Why life gets better when you stop fighting change
Learning to live your life as a series of small experiments
I changed careers at 30. And 34. And again aged 42.
Had my first child at 43. My second at 45.
At 52, I'm training to be a psychotherapist while pivoting one of my businesses. Again.
Most people have strong ideas about timing. When you should have your career figured out. When you should have kids. When you should stop experimenting with life and have it all sussed.
But these timelines are made up.
Look at your body: it knows better than to stay the same. Right now, millions of your cells are regenerating. Your heart cells will renew themselves completely in the next few weeks. Your skin will be entirely new in a month. Your skeleton rebuilds itself every decade.
Change isn't just natural - it's literally what you're made of.
The biology of becoming
Your brain is even more remarkable. Every new experience, every fresh thought creates new neural pathways. You're rewiring your mind with each moment of novelty, each experiment with a different way of being.
Your brain doesn't care if you're 20 or 60 - it creates new neural connections at any age, as long as you give it something new to work with.
You've probably heard of the research that explains why time seems to speed up as we age: our brains process familiar experiences on fast-forward.
Same job, same route to work, same daily rhythms - your brain barely needs to wake up. That's why entire years can blur into a single smear of routine.
But throw in something novel?
Time expands. You feel more alive. More present.
Here's the tension we all wrestle with: we want the thrill of novelty and the comfort of security. Most people try to resolve this by compartmentalising. A big adventure holiday for two weeks a year, counting down to the next city break, living for the big party coming up this summer - brief bursts of excitement while the rest of life runs on repeat.
Then back to the comfortable routine.
So what's the alternative?
I was catching up with a friend on the phone the other night when he casually cracked it.
"The secret is treating life as if it's just one big improv session," he said.
He's right.
In improv, there are no wrong moves - only offers and opportunities. When you approach each moment as a chance to play, to experiment, to try something new - that's when life opens up. No need for grand gestures or dramatic U-turns. Just the willingness to say "yes, and" to what each day offers.
I've always been fascinated by this dance with change.
While others seem to resist it, I've never understood why we'd choose sameness. Why we'd put up with staying static when life offers so many possibilities.
Those whispers of "what if" that most people push away? I've always leaned right into them.
They're not disruptions or problems to solve.
They're invitations to discover something new about yourself, about what's possible.
Each whisper is a door waiting to be opened.
Seneca understood this almost 2,000 years ago when he wrote "life is long if you know how to live it."
He wasn't talking about years. He was talking about richness of experience.
The secret isn't in massive leaps. It's in micro shifts. Small experiments. Tiny changes in how you show up each day.
A December invitation
As we head into the quiet between Christmas and New Year, try this:
Draw your map of 2024. The experiences you loved, the ones that stung, and the absolute 'never agains.' Just scribble it all down. See what it tells you.
Scroll through your photos. Past the posed shots and filtered moments - what actually happened this year? Which experiences left you thinking 'I want more of that in my life'?
Then write your wish list (they're not just for kids!) Not sensible adult goals. Not resolutions. Just wishes. What would you try if you knew you couldn't mess it up?
No pressure to do anything with any of this. Just pay attention to what makes you pause, what makes you curious. Your instincts know something about what you need next.
The takeaway: here's what I've learned at 52
Life isn't about following someone else's timeline.
It's about staying curious about what might be possible.
It's about allowing yourself to dream.
It's about making friends with uncertainty.
And most importantly - it's about being brave enough to keep experimenting, moment by moment.
Maybe there is some genetics in here as well...I like change, I like variety...I like the feeling of learning and growing.
That life as improv line has my brain churning.