Perhaps you feel that you have missed some great opportunity to progress, or are too old to take an exciting new direction.

Maybe you’ve just missed a promotion at work, or have been made redundant, or some other big chance seems to be fading from view. You’ve missed the boat.

Before you panic, consider two facts: 1. Significant achievements invariably take longer than we expect (this is a simple law of life that no-one gets around). 2. Longer, healthier lives are making the completion of big personal projects more possible.

In a little over a hundred years, life expectancy in wealthy countries has risen an astonishing 40%, and continues to rise at a minimum of two years a decade.

We are living longer than our parents, and much longer than our grandparents and great-grandparents. Compared to our ancestors, we are awash with time.

Life may sometimes feel short at a philosophical level, and there is always the chance we may die young. But for most people in well-off countries, life is not, as 17th political philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Millions are finding they can be active and reasonably independent into their 90s, living to see great-grandchildren come along who statistically can see turning 100 almost as a birthright.

So, if you’ve just hit 30, or 40, or 50, take a deep breath and stop panicking. You have much more time than you think to achieve your most important goals.

The adoption of reasonable timeframes can make even the most ambitious life project possible, making the path to success more predictable than we might think. Our achievements may not manifest in the way we planned, but success will happen.

Now more than ever, the formula for success is to combine the magic of thinking big with the power of thinking long.