lives being productive.
If you’re not achieving something, what’s the point? If it isn’t earning money, improving your health or solving a problem, why spend time on it? Life doesn’t work like that.
You can sit outside with a coffee and accomplish absolutely nothing. You can spend two hours talking to a friend, or listening to an old album. You can play golf badly, go fishing and come home with nothing, or take a trip simply because you want to see somewhere you’ve never been. None of these things need to produce a measurable result.
Some things are valuable because you enjoy them, and that’s enough.
Think About Who You Want To Be
When people think about the future, they often think in terms of achievements, but there’s another way of looking at it.
Ask yourself: What kind of man do I want to be now?
Perhaps you want to be calmer, more patient, more present, healthier, more adventurous, and or just more honest with yourself. Perhaps you want to be the sort of man who doesn’t automatically say yes to everything, or someone who makes time for friends, or listens more and isn’t afraid to admit he doesn’t have all the answers.
These aren’t traditional goals. They’re ways of living, and sometimes knowing the kind of person you want to be makes it much easier to decide what deserves your time.
You Are Allowed To Change Your Mind
There’s something else that becomes easier to see with age.
You don’t have to keep every promise you made to yourself twenty years ago. You don’t have to keep wanting the same things, stay interested in something simply because you’ve invested a lot of time in it, and you don’t have to keep doing something because you’ve always done it. That last one is probably worth thinking about.
“I’ve always done it” can keep a man in a lot of situations long after they have stopped being right for him, but you can reconsider. You can say no. You can change direction, and you can admit that something that mattered to you once doesn’t matter quite so much anymore.
That’s not necessarily giving up. Sometimes it’s simply recognising that you’ve changed.
Don’t Confuse What Looks Important With What Actually Is
We’re surrounded by ideas about what a successful life is supposed to look like, especially on social media. A good career, nice house, money in the bank, impressive car, busy social life, and the long list of achievements.
From the outside, these things can look like proof that somebody is doing well, but you know that appearances don’t tell the whole story. A man can have a very successful career and be miserable. I know a few like that.
Another can live a fairly ordinary life and be genuinely content with a quiet home, good relationship, a few close friends, reasonable health, enough money and time to enjoy them.
There may be nothing particularly impressive about that life, but it might be a very good one, and ultimately, you’re the one who has to live it.
Ask Yourself What You Would Protect
Here’s a question that can cut through a lot of the noise.
Imagine, for a moment, that you suddenly knew you had much less time than you’d expected. What would you protect? Who would you make time for? What would you stop worrying about? What would you wish you’d done? What would suddenly seem completely unimportant?
It’s not a pleasant thought, but you don’t have to dwell on it. The value of the question is that it can reveal your priorities.
Sometimes we spend enormous amounts of energy protecting things that, when you really think about them, don’t deserve quite so much of it, and we neglect things that matter because we assume there will always be time later. There won’t always be.
You Don’t Need A Completely New Life
When men start questioning what matters, they can sometimes assume they need a dramatic change. Quit the job, and start a business. Travel the world, or become a completely different person.
Maybe one of those things is right for you, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes the changes are much smaller. Call the friend you’ve been meaning to call, start walking every day, book the trip you have been talking about for a year, spend an evening without your phone, have the conversation you’ve been avoiding, or stop saying yes when you really mean no.
Small choices can change the feel of a life. You don’t always need to rebuild everything. Sometimes you just need to stop allowing everything else to take up all the space.
What Matters Can Become Simpler As You Get Older
One of the benefits of getting older is that some of the noise starts to fall away.
You may care less about winning every argument, impressing people, keeping up, with the neighbours, proving you’ve made it, and more about having a life that feels good to live.
You may want to be healthy enough to get hike up the local hill. You may want people around you who know the real you, or a reason to get out of bed that isn’t simply another obligation.
Maybe that’s part of growing older. You don’t necessarily discover some great secret about life. You just become clearer about what isn’t worth your time, and that makes room for the things that are.
You Don’t Have To Live By Somebody Else’s Definition Of A Good Life
For much of life, there can be a fairly obvious script. Get educated, get a job, build a career, buy a home, raise a family, work hard, provide and achieve.
There’s nothing wrong with that path, and for many men, it has been a good one, but eventually you may need to decide which parts of that script still belong to you.
Your life isn’t a checklist, and success doesn’t have one permanent definition. The things that matter to you now may look very different from the things you cared about twenty years ago.
That’s not something you need to apologise for. It may actually mean you’re finally paying attention.
Start With One Honest Question
If you’re not sure what matters most to you now, don’t try to work everything out at once.
Start with this: If I stopped worrying about what I was supposed to want, what would I actually want?
Don’t rush the answer, and don’t give yourself the answer that sounds good. Think about your real life, the people you love, your health, time, the things you’re curious about, the things you miss, the things you’re tired of, the experiences you’ve been putting off, the parts of yourself you’ve neglected, and the ordinary things that make a day feel worthwhile.
You may not discover one huge answer. Instead You might discover several smaller ones. Perhaps you want more time with your partner, or get stronger and fitter, or travel more, or just make some new friends. Perhaps you simply want fewer obligations and more mornings where you can decide what to do with your own time.
None of those answers has to impress anyone. They just have to mean something to you.
Final Thoughts
You don’t have to keep wanting the same things for the rest of your life. Your priorities, ambitions and ideas of success are allowed to change.
That doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It may simply mean you’ve reached a point where you have enough life experience to start separating what genuinely matters from what you’ve been told should matter.
Maybe you want more time, better health and relationships, more freedom and peaceful time. Maybe you want to stop proving yourself, and just enjoy the life you’ve spent so many years building.
There isn’t one right answer, and you don’t need to figure out the next twenty years in one sitting. Just start paying attention, and notice what gives you energy, what drains it, who you want around you, what you miss, what you keep putting off, and the things that make an ordinary day feel good.
Eventually, deciding what matters most isn’t really about making a perfect list, but about deciding what you’re no longer willing to waste your time on, and then making a little more room for the things you know, deep down, you don’t want to live without.
Not what looks important, what used to matter, what everyone else expects from you, but what matters to you now.
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