You get there faster when you go slower

On comparisons and feeling behind in life

This week I turned 33.

It’s safe to say that things haven’t quite panned out the way a younger me would’ve expected. No partner, kids, no house, no significant investments, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Every waking moment feels like a scramble to fill gaps in my life's résumé

Everyone’s out here waking up at 5am, meditating 26 hours a day, going to the gym 8 times a week, quitting their $600,000 jobs, getting 100,000 followers in 3 minutes, and making a living selling 3D printed AI Ponies.

And I'm just sitting here mentally masturbating.

Feelings aren’t facts

As I sit alone, doom-scrolling through social media, staring at this glowing screen reiterating my inadequacy, my chest tightens and the same old thought loop starts again: “I'm so far behind”.

But then it dawned on me: I’ve always felt behind.

Every year my birthday rolls around, it’s the same familiar feeling.

Am I actually behind or is this just a feeling?

When I was 13, I aspired to be a professional singer, yet felt behind because I wasn’t classically trained like the other child prodigies in my class.

When I was 23, I aspired to build a muscular physique, yet felt behind my friends who were already ripped and had embarked on their weightlifting journeys years prior.

If I’ve always felt behind no matter what I did then perhaps “catching up” is not going to make this feeling go away and maybe there’s another issue at the root of this: comparison.

Comparison trap

We can’t claim to be anything unless there’s a comparison.

We can’t be short without someone else being tall. We can’t be smart without someone else being dumb. We can’t be rich without someone else being poor.

The comparisons we make involve our ego. Every time we compare, we use “I” statements which become part of our identity. When we say things like “I am tall”, “tall” becomes part of our identity. But being tall doesn’t exist without context.

For example, at 5’10, I’m considered tall when I visit my family in India who are all relatively small, but when I go to the Netherlands, I suddenly become short as the average height for a man there is 6 foot. I can simultaneously be short and tall at the same time depending on who’s around me.

In the same vein, I can be both ahead and behind depending on who I choose to compare myself to.

I find that when I compare myself to people, most of the time I don’t realise that I’m comparing my step 1 to their step 100.

To compensate for this, I feel an urge to “catch up” which sabotages my progress.

Taking shortcuts

Instead of starting at step 1 and making our way through the process, the feeling of being behind makes us take shortcuts.

Shortcuts sabotage progress.

Any skill takes time to build, but instead of being patient, we want the transformation instantly.

Nowadays, because we have access to everyone doing everything all the time, there’s an endless amount of people we can compare ourselves to.

So we fall into these traps of taking shortcuts:

• Get ripped in 30 days

• Build an online business in 3 months

• Learn how to snowboard in 3 minutes

I’ve stopped and started my fitness journey many times over the past decade only to find myself still not where I want to be because I was always taking shortcuts. I wanted to catch up to my friends who started at 16 so I would always skip steps.

Instead of going through the process from step 1, I’d waste time cycling through all the latest diet and exercise trends to get there in the quickest way possible.

But I made little to no progress for years because of the constant starting, stopping, and changing strategies.

A similar thing happened on my journey of learning to sing. Instead of finding a good teacher and committing to the process, I would research endlessly, try different techniques, end up learning bad habits and damaging my voice.

I wanted the gratification instantly, but my body wasn't ready for that speed of change.

Letting go

In the past 6 months, I’ve lost more fat and gained more muscle than I have in the past 6 years because I stopped trying to rush nature.

When I ate 1000 less calories a day, my body resisted.

When I ate 100 less calories a day, my body let go.

At 33, I still want to build a muscular physique and become a professional singer. But I no longer care about how long it’s going to take. I no longer feel the need to catch up to anyone else (even if that person is an idealised, fantasy version of me).

If I compare myself to The Rock, The Weeknd, or fantasy Hari (whoever that is) then I feel behind, but if I compare myself to 32 year old Hari then I feel ahead.

Releasing myself from the shackles of comparison has lead to encouraging progress in both my fitness and musical endeavours over the past year. These lessons are ones now I’m learning to take on board when working on other areas of my life like improving my relationships and social life.

When I no longer feel behind, I feel more motivated to make progress. And this progress actually feels like progress so it creates a self-reinforcing loop instead of a self-sabotaging one.

By accepting where we’re at, committing to the process from step 1, and comparing ourselves only to who we were in the past, we can start to leave this feeling behind—the feeling of being behind.

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

— Lao Tzu