The Shortcut You Never Knew Existed
During the MCO, I often brought my kids out to places where they could breathe fresh air. One week we went to the Firefly Farm in Kota Tinggi. Another week we visited the Crocodile Farm in Ulu Tiram. By road, the two places were far apart. It took an hour and a half to get from one to the other. I never questioned it. That was just how it was.
But then one night, I stayed with the Orang Asli. These were the Orang Seletar, sea people who built rafts, fished at night, and knew the rivers like the back of their hand. At 2 a.m., they took me out on a boat. The river was salty, flowing into the sea. We stopped to fish, to drink coffee, and to rest. As the boat traveled, I suddenly realized: this river connected both the Firefly Farm and the Crocodile Farm.
What had taken me an hour and a half by road took us only 30 minutes by boat, and that was with breaks along the way. By road, I had followed the “safe” way everyone used. By river, I found the shortcut no one told me about.
If I had to commute daily between the two places, I would never choose the road again.
Life between 20 and 60 is like that river. Most of us never discover it. We keep driving the road, paying the cost of time, energy, and exhaustion, because we do not know another way exists.
NLP has a phrase: the map is not the territory. The maps we hold in our minds are not reality itself. Most of us live decades on autopilot, following the maps given by culture, society, or career expectations. But life has shortcuts, hidden rivers, and alternative ways. The tragedy is not that we take the long road. The tragedy is never knowing the river was always there.
The Fastest Four Decades of Your Life
From age 20 to 60, time accelerates. Psychologists call it subjective time compression. Studies from Harvard show that adults perceive time passing 20–40% faster than children. A school year that once felt endless suddenly becomes a month that vanishes. These are the fastest four decades of our life.
We think they are also our strongest decades, the years of career, family, and health. Yet they are also fragile.
At a recent cycling event, I experienced this firsthand. Two thousand people gathered to ride. We were full of energy and optimism. But only five kilometers in, one wrong swerve created chaos. A teammate I had encouraged to join flipped over, hit by a motorbike, his head smashing the ground. Thankfully, he wore a helmet. Behind him, more motorbikes collided. What was supposed to be a joyful memory almost became tragedy.
Fragility hides inside our strongest decades. We think we are invincible at 30, untouchable at 40, and secure at 50. But life has no guarantees. The decades we assume will be stable are often the ones where everything can change in an instant.
Leadership thinker John Maxwell calls this the Law of the Lid. Your effectiveness, in leadership, in family, in life, is capped by your awareness. The lid of life itself is mortality. You can be talented, ambitious, or disciplined, but one unexpected event can end it all. The higher we raise our awareness, the more meaningful our decades become.
The Hidden Cost of Drifting
In our 20s, we run on ambition. In our 30s, we juggle family and survival. In our 40s, reflection creeps in. By 50, regret starts whispering.
This is not just anecdote. Cornell University found that by midlife, 72% of adults regret neglecting relationships more than careers. And UNICEF reports that in Southeast Asia, over 60% of parents spend less than one meaningful hour daily with their children.
This is the illusion of progress. We confuse busyness with impact, motion with meaning. Like driving the long road when a river runs beside us, we exhaust ourselves without realizing we missed the view.
In NLP, there is a state called unconscious competence. It is when you do something automatically, without thinking. This can be a gift, like driving or speaking a language fluently. But in life, unconscious competence can trap us. We repeat the same actions without awareness, thinking they are serving us, while in truth they are eroding our most important relationships.
The cost of drifting is not only missed time. It is missed meaning. Children grow up without your presence. Spouses feel unseen. Teams lose trust. Leaders leave no legacy.
What Life Really Asks of Us
Life between 20 and 60 is not about speed. It is about trajectory.
Running one mile has more in common with a marathon than sitting still. Investing $100 has more in common with becoming financially free than staying broke. Writing one page has more in common with publishing a book than never starting. What matters is not your position, but your trajectory.
Harvard’s 85-year study proves this: the quality of relationships is the strongest predictor of long-term happiness, not wealth or fame. Princeton researchers Kahneman and Deaton found that beyond $75,000 annual income, more money does not increase happiness.
But purpose changes everything. University College London found that people with a clear sense of meaning reduce their risk of early death by 15–30%. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, saw this in the camps: survival came not to the strongest, but to those with a “why.”
Stellar’s own PVMC echoes this: to inspire the dream of a better world through innovating education and transforming lives. Life is not breathing alone. Breathing is survival. Living is choosing with awareness.
The real question between 20 and 60 is not: How fast did you go?
It is: Why did you go at all?
The Bell That Reminds Us
The game you played was simple: every five years, the bell rang. Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five. The bell is a metaphor. In life, it is birthdays, anniversaries, reunions, or even funerals. The bell is not fiction. It is real.
The bell is also a gift.
Psychology calls this future pacing. When you imagine your 80-year-old self speaking to you today, you make decisions with greater clarity. Studies show it increases long-term goal alignment by 40%. Journaling and visualization practices increase resilience and clarity for 80% of practitioners. Jeff Bezos built his “Regret Minimization Framework” around the same truth: decide today as if you were looking back from the end.
Purposebility calls this the Reverse That Redefines It All:
- You thought life was long. But actually, the fastest decades slip away unseen.
- You thought leadership was about following. But actually, the opposite of leadership is self-preservation.
- You thought wealth was accumulation. But actually, true wealth is what you can give without fear of running dry.
Every five years, the bell rings. The only question is: are you awake to it?
Living Awake Between 20 and 60
So what do we do?
- Insert Awareness. Do not wait for an accident, a loss, or a regret to wake you up. Treat every birthday as a bell that asks: Am I awake to what matters?
- Redefine Wealth. See wealth as relationships, health, and significance, not just money. Remember: beyond $75,000, more money adds little joy.
- Choose Trajectory. It is not about being the fastest or richest at 40. It is about the direction you are moving. Even small steps compound over decades.
- Love Relentlessly. The best gift you can give your children is to love your spouse well. The best gift you can give your team is to love truth, life, and people.
- Build Legacy Now. John Maxwell reminds us: “A leader’s lasting value is measured by succession.” If you died today without impact, you never really led.
The Reverse That Redefines It All
What if life is not what you think it is? What if the greatest illusion is that you have time?
The decades between 20 and 60 vanish faster than you imagine. They feel strong, but they are fragile. They look long, but they are short. They seem obvious, but hidden rivers of purpose run right beside you.
The opposite of life is not death. It is unconsciousness.
To live is to be awake. To live is to choose. To live is to love.
So when the bell rings, at 25, 35, 45, or 55, do not just breathe. Live.
