I used to think that if I was not making progress in one area of my life, then I was already falling behind.
I would look at what other people were doing and sometimes wonder why things were not moving the same way for me.
Someone gets a new job.
Someone starts a business.
Someone is making money from something they started a few months ago.
Someone else seems to have everything figured out.
Then you start asking yourself questions. “Am I doing enough?” , “Why am I not there yet?” , “Maybe I am wasting my time.” I have had those thoughts more than once. But the older I get, the more I realize that people are not really on the same timeline.
You can work hard and still not get the result you want immediately. You can have a good plan and still have things change along the way. Sometimes you have to start again. Sometimes you have to slow down. And sometimes you just need more time.
I think social media makes this even harder because we mostly see the finished part of people's lives. You see someone announcing a new job, but you don't see all the applications they sent before getting it. You see someone celebrating a successful business, but you don't see the months when they were struggling to get customers. You see the result, but not always the process. That has made me change the way I look at my own progress.
I am trying not to compare where I am today with where someone else is. Instead, I ask myself a simpler question: Am I moving forward?
It doesn't always have to be a huge step. Learning something new is progress. Getting better at something is progress. Trying again after something didn't work is progress. Even taking some time to figure yourself out can be part of the process.
I also learned that having several goals doesn't mean you have to achieve all of them at once.
There are things I want to accomplish with my work. There are skills I still want to improve. There are also personal things I want to get better at. I used to feel like I had to solve everything at the same time. Now I am learning to take things one at a time. I don't know exactly where I will be a year from now. Honestly, I don't think anyone really does.
We can make plans, but life can change those plans very quickly. So for now, I am focusing on what I can do today. Learn something, Do some work, Write something, Try again, Then do it again tomorrow, Maybe that is what progress really looks like most of the time.
It doesn't have to be a big step but a lot of small steps that don't seem important until you look back and realize how far you've come. I am still figuring things out and I think that's okay, not everything has to happen at the same time.
