For most of my life, I believed progress had to be big and obvious. I thought that if I wasn’t achieving something monumental, or visibly transforming my life, I wasn’t moving forward at all. I held myself to these impossibly high standards, comparing my journey to everyone else’s “highlight reel.”
And for years, that made me feel like I was always falling behind. I felt like I was always never enough, never quite where I should be. No matter what I did, it felt like it wasn’t enough — like I was constantly chasing a moving finish line I could never reach. I told myself I was stupid, that I was failing, that I was somehow less than everyone else.
I carried this quiet anxiety everywhere, comparing myself to others’ successes, scrolling through lives that looked so perfect, so effortless. Inside, I kept thinking, “I’m always going to be behind. I’m always going to be not enough. I’m always going to be… missing something.”








