> I'm at a point where I've been doing similar self reflecting and it's very scary to acknowledge the time that has passed without clear direction.

A big part of that now is because we have to make decisions. For most of the 2 million years of human existence we evolved to live in, there wasn't much in the way of choices so you couldn't really make a wrong one.

>But I also recognise I'm doing better than those who make it to retirement and then suddenly find themselves lost.

A lot of your satisfaction in life will come from who you compare your life to: Compare yourself with someone who's doing much better (easy to do because those people are splashed all over social media, plus everyone else grooms their social personia to be as positive as possible, regardless of reality) and you'll feel deficient and bad about yourself, compare yourself to someone who's done worse / had it harder and you'll be more grateful for what you have, and feeling grateful they say is important to life satisfaction. People find themselves lost in retirement because they let their jobs be their purpose. Have more than that. That said, by the time you reach retirement, your productive years are mostly over, so there's not a lot left you can do. If you want to do something meaningful it's better to do it earlier.

>and better relationships and friendships is a huge part of that. I'm much more mindful of how I spend my time on earth.

This is all evolutionary as I said before. We're very sensitive to having friends because it was crucial to be part of a group to survive on the prehistoric African sauvana. A long human was soon a dead human. And we bond with our children because we're such an altricial species, our young take so long to mature, we'd get fed up with all the work and abandon them if we we didn't, so we evolved to take satisfaction from it to keep doing it, and all forms of life's purpose is ultimately to pass on their genes. That's why so many people who don't have kids turn their pets into "furbabies" to have something to nurture.