What to Do When You Feel Like Everyone Is Ahead of You in Life

This is the best advice I’ve ever heard

Jeff Valdivia
8 min readApr 17, 2022
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Do you feel like you’re not where you should be? Like all your friends and peers are way ahead of you? Like you’re not even close to reaching any of the goals you so desperately want?

Social media doesn’t help. Although you know the endless number of positive posts isn’t representative of people’s lives, you nevertheless begin to get the impression that everyone else is achieving their dreams.

Then, you ask yourself, Where are all MY great things? Why isn’t my life as incredible as everyone else’s?

It’s questions like these that can make us feel not good enough, like complete failures, and frustrated about where we are in life. All of us feel this way from time to time. For better or worse, we’re compelled to compare ourselves to everyone else. This is built into our psychology.

So, what can we do when we feel like everyone’s ahead of us in life?

I think all we can ever do is follow the brilliant advice of tennis legend, Arthur Ashe:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Start where you are

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Jeff Valdivia

Following my curiosity and hoping it will lead me to wisdom. I write about psychology, meditation, self-development, and spirituality.