From any hopes for a bounceback in career, a healthy love life, a more active friend circle .etc
For me it’s when you start entering your 50s. You start to think more and more in how you’ll end up being as you progress in age. Thoughts of the idea of how to maintain your health and how so much now is going to affect you set in. Thoughts on potentially retiring start setting in.
Things like getting friends and dates won’t be impossible, but they’ll be incredibly hard to get. Even if you have either, they most likely will not turn out how you expect to be whereas when you were younger, you had the time and energy on your side.
Careers and where you’ll work will just dry up where you could likely be stuck just doing retail work for the remainder of your life or any minimum wage position.
Very few people make a difference in their 50s or already had their life planned out to where they’re fine in their 50s. But a lot of the time, people really don’t.
I think there’s not really a hard and fast expiration date. I think it’s more of a probability gradient which can skew from person to person. Career bounceback depends on industry, fitness, credentials, network, etc. Love life depends on personality, looks, intent, intelligence, sense of humor, stability, etc. A loser in their 40s can’t even really compete with somebody in their 60s who’s on top of their shit.
I think that if you’re concerned about this, therapy and/or meditation might help you to get uncomfortable enough to identify aspects of yourself that need work to improve. Small changes can yield big advantages in terms of tackling specific goals. Everybody can benefit from therapy, so don’t let some weird stigma scare you out of getting the best out of life.