Kitchen notes
Stop feeling behind, even if life sucks right now
When we were studying biochemistry we had to put our studies on hold for a year, because we needed to work to make some money so we can support myself. … Read more
When we were studying biochemistry we had to put our studies on hold for a year, because we needed to work to make some money so we can support myself.
We didn’t have the time and capacity to do both at the same time. We were working almost full-time, but we also had to be in the laboratory for 12 hours a day, 5 days a week.
So we just put that semester on hold.
Our friends continued as usual and we had to return next year to the class that started a year later.
It was a heavy, heavy feeling. We felt so ashamed. Our new fellow students were awesome, but we always had the feeling we're so behind and we kinda imagined they were talking behind our back.
However we put in the effort, finished university and got our diploma one semester later.
You know what we realized then:
- Nobody was talking behind our back.
- Nobody cares when you finish the university as long as you finish.
- This also will pass
Since then we had many setbacks, many, many things have happened that made us feel behind in our life. On multiple occasions. But, we now learned to welcome these setbacks as opportunities to learn something new. To do something new. We don’t take them as: well, it wasn’t meant to be and to give up. We don’t feel like all is lost.
And we don’t compare myself to everyone else. It’s our life, not theirs. We're not behind, they’re not ahead. They’re on their own path and we're on ours.
Nobody, and we mean nobody ever knows how life is supposed to be. There’s no blueprint we need or can follow.
Life is a marathon, kinda
We imagine life as a marathon. But with hurdles along the way. Also, in this marathon, we don’t all start at the same line. Some of us start in the front, some of us are in the back. And the hurdles? Some come earlier along the way, some later. Some are big, others small.
But what do you do in a marathon? You keep moving. If you’re one of the lucky ones, whose start line was forward – be grateful for it and take it as an opportunity to go along the way without looking back to be able to handle the hurdles ahead.
If you start way back, take it as an opportunity to learn as much as you can along the way to be able to handle whatever is ahead. Focus on what you can do now. Not what’s coming or how hard you had it. Focus on what’s now.
Life happens
Whether we like it or not, life doesn’t follow our plans. It just happens, whether we feel behind or not. Even with our blog. It took us 3 years just to start it. We always, even before the start, felt it was already too late. We felt behind.
But then, somehow, we went ahead and started it. We still felt behind though. Looking at all the people who started after us and made 10x more money than us in months. Getting so much more traffic than us. We didn’t know what their secret was. Our content was good and we put so much effort.
Then we stopped wondering around. We realized this is another opportunity to learn. And we learned a lot. We took blogging as a learning experience, as an opportunity to grow as a person, to support our family, to connect with others, to learn new skills, to build something that’s ours, to share with others what we've learned.
Time spent learning something new is never wasted.
Now that we let this mindset in, our blog is growing and it all seems to fall into place. We're not worried about making a ton of money, about getting millions of page views and promoting to our audience things we don’t care about, just because someone pays us to. We're going at our own pace, being true to myself and saying what we want, when we want it.
Of course we set goals, but there’s time for everything.
So whether you want to start a blog, to lose weight, to find love or to start a completely new career – it’s never too late for any of that.
Long story short. If you’re feeling behind – stop comparing yourself to others and stressing about what you don’t have yet or what you haven’t done by now. Focus on what you can do today.
Take this as an opportunity to experience & learn something new. Trust the pace of your own life and enjoy the road. You don’t know what’s coming next.
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