6 Things to Do if You Feel Behind in Life
Do you feel behind in life?
Here’s a secret: most people do, at one time or another. There is so much outside pressure from peers, parents, the demands of capitalism and the messaging we get as we grow up. Often what we learn from all of that is that there’s a right way to live your life, following a right path, hitting the right milestones and the right time–and there’s a wrong way (which is any way that deviates from that path).
No one follows the same path, yet almost everyone feels they’ve fallen behind at some point or another. If you’re struggling with feeling like you’re falling behind, or that you’ll never get to where you should be, remember you’re not alone. There are things you can do, supports you can turn to, and small actions you can take. It doesn’t have to feel like this forever.
Here are 6 things to do if you’re feeling behind in life:
Focus on what you have accomplished (not what you haven’t):
No matter what you think of where you are in your life, there has no doubt been a lot that you have done to get yourself here. Perhaps you haven’t gotten the promotion you were aiming for, or haven’t been able to buy a house, or haven’t gotten married on the timeline you thought you would, but there is a whole world of other accomplishments out there. Maybe it’s time to reframe what you view as an accomplishment–does it have to be a huge, life changing event? Or can it be something less flashy, that takes an equal amount of work, whether internal or external? Maybe deciding you need to go to therapy could be an accomplishment you celebrate. Or even the act of realizing there is something about your life that you want to change is an accomplishment–there are plenty of people who don’t explore their lives with enough intentionality to have that realization! Give yourself the credit you deserve for everything you’ve done already.
Give yourself grace:
On top of deserving credit, you deserve grace. Achieving big, flashy milestones is hard in easy times, and we’re not living through easy times. Millennials and zoomers are living through yet another recession, navigating the effects of climate change, and feeling the backlash against the progress of the last generation’s progress in the civil and social rights movements. While older generations had a more secure path to the “American Dream” of getting married, buying a home, and having a career, it’s been further out of reach for the generations after them. It’s not that younger generations don’t want many of those things just as much, or that they don’t work harder–it’s that the world has changed so much in the last 50 years that the timeline many feel behind on is simply not possible to achieve anymore.
Explore what you really want from those accomplishments:
What is it you thought you would get from hitting the milestones you feel behind on? Consider where you have a path to those needs in your life as is. For example, do you want to be married or do you want to feel secure in your relationship & the ability you and your partner have to plan for the future? Do you want to be at a certain point in your career or do you want to feel stable professionally? Or–do you want to be at a certain point in your career or do you want people around you (friends, family, peers) to understand the job/career path you’ve chosen, even if it isn’t a traditional one?
Remember there is no timeline
Everyone does things at their own speed, and people who seem “ahead” of you in one area will be “behind” you in other areas. Life is not a series of milestones to check off–it’s a great, big, messy, long experience that is different for everyone. How we move through the world has so much to do with our environment growing up–we don’t all start from the same place, so we can’t move through the world the same way or at the same pace.
If there are aspects of your dating life or your career that you want to be in a different place, you can set realistic goals for yourself, to help you move in the direction you want to go. You can set goals about dating more intentionally, learning to value your time better, practicing more effective communication, or challenging yourself to take on a new project related to where you want your career to go (or whatever other personal goals you have.) You’re never without options to change where you are, you just have to decide what is important to you to change.
Take small opportunities to practice boundaries & asserting yourself:
Do you feel behind? Or maybe do you feel a bit out of control when it comes to the trajectory of your life? When you have a hard time asserting your own needs and setting & enforcing your boundaries effectively, it can be easy to feel like you’re not in control of your own life–which can make you feel even further away from any milestones you want to hit, because you can’t see how you’ll get from where you are to where you want to be, Practicing things like boundary setting and learning to assert yourself can help strengthen your sense of self empowerment, and help you feel confident in how you show up in relationships, and in your decision making.
Work with a therapist:
And of course, working with a therapist can help you work on all of these (or whichever ones would be most helpful for you) and help you to identify what feels misaligned between your goals and your current situation. Taking the first step in therapy can be intimidating, but our practice is here to guide you. Whether you’re exploring therapy for the first time or transitioning to online care, these resources can help:
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