How often do you pick up your phone to scroll through your favourite social media app to keep track of other people’s lives, the exploits your peers are making, helping them mark every milestone, and watching their progress?
At the end of the day, you start feeling very far behind and out of time.
You start beating yourself up so hard for not measuring up to the timeline of tradition and society, when what you should truly be concerned about is living in the timeline of God for your life — that you’re aligned to His will for your life per time and per season.
You are not alone (seriously)
What if I told you you’re not alone in this, and that it is very normal?
I have been there before; in fact, I still struggle sometimes to stay in my lane and focus on my life. The same goes for everyone in this life’s journey.
There are just too many distractions in our world today. It takes one with a certain level of discipline to stay very focused and not lose sight. While such people exist, there are still others stuck in the phase of comparing milestones and feeling left out.
As mentioned earlier, society has painted life in such a way that it pushes us all to have our lives figured out in our 20s and has drafted a timeline for us to achieve one or two things at a particular age; graduate at 21, get a job at 23, be married at 25….
And as long as you’ve not been able to hit those milestones when it has been written in stone for you to do so, shame and judgement come with it..
Our present world teaches us to be on the go and never stop. Hustle culture teaches us that enough is never enough; it tells us to keep pushing until we get lost in ourselves and find it almost difficult to recognize who we are.
SLOW DOWN BABE!
My guy, can you just chill for a minute?
Yes, time is not on your side — even more reason why you should take a pause and reflect on your life, retrace your steps back to where you might have lost it to help fix things. Because there’s no time to live a life that isn’t yours for so long till it’s late.
While things are happening for others, cool — cheer for them and cheer them on.
You must understand that everyone has his or her own life to live, and that life is an individual journey. Nobody can live yours for you, and you can’t live for others either. Everybody’s path to success is different; take your eyes off their track and focus on becoming better.
HOW TO STOP FEELING BEHIND
First, to find the solution to a problem, knowing and understanding the root cause of the problem is the first step to making changes. Here are reasons you feel the way you do.
The first reason is self-comparison — where you constantly measure your worth with societal standards and with others. In doing so, you tend to feel very little of yourself, beating yourself up so hard for not being where you think you should already be.
And let me give you the gist of the matter — you see those social media highlights? Those reels are not real, my guy. Those are just the things people want you to see. I promise you, no one shares a hundred percent of what’s going on in their lives — that’s the game of social media.
Haven’t you wondered how it is that you see a couple online (for example), living fine and posting back-to-back, living their best lives, and then the next day, they’re no longer together? Sometimes I’m like, “These people were just fine, what happened?”
The “what happened” is the behind-the-scenes we don’t see.
People only show you what they want you to see, and it’s OK to keep certain things private, but it’s wrong when it’s misleading and deceitful.
Try to stop comparing yourself with people and focus on yourself and your race. You have your own race to run, and it’s different from that of the next person.
I want you to see it this way — you didn’t come into this world with any other human, In that same way, your destiny is different from the person next to you, and as such, your refining process isn’t the same.
As your refining process differs, your timeline can never be the same. That is why, to some, it seems as though they’re far ahead of others. You need to understand this; it will greatly help.
Destinies differ. The refining or cooking process that brings you to the destination orchestrated by God for you also differs, depending on the weight of your destiny, hence the difference in timeline per person.
The second on the list is unrealistic expectations — where standards have been set for you to meet, and not meeting those standards when it has been proposed makes you feel far behind in life.
Some of these expectations are very unrealistic, and as such, pressure is mounted on everyone who has not broken off the shackles of trying to meet society’s standards.
Who says you must have life all figured out at the age of twenty-five? (by the way, I’m twenty-five, not like you care, buh… laughs)
I was a victim of this. I saw 18-year-olds and people in their 20s already building their business empires. I started comparing and pressuring myself because I felt I wasn’t doing well enough. Honestly, the pressure I mounted on myself took me nowhere close to my destination and caused more harm than good.
I realized that in doing this, it is very easy to lose track of who you are — your identity, values, and principles. I immediately retraced my steps back, and I couldn’t be more grateful for where I’m at today.
I’m not where I wish to be or where I’m supposed to be, but I’m not where I used to be either. I’m more mature, and old mentalities have changed.
Right now, I’m at that point where I don’t tie my progress to age anymore. If I see younger people making things happen — good for them! I cheer for them and try to be sincerely happy and inspired positively. I no longer compare or feel unhappy about where I’m at but feel challenged to do and become better in my craft and life overall.
In essence, I try not to look at those people and compare myself to them; rather, I learn from them. I don’t belittle or say, “Oh, that small girl or boy is doing better. Why are things not working for me? Why am I far behind?” Nobody is too young for you to learn from.
Trash the idea of tying your progress and milestones to age and understand that it’s fine if you don’t meet certain expectations.
Delay is never denial, you’ll get there. You need more time to unlearn your mistakes and become better, and that more time is now, in your 20s.
Nothing beats a person up or silently kills them more than pressure from family for not hitting milestones on time.
It hits and hurts differently when the very people who are supposed to be your safe place from the world, where comparison and competition are rampant; they are the ones making you feel less of yourself and far behind in life.
To be fair, their constant reminders of your setbacks might honestly come from a good place (to push you into becoming better), but approach matters a lot, and that’s why their actions might seem toxic.
I know someone whose parents are making home kind of uncomfortable for her because she’s, according to them, of age to be married but still unmarried. Crazy! It honestly doesn’t mean they hate her, but their approach can place her under a lot of pressure and could potentially make her make wrong decisions just to please them or even make them let her be.
Such things can really exhaust a person. As such, other people’s wins become more obvious, and the tendency to start feeling down and backward in life becomes very high.
Lastly, self-sabotage — this comes into play when you unconsciously do things that pull you back in life and keep you stagnant, with no growth.
While some other things might be contributing factors to why you think you are behind, you yourself can also be one of them — more like you’re the problem and the medication for your problem.
It could be that you’re consistently doubting yourself so much that you don’t even, for any reason, see the little progress you make, because you feel other people are better than you. Nothing you do feels satisfying or fulfilling, and as such, you feel far behind just because you don’t see that you’re making progress in life.
Or maybe you self-talk negatively, reducing your self-esteem to the point that nothing you do seems right.
Now that you’ve identified and understood what the root cause might be, it’s time to unlearn what you’ve always known and thought about yourself. It’s time to start shifting your perspective and changing your mindset.
You need to understand that time unfolds differently and beautifully at its appointed season, and you’re no exception to that. You are on your own timeline, not behind.
This point you’re at is your learning season, where you have the time to learn, make moves, make mistakes, and correct those mistakes. Basically, it’s your discovery stage; to discover and build your life slowly, not completely.
You can’t have it all figured out at this stage.
Learn to give yourself grace and cut yourself some slack. We’re all in this together, nobody has it all together. It might seem like some of your idols in their 20s have figured it all out, but that’s just what you think, not what it really is.
Life is a journey. We transition from one phase to another; we constantly need to learn, unlearn, and relearn. We meet new people, ideologies and mindsets change.
So, you see, you can never completely have life figured out, you need to learn to depend on God, to provide direction and wisdom to help you navigate this journey.
Learn to enjoy and be grateful for every season of your life. Acknowledge your 20s as a decade of setting up foundations that will help shape your life.
See these ten years of your life as a refining phase.
It’s okay to feel lost, scared, make mistakes, face challenges, and fall over stumbling blocks. These setbacks will make you, refine you, and give shape to your future so that when you get to where you should be, your experiences and character (already built) will sustain you as you go higher in life.
Being grateful for the refining phase as you make progress shows that you acknowledge you’re in a cooking process — that you might not be where you ought to be, but you’re not where you used to be.
It helps you stay present and aware of everything going on around you. Working to become better than yesterday becomes easier, helping you keep track of your progress, so you don’t feel stagnant.
Another thing I’d like to add is that you should always stay focused on your lane. Have your eyes on your path so you don’t get distracted or waste your time on things that wouldn’t add or give value to your growth and progress.
This way, it will be easier for you to stay consistent on a course — focus on your goals and aspirations, make progress, and see your progress as growth.
Focusing on your growth process helps take your eyes off the progress of others, thereby preventing you from feeling left behind.
Lastly, to get your mind to a state of rest and contentment, feel free to unfollow accounts of people you constantly watch online, those you measure your progress against, or even deactivate your account for a while until you’ve been able to work on yourself.
Once you’ve attained a level of mental maturity to separate social media from real life and focus on yourself and your lane, you can return to the social media space.
As mentioned earlier, life’s journey is a very individual one — yours is different from mine, mine from another’s. So is our timeline and pace for reaching our various destinations as destined by God.
Social media pushes so hard on negative hustle culture, and society sets standards that push our focus toward comparing paces. When in truth, the main thing we should focus on, rather than time and age adding up, is being aligned to God’s will for our lives, per time and per season, fulfilling purpose, which brings peace to our hearts.
I just need you to know that you’re not behind. You’re on your own pace, being refined to become who the Lord has called you to be.
Always remember that delay is not denial — you’re not late; you’re just on a different lane, moving at the pace designed by God for you, as long as you’re in alignment with His words for you
