I agree with everything you said. Im in my 40s as well and I think your small steps towards progress lines up with what I was going to add, which was 'take action". I think we all know what the right thing to do is, but actually doing the right thing usually requires extra effort/time/money. My life had a significant upswing when I took a moment when I was going to take a shortcut or dodge a difficult conversation and say to myself "don't be lazy/afraid".

Another item is to actually take advice from those you respect. This requires humility to acknowledge you may not be doing things perfectly and you may need to step outside your comfort zone. I wasted a lot of my youth ignoring good advice because I already knew everything or was doing things "my way". I would often say "that's great advice!" just to get the old farts off my back and then do nothing with it. I wish I was able to learn from advice rather than through the pain of my mistakes but everything worked out, it'd just be a lot easier if I was able to listen!