The Problem With Most 40 Before 40 Lists

If you’ve searched for 40 before 40 ideas recently, you’ll know exactly what comes up. Skydiving. Hot air balloons. Learn a new language. Run a marathon. See the Northern Lights. All perfectly lovely — and completely interchangeable with every other milestone birthday list on the internet. And if those things genuinely light you up, brilliant. But if they don’t, then ticking them off won’t give you what you’re actually looking for.

What I think most of us are actually looking for when we search for a 40 before 40 challenge isn’t a list of activities. It’s permission. Permission to stop drifting. Permission to say yes to things we’ve been quietly putting off. Most importantly, permission to push up against the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for decades about what we can and can’t do.

That’s what my list is built around. And I want to share not just the list itself, but the thinking behind it — because the why matters more than the what.

How I Built My 40 Before 40 List

There were a few rules I set for myself. Every item had to be something I had genuinely never done before — not something I used to do and had let slide, not a weight or fitness target I’d hit before in a different chapter of life. Newness only. Growth only. With the exception of swimming a mile. I used to be able to do that without much thought too. But since I’ve had my energy issues I haven’t done it. I don’t swim anywhere near as much as I’d like to and never more than 30 lengths so I need to double my distance for this. It will feel like a massive achievement so it’s in my list.

I’ve been inspired hugely by my friend Ruth, who did her own version of this for her 50th year — except she did it without a list at all. No plan, no spreadsheet. Just a commitment to say yes as opportunities arrived, and to notice and acknowledge the new things as they came. Over her 50th year she climbed mountains, walked 216 kilometres across Portugal, quit her job, moved to South America, and ended up being sung Happy Birthday to in Spanish by eighty strangers in a restaurant in Argentina.

You can read her full story here — and her reasoning for letting it unfold that way is genuinely worth understanding before you decide how to approach your own.

To list or not to list?

I’m doing mine with a list, because I’m in a different season of life. I have younger children. I’ve spent most of my thirties putting myself firmly at the bottom of the pile — the kind of tired where by the end of the day the most radical act of self-care available is a bath. I’m firmly in camp “baths absolutely count as self-care,” by the way. But I know I’m capable of more than that, and 40 feels like the right moment to prove it to myself.

I’m also being slightly flexible with myself, inspired by Ruth’s insight — a handful of items may shift or be replaced as the year unfolds and life surprises me. Every item on the list right now is chosen for a specific reason. But I want to stay open to the unplanned ones too.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

A few years ago I decided to learn to knit. My gran used to knit with me when I was little, but she always cast on for me — I never learned that part myself. When she died, I just stopped. Told myself I couldn’t do it without her. Then one day I caught myself thinking about it and realised how completely ridiculous that was. It is, as I reminded myself at the time, surely the entire point of YouTube. So I looked it up, learned to cast on properly, and made an actual hat. A real hat. That I wore.

Number 40 on my list is to knit a jumper — and then wear it for the whole day, even if it’s terrible, because I made it and that deserves to be celebrated. The jumper terrifies me in a way the hat didn’t. You have to do a tension square, measure properly to get the sizing right, and there are so many more ways it can go catastrophically wrong. But that’s rather the point.

That knitting story is a small example of something I’ve noticed running through a lot of my 40 before 40 list: the things I’ve avoided aren’t things I genuinely can’t do. They’re things I decided I couldn’t do, usually a very long time ago, based on very little evidence. I always thought I wasn’t artistic or crafty because my drawing isn’t very good. But drawing is one tiny corner of creativity. I recently put a button on a pair of pyjamas and it came out better than the ones it arrived with. I’ve been repairing clothes with holes in rather than binning them and finding it deeply satisfying. The story was wrong — I just never questioned it.

On facing fear

Number one on my list is holding a tarantula. I want to be clear about what I’m actually asking of myself here, because on the surface it sounds like a novelty. It isn’t. I am genuinely, deeply, embarrassingly scared of spiders. I used to kill them — or get someone else to — because I couldn’t bear the thought of them lurking somewhere to reappear later. Thankfully, I don’t do that any more.

My Reiki practice has shifted something fundamental in how I relate to all living things, and I believe now that everything has a purpose and that we don’t cause harm to anything. I still joke that I cannot fathom why anything needs eight legs. But holding a tarantula is, for me, the ultimate act of facing a fear I’ve carried my entire life. If I can do that, I can do most things.

Normal to others but not to me – 40 before 40 challenge

Number 2 is taking a flight entirely on my own. I married young, have lived within five miles of where I grew up for most of my life, and have always been a nervous flier — the kind who genuinely believes a patch of turbulence signals imminent catastrophe. I once flew alone with my children after my divorce, to meet my parents in Spain, and felt like such an adult for managing it. But I had the kids with me, which oddly steadies you. Doing it completely alone, with no one to hold on to — that’s a different thing entirely.

The fear or heights and falling – I’m sure that’s where the flying issue comes in too.

Number 25 is climbing Snowdon. I’ve never climbed a proper mountain. I’ve been partway up Glencoe years ago when I was much fitter, but I’ve been battling a chronic, as yet undiagnosed health condition for some time now, and the deconditioning that comes with it has been one of the harder things to accept about this chapter of life. The three peaks isn’t realistic for where I am right now. Snowdon is — and it’s still a real mountain, and it will still be a real achievement.

Number 37 is visiting Kew Gardens and doing the treetop walkway. I love trees with a fervour that might surprise people who don’t know me well. And yet I am fiercely scared of heights — more specifically, of the sensation of falling that heights bring. The idea of being up among the treetops is dreamy and terrifying in almost equal measure. It belongs on the list for exactly that reason.

The quiet ones

Not everything on a 40 before 40 list needs to be dramatic. Some of the most personally significant items on mine are the quieter ones.

Number 26 is going six months without dyeing my hair. I’ve had my hair coloured every six to eight weeks for over twenty years. I’m more than fifty per cent grey now — and I’ve been going more frequently recently, not less, because of it. This one is about proving to myself that I can stop, and more than that, about genuinely not caring what other people think. I won’t pretend that last part is easy. It isn’t. But it matters.

Number 9 is spending a whole day out with just my dog Rocky and nowhere to be. I am a person who always has somewhere to be, something to do, someone who needs something. The idea of dropping the kids at school, picking up Rocky and a bag with a picnic, and just wandering for six hours with no agenda whatsoever — sitting when I want to sit, stopping when I feel like it — feels almost radical. That it feels radical is, of course, exactly why it’s on the list.

Going out solo & another big one

Number 10 is going to the cinema on my own. I didn’t go for lunch on my own until my mid-thirties. I was 31 before I took a train alone — it had always been a planned event with someone else before that. Doing things solo, without it being a crisis or a necessity, is something I’m still learning. The cinema feels like a good, gentle place to practise.

Number 29 is going on holiday without my phone. I currently average five hours a day on it — some is work, some is useful, and a fair amount is scrolling I’m not proud of. I’m working on it. This week I’m averaging three and a half hours, which is progress. But a whole holiday without it is a different level of challenge entirely. Scotland in July is the plan.

The ones about becoming

Several items on my list are connected to my Reiki practice and the person I’m in the process of becoming. I’m currently doing my Reiki Masters — items 12 through 16 all flow from that: hosting my first Reiki shares in person and online, teaching my first level one course, giving my first attunement. These aren’t just professional goals. They represent the end of a particular kind of self-sabotage I’ve been practising for years — telling myself I need one more qualification, one more course, before I can offer this properly. I don’t.

Number 16 is leading a Forest Attunement session, something I’m fiercely passionate about and have been quietly stopping myself from offering formally for too long. Insurance, credentials, the usual obstacles — which are, if I’m honest, mostly fear in a sensible disguise. It’s on the list because it’s time to stop letting that win.

Number 20 is going to Glastonbury — not the festival, but the town itself. It’s somewhere I feel a deep and inexplicable pull towards, like a coming home to somewhere I’ve never actually been. I can’t explain it more precisely than that. I don’t think I need to.

Health in a small consistent way

Number 38 is getting my average daily steps to 10,000 consistently over three months. My 2025 average was 6,163. So far in 2026 it’s 6,808 — moving in the right direction, but still a real push from where I am. I have prediabetes and high cholesterol, and I know that consistent movement will help both. With the deconditioning I’m working through, building steps up gradually feels like one of the most genuinely impactful things on this entire list — not just a number, but a foundation.

I didn’t want to do any ‘weight’ ones. I’ve seen the in other lists but I have been my goal weight before…many years ago of course but it isn’t ‘new’. This walking one however feels different. Important even.

The Full 40 Before 40 List

Here it is. Every item is chosen for a reason. Some will happen before my birthday in April. Some might spill into my 41st year — and I’m giving myself permission for that, because this list is about the Love Life More ethos, not about performing a challenge for an audience. The point isn’t to sprint. The point is to move.

Why You Should Make Your Own

This isn’t a post telling you what should be on your 40 before 40 list. Or your 30 before 30, or your 50 before 50 — whatever milestone is on your horizon. None of it means anything if the items aren’t genuinely yours.

The question worth sitting with is this: what have you been telling yourself you can’t do? What have you been putting off because you’re waiting until the kids are older, or until you feel more ready, or until life is less busy? What would you actually try if you stopped caring quite so much what other people thought?

Do it your way – it’s the only way to do it

And if a list feels wrong — if writing it all down in advance feels like pressure rather than possibility — then take Ruth’s approach instead. Don’t write one. Just commit to saying yes more, and to noticing the new things when they arrive. That counts just as much. The only version of this that works is the version that’s honest about who you actually are and what you actually want.

I’ll be sharing how mine unfolds right here on Love Life More. Some of it will go brilliantly. Some of it will be a spectacular mess. The tarantula alone could go either way. Either way, I’ll be telling you about it.

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Are you working on a milestone birthday challenge — or thinking about starting one? I’d love to hear what’s on your list in the comments below, and especially the item that surprises even you.

Want to read Ruth’s 50 new at 50 story?

Ruth did hers without a list — and what unfolded was extraordinary. Read her story here – 50 at 50: Why I Said Yes to Everything for a Year | Love Life More