Across social platforms and therapy rooms, a powerful idea is gaining momentum: your best years are shaped less by your age and more by how you interpret everyday life. A Spanish psychologist suggests that a real turning point arrives when you stop complaining, rewrite your internal dialogue, and intentionally learn to value what already exists around you.
Why We Believe Our Best Days Are Behind Us
When people recall their happiest moments, similar memories surface again and again: carefree childhood summers, the thrill of first love, the freedom of student life, or the slower pace of retirement. Nostalgia gives the past a gentle glow that the present rarely receives.
Psychologists explain that this happens because memory edits itself. Mundane routines, stress, and discomfort fade, while emotionally charged highlights remain. Childhood becomes a symbol of innocence. Youth is remembered as limitless possibility. Older age is marketed as serene wisdom.
The reality is far less idealized. Childhood often involves dependence and a lack of control. Early adulthood can be filled with financial pressure, academic stress, and constant comparison in a digital world. Later years may bring health concerns, loss, and loneliness.
Because of this, many researchers now argue that happiness follows a mindset curve, not an age curve.
Where the “Best Stage of Life” Really Begins
This shift from age to attitude is exactly where Spanish psychologist and author Rafael Santandreu places the beginning of the most fulfilling phase of life.
With a large online following, Santandreu says this stage does not depend on earning more money, looking younger, or solving every problem. Instead, it starts when a person consciously stops fueling the mind with complaints and begins paying attention to what he describes as the remarkable, even magical qualities of ordinary life.
The best stage of life starts when thinking changes: fewer complaints, deeper appreciation, practiced daily.
How Complaining Gradually Undermines Wellbeing
Complaining often feels harmless. It can even feel socially connecting, whether it is about work, weather, politics, or other people. Yet consistent psychological research shows that habitual complaining strengthens negativity in the brain.
The more often the mind rehearses what is wrong, the more efficiently it detects problems. Neural pathways reinforce pessimism, causing neutral or positive experiences to be filtered out before they are even noticed.
This does not mean denying real problems or injustice. Psychologists emphasize the difference between:
- Recognizing a problem and taking action where possible
- Replaying the same complaints repeatedly, without resolution
The first approach builds confidence and agency. The second slowly drains energy and deepens a sense of helplessness.
What “Healthy Thinking” Looks Like in Practice
Santandreu’s approach is not about forced positivity. It closely resembles trained attention, similar to techniques used in cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based practices.
In everyday terms, this often involves:
- Observing negative thoughts instead of identifying with them
- Challenging exaggerated or catastrophic thinking
- Directing attention toward small, concrete positives
- Reducing mental drift into past regrets or future worries
- Allowing difficult emotions without turning them into an identity
In this model, happiness is not a peak experience. It is a form of daily mental practice that gradually reshapes how life feels.
Why Attitude Matters More Than Age
Research shows that happiness does not move in a simple straight line across the lifespan. Some studies suggest a U-shaped pattern, while others show widely different paths.
What remains consistent is the link between certain mental habits and wellbeing. Gratitude, realistic optimism, and meaning-making consistently correlate with higher life satisfaction, regardless of age.
This supports Santandreu’s idea that the “best stage” may begin at 25, 55, or only after a personal crisis prompts a mental reset.
Three Mental Shifts That Mark the Turning Point
Psychologists often observe similar changes when someone enters this more grounded and fulfilling phase of life:
- From comparison to curiosity: Less measuring against others, more interest in personal values and direction.
- From entitlement to appreciation: Fewer thoughts of being owed more, greater awareness of what already works.
- From control to flexibility: Reduced need to control outcomes, increased ability to adapt.
People who adopt these shifts report steadier emotions, even when their external circumstances stay largely the same.
How to Invite This Stage Into Your Own Life
The idea that your best phase is a choice rather than a number can feel empowering or frustrating. It may sound overly simple. Yet therapists regularly observe meaningful changes from small, repeatable habits.
Practical ways to begin include:
- Creating a daily complaint limit and avoiding repeated venting.
- Recording three “ordinary positives” each evening.
- Challenging absolute thoughts like “this always happens to me.”
- Practising cognitive distancing by noticing thoughts instead of merging with them.
- Reducing emotional overload by focusing on one constructive action at a time.
You do not need ideal conditions for this stage to start. You need a new mental agreement with the life you already have.
Psychological Ideas Behind the Approach
Several well-established concepts support Santandreu’s message:
Gratitude bias: The brain naturally scans for threats. Gratitude practices counter this by training attention toward safety, support, and beauty.
Cognitive reframing: The ability to view the same situation through a more balanced lens, acknowledging stress without stopping there.
Agency versus learned helplessness: Shifting focus to small, controllable actions rebuilds a sense of influence and wellbeing.
What This Stage Can Look Like in Real Life
Consider a woman in her late forties who believes her happiest days ended at university. Her career feels stagnant, her relationship predictable, her body unfamiliar. Looking at old photos brings quiet sadness.
After beginning therapy, she starts limiting complaints and noting three positive moments daily. Initially it feels artificial. Within weeks, subtle changes appear: fewer arguments, more patience, renewed interest in forgotten hobbies. Her circumstances stay mostly the same, yet life feels lighter and more engaging.
Or consider a retired man struggling with the loss of status after leaving a senior role. Through coaching, he shifts his inner story from loss of identity to usefulness. He volunteers, mentors, and learns new skills. His health issues remain, but his daily experience changes.
These are not dramatic transformations. They show how a deliberate shift in thinking can quietly open a new phase of life, without waiting for external change.
The Quiet Decision That Opens the Next Chapter
This phase does not begin with a birthday or a crisis. It often starts with a subtle choice about where attention is placed.
Psychologists note that mindset work is not a solution for severe mental illness or structural challenges like poverty or discrimination. However, within those limits, reframing daily experience can reduce suffering and increase meaning.
According to voices like Santandreu’s, this is the true gateway to the best stage of life—one that remains accessible at any age, the moment thinking begins to shift.
Psychology says people who feel exhausted “for no reason” often share this overlooked mental pattern
