Maybe This Isn't A Problem

How often do we feel behind in life? Or simply worry about falling behind?

Am I saving enough for retirement?

Will we be ready for the college years?

Why haven’t we gotten farther ahead by now?

We do the same thing worrying about our kids, anxiously analyzing whether they’re falling behind learning to walk, potty train, spell, do algebra, and perhaps be capable of finding their own backpack.

These types of thoughts are so common for most of us that we don’t even notice anymore. But if you pay attention, you’re probably low-level stressing about various forms of being behind far more than you realize.

In some ways, this is a healthy form of stress that stimulates us to improve and grow.

Our fear about retirement prep spurs us to get educated about our investments (check out the passive investing course that I recommend). Our worries about college savings causes us to get informed about the nuances of 529 plans and make decisions on how we approach the cost of the college years.

In short, feeling behind creates the necessary urgency to get ourselves moving forward.

But it’s worth balancing that reality, to tone down the stress that tags along. The very fact that the “behind” stress spurs us to take action is good and useful. But the drama of beating ourselves up for not doing it yesterday works against this fresh energy to take action.

What if you dropped the judgement about being “behind” and just jumped in and took some small action forward?

Instead of stressing, simply take a step.

When you realize you missed a step, you should have done something five years ago, you’re falling behind on something… okay, fine. You’re human.

And now that you realize it, just go ahead and do something about it. No stress, guilt, or frustration necessary.

Because ultimately long-term goals are met from persistence. And persistence is not well fueled by self-deprecation or anxious spiraling.

Ultimately you don’t control the timeline of when things turn out, you only control your own inputs.

And no one else is judging your timeline because they’re too worried about their own.

So when you find you’re off track, go ahead and tend to those inputs.

But stop wasting energy feeling bad or anxious about it.  Sometimes you feel like getting on top of something most when you have space and energy to focus on it, or when you really have no other choice before consequences stack up.

And that’s okay. That’s how it works sometimes. That is enough.