Navigating the Maze of progress

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Do you ever feel like you're walking too slow? Or you're heading in no particular direction. Making steps that at first seemed like you were heading in the right direction but then all of a sudden you start to feel like you've been in the same place for too long or you've only made a small step forward compared to where you were in the past. Worst is when you start to look at other people around you (your friends and colleagues) who started or were around the same level as you in the past, but it seems like they're far ahead now.

You start to think "What is it that I'm doing wrong?" Analyzing, chopping and changing looking for what exactly it is that you are not doing right. Even the miniscule things that probably weren't important to you before you start to find them important. Putting unnecessary pressure on yourself.

"Each step I take has to be the best step possible. Nothing less than that."

What was once relatively easy to do starts to seem so frustrating. Slowly and surely it starts to weigh you down when you're putting in more effort, but then getting the same results. And now you can't go back to how things were in the past because it would seem like you were starting to put in less effort.

"I don't think I can do it, or maybe this just isn't meant to be for me. Perhaps I should quit." are the type of thoughts that start to fill your head and then the feelings of not being good enough start to creep in.

You see, the reason I find it so easy to describe this thought process is because it has happened to me a lot of times. And each time it does it is very frustrating. But overtime I feel like I am learning to overcome it. A large part of it stems from overthinking. You know where you want to be, you have set out steps on how you'll get there, you have a look and you're not there yet, you start to panic, you don't even see that though you're not there yet you have come a long way from where you were at the beginning. Then self sabotaging starts to happen and you get there even later than you would have if you'd just continued. At times it's best to just continue.

Thinking and evaluating where you are and where you want to be are good things, but it is very easy to start overthinking things and when all of that mixes with comparison it makes things a lot worse.

Nowadays what I have found myself doing when it looks like I'm not moving, is analyze, reflect and see if I am really not moving at all. If I am moving forward then I don't stop, even if it seems a bit slow. I also look to see if there's better ways to move faster, especially advice from those I'm looking up to. If there's none, I keep pushing.

~THANKS FOR READING~

_{Cover image by Dan Asaki from Unsplash}