When Everyone Else Seems to Have a Plan: Thoughts from a Therapist in Wakefield
Feel like everyone has it all figured out but you? Meet with a therapist in Wakefield for help navigating these tricky comparison traps.
The Pressure of “Having It All Figured Out”
How many times this week have you wondered to yourself how everyone around you seems to have figured out their lives but you? Surely more times than you would like! It would probably also be safe to say that you don’t feel great after those thoughts enter your mind. After all, feeling like you are left behind, like you haven’t been able to do something that seems to come easily to others or feeling like there might be something wrong with you that will keep holding you back can be super discouraging.
While it can feel sometimes like everyone has a plan but you, this is usually not the reality. Instead, it is a common trap our minds can lead us into when we can’t figure out how else to move forward…so we blame a personal shortcoming. This doesn’t exactly help us feel inspired though, so what we can do instead? Read on to learn more about how therapy can offer a different perspective, and how meeting with a therapist in Wakefield can help you get unstuck.
Understanding the Roots of Comparison
Comparisons are sooooo easy to make, yet are so rarely helpful to us. So why do so many people fall into the comparison trap so easily and so frequently?
First, I think it is important to pause and acknowledge that comparison is not all bad. Sometimes, comparison can lead to inspiration, innovation, mentorship and partnership. Perhaps you see that your coworker is incredibly efficient at certain tasks and you want that for yourself, so you strike up a conversation to learn from them and perhaps get some tips that work well for you. You might also compare yourself to classmate who always does better than you on exams, so you invite them to your study group to see if you can build some synergy to help learn the material better. If comparison leads to your desired outcomes, it’s pretty neutral or beneficial.
Often, comparison leads to despair, shame, self-criticism and defeat instead.
One dynamic to consider is the way in which modern, American society saturates us with what everyone else is doing. Whether it’s podcasts, YouTube, Instagram or a Pinterest board, we currently have more access to other people’s lives than has been typical historically. This can be helpful for enhancing connectedness but for some people, sometimes seeing differences automatically prompts a sense of comparison, rather than acceptance. When you are flooded with these differences instead of only seeing them occasionally in passing, then you are flooded with being in comparison-mode and it can become a more habitual state.
Let’s also be realistic that many families and cultures also play into the comparison game. “Did you hear about so-and-so’s son who got into Stanford?” “Last night I ran into so-and-so and learned he already made partner at his firm, he’s amazing!” These pressures can be subtle or overt as these statements are easily followed by “When do you think you’re doing to be promoted?” Or “isn’t it about time you think about starting a family and giving me grandchildren? I’m the only one of all my friends who isn’t a grandmother yet.” And the list goes on. It’s no wonder that you may have become highly attuned to what others are doing and comparing yourself to them.
Usually, all these internal and external comparisons to others leaves people with lower self-esteem, which is hardly what inspires them to take new steps in their lives. Feeling like everyone has it figured out but you doesn’t exactly get most people eager to engage in reflection and connection to take new steps forward, or even to accept a transient period of uncertainty. Thinking everyone is doing something better than you tends to get people stuck and suck the joy out of where they are in the moment.
Why Feeling Lost or Behind Is Normal
I always like to acknowledge that there is always going to be someone you know who does indeed seem to have things figured out and whose life takes a fairly linear path on particular topics. I personally always feel a mix of genuine happiness for that person along with a chip on my shoulder of what I didn’t get that clarity myself. It’s human and okay! I think about a high school friend who was inexplicably and intensely interested in becoming a dentist when she “grew up.” She was certainly academically capable of it, yet it seemed so random at fourteen years of ago to want to be a dentist so intensely, as it’s not something her family members did. I lost touch with her through college and many years later connected on Facebook and lo and behold, there she was living her best life with a private dental practice in NYC. Talk about clarity! She stands out to me though as the exception, rather than the norm. (and I will probably always wonder why she has been so interested in teeth!!)
For most of the rest of us, life doesn’t move so neatly, and it is okay if there are twists and turns on your path. Can it be incredibly hard to feel like you are on a twist instead of having forward trajectory? Of course! It is not necessarily an easy state to embrace, yet it is a realistic one, and if you do not know where you are going, you are not alone. I always like to say that if you do not know where you are going then you can’t get lost.
If can be lonely to feel like you don’t know where you are headed though, and social support can be really helpful to normalize the experience. It can also be really helpful to feel like you have a contingency plan or like you have an emotional plan to take care of yourself and make sure you feel like you are ultimately still headed where you want to go emotionally, even if the logistics are unclear. Meeting with a therapist in Wakefield can be really helpful during uncertain times to help you feel like you are somehow still in track, even when the track itself is unclear. Therapy can normalize and validate these feelings
Strategies to Stop the Comparison Cycle
Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to stop the comparison cycle and transform it into something far more useful. Not every strategy will work for everyone and developing a personalized plan will be important, as a one-size-fits-all is likely to leave you still stuck.
It can help by starting to thing about your preferred reaction when you see or hear about someone who seems to have a plan for their life. My guess is you don’t want to feel envious, resentful, like a failure or pathetic. Do you want to feel inspired? Detached? Impressed yet secure? Curious? Deciding what feels right for you, knowing your unique temperament and interests will really help give you a guide for how to respond when these inevitable moments arise.
Find where you feel secure. You might not feel secure about your plans for the future or even your plans for the next two months. Yet I truly believe there is something you can find to feel secure about in yourself. Do you trust your perseverance? Your creativity? Your intellect? Your ability to connect with others? Somewhere in you is something that you can trust, and learn to rely on this when everything else feels shaky.
Remind yourself what matters most to you. It can be really easy to compare yourself to someone who is doing something you don’t even care about doing in your own life. Maybe you are surrounded by people who keep talking about their grad school plans and all the sophisticated things they are planning to study and you end up feeling worthless because you are focused on finding any job you can to get by after undergrad and have no intention of being in school any longer. Perhaps you can admire their enthusiasm, but you know you don’t want to go to grad school, so try instead to focus on your goal of starting your professional life because that’s what matters more to you.
Consider also limiting your use of social media, or trying to curate your feed to be more helpful to you emotionally. The goal is not to totally avoid other people, but to avoid oversaturation with opportunities for comparison. So cue the cute kitten videos to clean up your feed!
Building Your Own Definition of Success
“Success” is actually a term that drives me bonkers in the way it is used in casual conversation. The real definition from our friends at the Cambridge Dictionary is “The achieving of the results wanted or hoped for; something that achieves positive results.” Which I think is lovely! In my experience though, 95% of the time, people define success as making a lot of money. “She became a really successful surgeon in LA” or “He is a really successful stock broker in New York.” Are these folks successful or wealthy? Is the only way to measure the value of work through the wealth it garners? As someone in a low-wage field, I admittedly have a chip on my shoulder about this, so full disclosure on that! It’s peculiar that unless I start to charge much more for my work and work more extensive hours to make more income, I have chance of being regarded as “successful” by most of society. Yet I am more deeply gratified by my work than most people I know and I have put in plenty of hard work to get where I am, so I consider myself highly successful. Think about this when you hear the word “success” being thrown around and consider how you want to define success. This can absolutely include financial goals, yet call those what they are and call it having a lucrative career instead of a successful career!
In one of my internships I remember working with a man who was effectively a sports coach for teenagers and adults. He had a beautiful definition of success in his work that allowed him to enjoy the process regardless of whether his athletes won or lost their games. He defined success as see elements of his teaching style show up in his players’ movements…indicators that the ways they made improvements effectively had his signature on them. It allowed him to know his work made a difference in the ways he could control and this allowed him to have a very meaningful relationship with his work, and separate from challenges of the coaching climate that could get excessively focused on stats and outcomes and burnt out most of his peers.
If you find yourself struggling to create a vision of what success means to you, you are not alone! Consider structuring journaling, intentional reflection on a walk or talking with others for their definitions. If you still find yourself stuck, consider therapy. A therapist in Wakefield can help you clarify your vision and start moving toward the reality you want to create for yourself.
Cultivating Self-Compassion and Patience
Learning to treat yourself with kindness is critical, even though it’s really hard! It’s hard to be around other people who seem to have things all figured out. It’s hard to have a ton of uncertainty in your life. It’s hard to feel unsure what you want to do next. These are hard stages of life to endure, there is no doubt about that. There is no need to beat yourself up about it though, it’s hard enough already!
Give yourself permission to celebrate small wins and enjoy the journey. You don’t have to love this stage, you really don’t. Yet fighting it won’t get rid of it, so make your way through it as gently as possible.
How a Therapist in Wakefield Can Support Your Journey
You may be wondering how therapy can help when you feel like all you need is to figure it out on your own, have more direction or get your act together. Yet this can be a really tall order if nothing inspires you are naturally as my friend who was fixated on becoming a dentist. In therapy, we will explore your personal interests, identify what lights you up, what leads you to cower and then develop a plan to move towards what is most important to you in a way that feels comfortable, yet with enough of a challenge to know without a doubt you are doing something different than you have done before. When you feel like you are stuck in comparison, therapy can help you shift the way you respond to others and find more security in yourself. While it can’t eliminate uncertainty, it can absolutely help you navigate it with more comfort.
Feeling like everyone else has a plan but you?
A therapist in Wakefield can help you find your path and build self-trust.
Contact me today at the link below for a free consultation. Whether in-person or online, therapy offers a personalized approach to navigating life transitions and improving your overall well-being. Start your journey toward navigating uncertainty with readiness today.