Have you ever sat alone and wondered why is everyone around you seems to be winning except you? A friend gets a job, another graduates early, someone else moves into their own place and suddenly you feel like you are the only one running behind in a race you never even signed up for.
The feeling is inevitable I would not lie, it is a quiet pressure, the kind that sits on your chest and whispers, “You’re failing.” But trust me, believe me you are not; You are simply becoming.
What we always forget is that people rarely show us the full picture of their lives. People tend to announce promotions, not the nights they cried themselves to sleep thinking they were not good enough and never going to make it.
Actually, nobody ever posts the years they struggled, almost deferred or doubted their course. The same happens offline, people proudly talk about where they are not mentioning what it cost them to get there. Results are seen, not the process making comparison easy and self-doubt grows quietly.
“Comparison is the thief of joy,” Theodore Roosevelt once said. The more we measure our progress against someone else’s highlight moment, the more we forget the depth, value and uniqueness of our own path.
To be honest, I also feel like that sometimes. There are moments where I question whether I am doing enough, moving fast enough or becoming who I hoped to be. But reminding myself that I am definitely not alone and many people around me silently feel the same pressure which helps me breathe again. My point is ,you are not the only one struggling to trust your path many of us are quietly trying to believe in ourselves too.
Life does not have a single timeline. Some people get their breakthroughs early, others get them later and some discover their path after failing repeatedly. But late success is still success, Slow growth is still growth and moving at your own pace is not a sign of weakness but a sign of patience, endurance and faith in your own journey.
Come to think of it, a flower does not stop blooming just because another bloomed earlier. A delayed sunrise is still a sunrise. Nothing in nature grows at the same speed yet we accept that. Meanwhile when it comes to ourselves, we panic the moment someone else gets ahead. We forget that our stories are different, our battles are different and our blessings will come differently.
To anyone feeling pressured by other people’s success, just take a deep breath . You are neither late, behind nor a failure. Your time is coming truly and When it arrives, things will make sense of why your journey took the shape it did.
Trust your process. Your journey is not late. It is yours.
