Ever feel like every step you take might be the wrong one? Do you sometimes feel like you trudge through life, confused about what you should do next? Or do you feel as if you’re sometimes moving so fast that everything kind of blurs around you? I’ve noticed that I often feel like there’s either no opportunities on the horizon, or it seems there’s so many choices it becomes overwhelming. Sometimes life feels like a sprint: you can’t slow down long enough to catch your breath and there’s no time to second guess your steps. Other times, it feels like running a marathon: you haven’t found a second wind and every step is tremendously heavy.
If you’re not a runner, please forgive all the running metaphors. But even if you can’t relate to the what it feels like to race, I assure you this will still make sense and you’ll find you can relate to some of these thoughts.
Running behind
In the wake of our decision to leave our day jobs and pursue different kinds of work, I’ve felt a wide range of emotion pass through me. Life moved on, but I can’t find my stride. Some days, I feel stumped. I wonder what the heck I got myself into. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information I need to consume and skills I need to adapt. Often I hit writer’s block. I worry about finding work.
I’m constantly bombarded by I “should be” thoughts. These are the kind of thoughts that make me feel guilty for not being more established, more successful, more knowledgable. Thoughts like this creep in at the end of a day when I feel like I didn’t get enough done. They’re exceptionally prominent after a scroll through social media when I see what everyone else is up to these days.
Rather than let these kind of thoughts propel me forward toward my next goal, I often let them drag me down into further distress. Instead of feeling motivated, I feel distressed. Instead of feeling challenged, I feel behind. I constantly feel as if I’m trying to catch the person in front of me. Not a specific person, mind you, but the idea of a person, many persons, running in front of me, seemingly more easily than me. These “competitors” widen the gap with easy strides while I gasp for air and my legs cramp up. I can’t keep up! I need to walk!
We’re all wingin’ it
In many of our interviews, when we ask people what their advice for people feeling “in-between” would be, they often answer with something along the lines of “everyone feels this way.”
In the age of social media, this is very, very hard to believe. It certainly looks like everyone else has got it together. This idea that other people have something figured out that we don’t is easy to accept because it encourages the idea that once we figure “it” out, our lives will change dramatically for the better. This may not be what you want to hear, but you’re probably never going to figure “it” out. Because no one has it figured out. We’re all wingin’ it. Some people have found their stride, yes, but a big cramp might be about to seize the muscles because that’s life and the race is not about who you beat.
One more running simile: we’re all in-between the start line and the finish line (that’s called life). Sometimes, we’re in-between the finish line of one race and the start of another (that’s called your recovery period). Either way, we’re always in-between. Right now, my own pace is constantly changing. I have to adapt as the course changes. But what I should not be concerned with, is what my competitors are doing. I’m reminded how important it is to run my own race.