Are You Actually Stuck in Life, or Do You Just Feel Behind?

There is a particular kind of anxiety that shows up when nothing is technically wrong with your life. You have a job. You pay your bills. You have people who love you. Maybe things are even pretty good.

And then somebody announces a promotion. Someone buys a house. Someone gets married. Someone else is posting pictures from Greece while you're standing in your kitchen trying to decide whether ordering takeout again is financially irresponsible.

Suddenly, your perfectly decent life doesn't feel quite so decent anymore. You start wondering:

What am I doing with my life? Shouldn't I be further along by now?

Maybe. But before you rearrange your entire life because you've decided you're behind, I want you to answer a question I ask people all the time in my therapy office:

According to who?

Who Decided Where You Were Supposed to Be by Now?

We carry around an incredible number of invisible deadlines.

• I should be married by now.
• I should own a house by now.
• I should make more money by now.
• I should have figured out my career by now.
• I should be further along.

Okay. According to who?

Sometimes there really is an answer. Maybe the expectation came from your family, your community, your religious upbringing, or the culture you grew up in. But sometimes there isn't.

Nobody actually told you that you were failing. You've simply absorbed an idea about what a successful life is supposed to look like and started treating it like a deadline. Then you built an imaginary jury, presented all the evidence against yourself, and convicted yourself of not being successful enough. That's a rough trial considering you're also the prosecutor.

Before you decide you're behind, it's worth asking whether the timeline you're chasing is even yours.

Comparison Gives You Bad Data

Sometimes you know exactly who you're comparing yourself to. It's your sister with the marriage. Your friend with the new house. Your former coworker with the promotion. Or somebody you haven't spoken to since seventh grade whose newly remodeled kitchen apparently has the power to make you reevaluate every financial decision you've made since 2009.

The problem isn't necessarily that their life is good. The problem is that you're using incomplete information about their life to evaluate yours. You see the promotion. You don't necessarily see the hours required to maintain it. You see the house. You don't see the mortgage payment. You see the twentieth anniversary picture. You don't know what year nineteen looked like.

That doesn't mean we should assume everyone who appears happy is secretly miserable. That's just comparison wearing a different outfit. It means you don't have enough information to use someone else's outcome as evidence that your life is going badly.

And social media has made this particularly difficult. Think about how strange our current environment actually is. Previous generations knew what was happening with their families, neighbors, friends, and communities. Now you can absorb dozens of people's accomplishments before you've finished your first cup of coffee. That's a lot of lives to process before breakfast.

We're constantly being shown outcomes, milestones, announcements, accomplishments and celebrations. What we're rarely shown is the entire equation that produced them. And then we compare that edited information to the unedited version of our own lives. Of course we're going to feel behind.

But What If You Really Are Stuck?

Here's where I'm not going to give you the standard motivational speech about everyone having their own timeline. Because sometimes the discomfort you're feeling is useful information.

Sometimes you keep saying you want a different life while making choices that maintain the one you already have. You've wanted a different job for three years, but you haven't updated your resume. You say you want healthier relationships, but you continue investing in people you already know aren't good for you. You have something you desperately want to create, but you're still waiting to feel confident enough to begin.

At some point, we have to ask whether the problem is your timeline or whether you're participating in your own lack of movement. Here's one of the simplest ways I know to distinguish the two.

Feeling behind sounds like: “I should be where they are.”

Being stuck sounds like: “I know what I need to do, and I'm not doing it.”

 Comparison requires perspective. Being stuck requires action. So if you strip everybody else's life out of the equation, what remains? Is there something you genuinely want? Is there a decision you've been avoiding? Is there a next step you already know you need to take?

If there is, you don't need to shame yourself. You need to get honest and move.

Not All Progress Is Visible

There's another possibility we don't talk about enough. Maybe you're neither behind nor stuck. Maybe you're growing in ways that aren't producing visible accomplishments right now.

There are seasons of life when progress looks impressive from the outside. You're building something. Getting promoted. Graduating. Moving. Launching. Achieving. And there are seasons when progress looks like getting healthy. Getting stable. Recovering. Grieving. Learning how to live differently. Figuring out why you keep recreating the same patterns.

Sometimes you need to learn how to build differently before you start building again. Otherwise, you may work incredibly hard just to recreate the same life that exhausted you in the first place.

I think about it like a field. There are seasons for producing fruit. And there are seasons for growing roots. Don't call the roots wasted time just because nobody can see them yet.

“What Is That to You?”

There's a moment in John 21 that I love because it captures how incredibly human comparison is. Jesus is talking to Peter about Peter's life and what lies ahead for him. And Peter looks at John and essentially asks, “What about him?”

I love this because...of course he does. Jesus is literally talking to Peter about Peter, and Peter still wants information about somebody else's assignment. Jesus redirects him: “What is that to you? You follow me.”

That isn't dismissive. It's directional. Peter had an assignment. John had an assignment. They weren't the same assignment. Neither man needed to determine who was ahead in order to faithfully live the life in front of him.

We do the same thing. 

• God, I hear you about my life, but what about hers?
• Why did he get there first?
• Why did that work for them?
• Why am I still waiting for something they already have?

And maybe sometimes the answer is still:

What is that to you? You follow me.

Faithfulness isn't measured by how quickly you arrive somewhere. It's measured by what you do with what you've been given. So maybe the better question isn't, Why am I not there yet? Maybe it's, Am I being faithful with what's in front of me today?

 Stop Trying to Solve Your Entire Life

Eventually, you have to put your phone down. You have to stop analyzing your life and actually live it. Instead of asking, Am I behind? try asking:

What is mine to do next?

Not what needs to happen before you turn 40. Not what you need to accomplish in the next five years. Not the master plan that will finally prove you're a successful adult.

What's next? Maybe you need to send the email. Have the conversation. Fill out the application. Make the appointment. Change a spending habit. Take one step toward the thing you've been talking about doing for the last three years.

Or maybe there isn't a dramatic next step. Maybe tomorrow you're going to get up, go to work, take care of the people you love, pay your bills, make dinner and go to bed. And maybe you need to recognize something:

This ordinary life you've been treating like a disappointing waiting room is actually your life.

Don't miss it while you're waiting for the impressive part to start. We have a habit of believing our real lives will begin when we finally get there. When the career takes off. When the relationship comes. When there's enough money. When the kids are older. When we finally become the person we thought we'd be by now.

Before You Decide You're Behind

If you're convinced you're falling behind, don't immediately create a new five-year plan. Get curious first.

If there's something you genuinely want and you've been avoiding the work required to move toward it, acknowledge that. Pick a next step and do something. But if you look carefully at your life and realize:

Actually, I like a lot of this. I just thought I was supposed to have more by now.

That's different. You may not have a progress problem. You may have an expectation problem. Your life doesn't have to look impressive from the outside to be meaningful on the inside. And it doesn't have to happen on somebody else's schedule in order to count.

So the next time that little voice starts telling you that you're falling behind, ask it one question:

According to who?

And if you don't have a good answer, maybe it's time to stop giving an imaginary jury so much authority over your life.

Prefer to Listen?

This article was inspired by Episode 33 of Becoming Unbothered with Dr. Shiloh, “Dear Dr. Shiloh: Why Do I Feel Like I'm Falling Behind?”

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube for more on comparison, invisible progress, faith, and how to tell the difference between feeling behind and actually being stuck.

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About Dr. Shiloh

Dr. Shiloh Werkmeister is a licensed professional counselor, educator, author, speaker, and host of Becoming Unbothered with Dr. Shiloh. Her work combines psychology, practical strategies, personal experience, and faith to help people build healthier boundaries, increase emotional resilience, and stop allowing other people's behavior to control their peace.

Have you ever realized that a timeline you were chasing wasn't actually yours?

Share your thoughts in the comments. And if someone in your life keeps saying they should be “further along by now,” send this article to them.