By Toronto Life & Mindset Alignment Coach Stephanie J. Marshall

Find Out if You’re Behind

I’ve had countless women tell me why they think are so behind. Why at 30 they should have ticked certain boxes, why they need to reach certain milestones before turning 40, what has to happen before they turn 50, why they will be a failure if by the age of 60 they haven’t had a level of impact…

A lot of people joke about “adulting” and it’s because we all have a sense of what it should look like and we can’t help but compare ourselves. 

Check-In Now

Step 1: Start by writing down how old you are and everything that you think you should have done or figured out by now.

Step 2: Circle anything that YOU actually care about changing right now (not what you worry other people are judging you on) and that you are willing to work towards.

Steph 3: You can’t do everything at once so choose one and start there. 

Step 4: Now let go of the judgement it’s only holding you back. Keep this in mind: I guarantee that there is someone out there who wishes that they had things figured out as much as you do.

Fact: There is no official “behind” police.

Everyone is just figuring out the next thing that needs to be figured out.

Worrying About Being Behind is a Problem

When you waste time and energy comparing and negatively judging yourself you’re making it harder to move forward for 3 reasons:

1. Being a jerk to yourself is exhausting and will reduce your capacity to do something about it (and then you will judge yourself more making it worse).

2. A lack of self-compassion has been shown to cloud accurate self-assessment, making it likely that you are imagining things are worse than they are (triggering your inner drama queen, we all have one).

3. When you’re judging yourself and ashamed you’re more likely to procrastinate because you don’t want to face the thing that makes you feel that way.

So many of you are SO hard on yourselves and you think you need to be, when in fact the opposite is true. It’s impossible to keep taking productive action when you’re being weighed down by heavy feelings.

In Kickstartology Coaching one of the Laws of Alignment is “Collect data not judgements” and it’s just one of the skills that’s tackled using the Alignment Framework.

You can learn to lighten the feelings and accept where you are even when you aren’t satisfied, and this makes it easier to get clarity on how to proceed and to get yourself into momentum. It feels so much better to compare yourself to others and instead of feeling down about yourself start getting ideas and inspiration.

You’re on Your Own Path

Stop playing catch-up right now and start where you are. You might want to argue and try to justify why you really are SO BEHIND but let me offer something else.

You’re not behind, it’s not too late, and you’re not too old.

Focus on what’s next. My clients are making leaps they didn’t believe were possible because they broke out of the pattern of trying to catch up. They are changing careers, landing dream jobs, finding great partners, and buying real estate, all because they learned how to stop bringing the judgments and the “shoulds” into their decision-making.

They were able to see more possibilities to get what they want and take advantage of where they were starting from and what they already had. 

And no matter how behind you feel, you can learn how to start getting out of your own way with this “I’m so behind” stuff. Learn what happens when you change your approach to connect to what you really want, and when you stop chasing milestones on a list.