You know that feeling where you think everyone else seems to be moving forward and yet you feel stuck or left behind. Perhaps this feeling sneaks in during quiet times. That sense that you should be further along or clearer about your life, or somehow more sorted than you really feel. Maybe it doesn’t take much to trigger that feeling, perhaps a conversation or you see a social media post, or somebody mentions all of the things that they’re doing, and suddenly your mind starts to compare yourself to everyone else and you end up feeling much smaller than you did perhaps just five minutes ago.
Imagine someone sitting late at night scrolling through everyone else’s moments, the new job, the holiday, the engagement, someone buying a house or getting a new pet. And the person starts comparing those snapshots to how they feel about their life, the messy bits, the doubts, the days where they’re barely keeping it together.
Perhaps this thought doesn’t cross their mind in the moment, but it’s an unfair comparison. They don’t know the story of that person’s life up to the point of those social media posts or what’s going on unsaid and unshown. They don’t know what opportunities, time, work, and luck. Went on in the background.
It’s obviously natural to compare ourselves upward to the people who look like they’re doing better than we are. And when you are already tired or unsure, that can then hit you even harder. Feeling behind doesn’t usually come from your actual progress, it often comes from pressures and desires. Pressure from the expectations you grew up with.
Pressure from watching other people’s milestones with none of the context. Pressure from not knowing your direction yet and feeling ashamed of that, or from an unfulfilled desire for change, perhaps a desire to move away from a situation you are unhappy with or to move towards a situation you want, but which still feels a long way off or perhaps feels unattainable.
And if you’ve had to deal with more than most, perhaps anxiety, perfectionism, uncertainty, a childhood where approval depended on how well you performed or where achievements were unattainable, then the idea of keeping up gets wired in early. When life hasn’t been straightforward, your pace naturally ends up different, not worse, not slower, just shaped by things other people didn’t have to carry.
Often that feeling of being behind isn’t about failure. It’s about transition. When we’re no longer able to change a situation, we’re challenged to change ourselves. Sometimes that uncomfortable sense of being out of sync shows up just before something within you starts to shift. Almost like a sign that you’re outgrowing a version of yourself and you haven’t stepped into the new version of yourself yet, and that in-between place can feel like you’re standing still.
Yet you aren’t. A domino has dropped. A lock has opened. Change has begun. You’re questioning things you used to accept. You’re noticing what doesn’t fit. You are trying to move in a direction that feels more like you. Even if you don’t fully know what that looks like yet. You’re not behind. You are becoming. A deep part of your mind is asking, “what should I be doing now?” “What actually feels right for me at this stage of my life?” You’re beginning to explore what version of you feels the most honest and authentic version of who you want to be. Comparing yourself to moments in others’ lives is just the catalyst to power change in your own life.
Sometimes that’s enough. You don’t need the whole path, just the next honest step. Other times it’s like a message guiding you to let go and find peace in your moment and in the little things in life you are not behind. You are finding your own way and discovering what’s important to you.
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