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P48: Today Is The Youngest You're Ever Going to Be. So Start Now.

For anyone waiting for the perfect time—this is it

Author

Maria Keckler, Ph.D.
October 26, 2025 • Reading Time: 4 minutes

Welcome to Just One Pivot, your weekly pause to find clarity and consider your next best move. If this was sent to you, subscribe to get your own copy next week.

Hi! What’s coming up for you this time of year?

The phrase that keeps finding me this time of year is one I first heard from myself decades ago:

“Today is the youngest you’re ever going to be. So go for it now.”

I was thirty, and my daughter had just started first grade. For years, I’d promised myself I would go back to college once she was in school.

I had already delayed that dream, first to learn English and later to be fully present in my daughter’s earliest years.

When I finally said, “I’m going back to school,” a respected friend, well-meaning and pragmatic, smiled and said,

“Maria! Do you know how long that’s going to take you? My daughter just started college, and it’ll take her five years to finish. And she doesn’t have a full-time job or a family to take care of like you do.”

I remember the feeling of my enthusiasm leaking as she spoke, before my quiet, private defiance kicked in:

If it takes ten years, I’ll be forty with or without a degree. This is the youngest I’ll ever be, so I might as well begin.

Since then, there have been other leaps: leaving secure jobs, walking away from comfort and certainty to follow the call of creativity—an inner call for more—and betting on myself.

Once in my forties.
Again in my fifties.

Each time, someone asked, “Isn’t this the season to play it safe?”

And each time, I heard that same voice:

❝

You are the youngest you will ever be.

We imagine that youth makes courage easier, but maybe it’s the other way around.
Maybe what makes courage possible isn’t age at all.

Maybe it’s the growing realization that time will keep moving—whether we do or not.

So here we are:

  • Six days before the end of October.

  • Nine weeks and three days before the calendar resets itself.

  • And perhaps a visibly shorter runway of our lives.

I don’t mean to sound morbid, but you may remember that my father—the biggest dreamer I’ve ever known—lived to be only thirty-nine. So forgive me if I live fully aware that every day, week, month, and year here are precious, and that all we truly have is today.

Pivot Point

Today’s pivot is a reframe just in case you’ve been putting something off for “someday” and need a gentle kick in the pants to reset your perspective.

If there’s something you’ve been postponing—a decision, a conversation, a beginning—this is your invitation.

Take one step, however small, toward the thing you’ve put off.

Because this much I know for sure, and you do too:

You will never again be as young, as ready, or as alive as you are right now.

Your Turn

What have you postponed that might be time to start now?

Relevant Pieces You May Have Missed

Until next week,

Maria