The Inner Conversation

"I Should Be Further Along"

You know that voice. The one that shows up when you're scrolling through LinkedIn at 11pm, watching people half your age announce their promotions. 

The one that whispers when you look at your bank account, your relationship status, your career trajectory. 

“You should be further along.”

I heard it again last Tuesday. A friend mentioned buying their second investment property, and there it was - that familiar punch to the gut. The math started immediately: if I had made different choices five years ago, if I hadn't gone travelling, if I'd been more strategic, more disciplined, more... something.

But I have a sneaking suspicion about this particular mental terrorist: it's not really about being behind. It's about the myth that progress is linear.

We've bought into this idea that life is a ladder everyone climbs at the same pace and there's some cosmic scoreboard keeping track. 

But life isn't linear. 

It's more like a spiral staircase in an old house - sometimes you're going up, sometimes you circle back to where you thought you'd already been, and sometimes you discover rooms you didn't know existed.

The "further along" voice assumes there's one path, one timeline, one definition of success. It ignores everything you can't quantify:

• the resilience you built during that difficult year

• the compassion you developed through struggle

• the boundaries you learned to set

• the relationships that deepened when you stopped performing and started being real

I think about my grandmother, who didn't learn to drive until she was 45, didn't start painting until 60, didn't write her first letter to the editor until 75. By society's standards, she was "behind" on independence, creativity, and civic engagement. 

But she was exactly where she needed to be at each moment, building the foundation for what came next.

Your timeline is not their timeline. Your ‘behind’ is not actually behind - it's exactly where you are. And where you are is the only place you can start from.

The next time that voice shows up, try this: instead of asking, "Where should I be?" ask "What am I learning right now?"

Progress isn't always forward. Sometimes it's deeper. Sometimes it's wider. Sometimes it's just staying still long enough to see clearly.

You're not behind. You're becoming.

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