Learning to Trust Your Own Timeline

I spent most of my career measuring my journey against everyone else’s.

Their timelines.

Their promotions.

Their successes.

Their failures.

Even though I knew the phrase “comparison is the thief of joy,” I still compared. Constantly.

It took me years to stop.

Years of reminding myself that no two journeys are the same. No two people are the same. No two organizational conditions are the same. And that even when you want something badly, sometimes painfully badly, there are factors outside your control that you have to learn to accept.

That part is hard to swallow. Especially when you’re ambitious. Especially when you’re capable. Especially when you know you’re doing the work.

There Was No Playbook for This

There was no checklist that fixed it.

No mindset hack.

No mantra that magically made the comparison go away.

What changed things wasn’t a breakthrough moment. It was time.

Time.

Experience.

And slowly building confidence in my own path instead of borrowing someone else’s.

I stopped asking, “Why not me?” and started asking, “What am I actually building?”

That shift didn’t happen overnight. It came from living through enough seasons, good and bad, to realize that forward doesn’t always look linear, and success doesn’t always show up on the schedule you expected.

Watching It Happen All Over Again

Now I’m watching the same thing play out with my daughter as she applies to college and waits for decisions.

It’s almost impossible not to compare.

Grades.

Awards.

Extracurriculars.

Acceptances rolling in for other students, some to the exact schools she’s dreamed about.

As we talk through it, I’m pulled right back to how it felt to live in the shadow of other people’s milestones. To wonder what you missed. To question whether you did enough. To assume someone else’s moment somehow diminishes your own.

It’s brutal. And familiar.

Wanting to Say the Right Thing (And Knowing It’s Not Enough)

I wish I could convince her that she’s enough.

I wish I could list every accomplishment. Every late night. Every hard thing she pushed through. Every reason she should believe in herself.

But I also know something uncomfortable.

Words aren’t enough.

She has to believe it herself.

She has to trust her journey.

She has to learn how to stand confidently in her own story, even when it doesn’t look like the one unfolding next to her.

And maybe that’s the hardest lesson of all.

The Lesson You Can’t Be Taught

We don’t learn this by being told.

We learn it by living it.

By sitting in the discomfort.

By watching others move ahead while we stay put.

By staying committed to our path even when it’s quiet.

By realizing, eventually, that the journey we thought we wanted wouldn’t have fit us anyway.

It’s not a comforting lesson. But it’s an honest one.

And for better or worse, it’s one we all have to learn for ourselves.