What to Do When You Feel Chronically Behind in Life but Want to Excel

You’re Not Lazy, You’re Just Haunted by Potential

Modern life constantly exposes you to people who seem ahead of you.

And it’s not just your friends or coworkers either…It’s seemingly millions of people, all of whom have it better than you.

You open Instagram and see entrepreneurs in Dubai driving around in Lambos.

You check YouTube and see 23-year-olds making $100,000/month.

You browse LinkedIn and someone announces a promotion every six minutes.

All of this noise creates the illusion that everyone is progressing smoothly except you. Hell, my content is guilty of this too sometimes (my bad lol).

The thing is, after enough exposure to all of this, your brain starts treating extraordinary outcomes as normal. Naturally, in comparison, your life looks pretty lackluster.

This line of thinking is a trap. Quite a deadly one, too.

If you let it fester, it deters you from taking meaningful action to create the life you desire. After all, if you’re so far behind, what’s the point of even starting?

In reality, many successful people have spent years feeling lost. Many confident people you see online are faking it until they make it. And the “overnight” success stories you see don’t share the years of work behind the scenes that made everything possible.

And so if you’re feeling behind but want to excel, this one is for you.

I’m covering actionable steps you can take today to begin working towards your goals.

From small steps that compound into larger wins to reframing certain modes of thinking; this is for anyone feeling lost and unmotivated who wants to get back to dreaming big.

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1. Start Stacking Small Wins

When people feel stuck in life, they often think they need some massive transformation.

New city. New relationship. New business idea. New personality, even.

Usually, what actually changes people is much less dramatic. It’s the implementation of small routines, small improvements, and small moments of discipline that gradually build up positive momentum in your life.

I talk about this concept in my post on the opportunity cost of not following your dreams.

Jordan Peterson talks about the importance of “aiming low enough” as well. Basically, setting goals small enough that you can actually achieve them consistently.

There’s a lot of truth to that, especially when you feel overwhelmed.

This can look like:

• Going to bed at the same time every night

• Drinking water and stretching in the morning

• Cooking basic meals instead of ordering takeout

• Walking every day

• Cleaning your apartment for 10 minutes

• Calling a friend once a week

• Reading for 20 minutes before bed

These habits sound almost insultingly simple. But when you follow through on them consistently, you prove something important to yourself: you are capable of changing your life for the better.

That sense of agency matters more than people realize. You need to believe you have autonomy and agency over your life if you actually want to control your life and outcomes.

2. Save Money & Buy Back Your Capacity To Take Risk

When you’re feeling stuck and don’t know where to go, I urge you to default to saving money.

There’s a few reasons for this.

Firstly, if your expenses outpace your income, you will always feel behind. You even see this with high-earning professions like doctors and lawyers; when you live paycheck to paycheck, no amount of keeping up with the Joneses will bring happiness or fulfillment.

Secondly, building up your savings buys you the capacity to take action when you know where you want to go.

In other words, if you have a few months’ of living expenses saved up, you buy the ability to take risk and action when it counts.

Here’s a personal example: I landed a ~$40,000 a year office job shortly out of college. Yet I was miserable, stuck in the same town I’d been in for years, working on a job that was deeply unfulfilling with no upward mobility.

I ended up quitting that job within a few months and booked a one-way ticket to Colombia. I had some savings and was beginning my freelance writing and blogging career.

Quitting my day job was an immediate hit to my income. But I had enough savings to place a bet on myself, at least for the next few months.

A couple months came and went, and you know what?

My writing income was surpassing my old day job, I had freedom over my time, and I had never felt more alive. And the businesses I started ended up making $1M+ along the way.

Medellin, 2020. I had just quit my office job and was building online businesses. This is one of the happiest times in my life. Also the most impactful for my finances and life.

This is what buying capacity gets you; you can take shots on net when it matters.

I have met many people during my years of being a digital nomad who want to start a business, who want to move somewhere new, or who want to have a career shift. Many never take action, and the reason is almost-always due to lack of capacity.

Bottom line: if you feel lost, save money and make this a priority.

Put your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account you don’t touch (you can use something like Current and earn 4% APY right now, easy freebie!)

Slash spending on stupid stuff. Bide your time and plan. When you find clarity, you’ll be able to take action and pull the trigger.

💸 Extra Reading - 6 Simple Steps To Making $1,000 More Per Month.

3. Learn Something New & Reignite Your Curiosity

One of the worst parts about feeling stuck is that life starts becoming repetitive.

Wake up.

Work.

Scroll.

Sleep.

Repeat.

Days blur together. Weeks disappear. They’ve actually studied this, and it’s terrifying, but the fewer novel experiences you have in your life, the faster life seems to pass you by. You legitimate feel like you’re living less life if you remain stagnant.

I’ve found the best way to break this monotonous cycle is to learn something new, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with money or productivity.

Recently, I started learning boxing because it always interested me.

I’m objectively terrible at it.

But there’s something incredibly healthy about being a beginner again. It forces your brain to wake up. You become present. You struggle. You improve slightly. You get humbled. And any progress you make at this new skill makes you feel like you’re conquering an absolute mountain.

I’ve also been slowly learning Dutch. The other day I bought a whole chicken from the grocery store and watched a YouTube video on how to properly break it down and cook it.

None of these things are life-changing on their own.

But together, they create a feeling that life is expanding again instead of shrinking. And once again, you prove to yourself with small wins that you’re capable and have the power to do cool stuff with your life.

Again, this doesn’t have to relate to business or money in any way. You could learn programming, vibe code something, how to edit YouTube videos, or some other highly-monetizable skill, but you don’t have to.

Learn how to dance salsa, how to bake break, or how to make a great cup of coffee. Just do something new

4. Find Your Ikigai - Your “Reason For Being”

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that roughly means “reason for being.”

It’s a very powerful concept. Typically, it relates to four elements: finding what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at, and what you can get paid for:

This image is actually from the Government of Japan’s website, how cool is that?! They have a blog haha.

However there’s also an element of Ikigai that emphasizes finding joy and beauty in everyday, mundane actions.

In the West, we’d probably call this mindset “practicing gratefulness” or something similar. But I think Ikigai is slightly more intentional, especially for everyday routines.

I encourage you to stay off your phone in the morning and to give this thing a try, even if it sounds silly.

Take notice of how your coffee machine gurgles and smells when you flip it on. Watch how the sun hits the leaves of that tree in your backyard slightly differently each morning. Spend a few minutes talking with someone at the dinner table instead of scrolling, and be present for the conversation.

Lately I have felt very behind in my various online businesses. I’m not producing as much as I could. Other people are using AI tools ‘better’ than I am. Views are down on many of my accounts. The feeling is bleh.

Yet somehow, this stress evaporates when I spend time watching how the sun reflects off the ocean in the evenings, or when I cook a simple meal without checking my phone.

Besides stress evaporating, your mind will clear when you practice Ikigai. You’ll have space to make clearer, better decisions for the road ahead. This alone can have a massive ROI for your life as you tackle difficult choices and forks in the road.

Related: Everything You Desire Waits On The Other Side Of Risk & Fear.

5. Start Optimizing For Freedom Instead Of Status

Part of the comparison trap and feeling endlessly behind comes from confusing visible status with actual quality of life.

We’ve been conditioned to assume:

• Expensive = successful

• Busy = important

• Famous = fulfilled

But these things are often loosely connected at best. And I’ve met plenty of people who have impressive-looking lives on the surface or their Instagram feed but are actually miserable in reality.

SO before you go off chasing a life that was pitched and sold to you on social media, ask yourself this question: is your decision building towards status, or freedom?

Trust me, making decisions that reduce complications in your life and give you more control over your time and energy is how you ‘lifemax.’

I’ve lived in Dubai and tried living a lavish lifestyle for YouTube.

I’ve done the whole ‘grind out a business —> work 80 hours a week —> try and sell that business —> roll that money into a NEW business —> work even MORE —> Don’t forget NETWORKING HAHAHA —> Did you buy a Rolex yet bro? —> I LOVE LINKEDIN SHIT POSTING —> AHHHRHRHGHGHGHHFH

All of this made me stressed and miserable. I ended up making worse decisions too because I couldn’t think straight anymore.

Alternatively, you can build a more ‘boring’ life that focuses on maintaining a flexible schedule, limited meetings, meaningful relationships, and more freedom over your time and creative pursuits.

This is why I’m such a fan of Coast FIRE and living in cheap places.

You can skip chasing status symbols that don’t have any impact on your happiness. Simplify your life. Unlock freedom and control over chasing a shiny business model you see online. Chances are, you’ll need a way lower annual income to do this and you’ll be happier, so this path is both easier and more fun 😉

This isn’t to say you can’t set ambitious goals. Just be careful for what you’re optimizing for.

6. Change Your Environment If You Need To

Sometimes feeling behind has less to do with you and more to do with your environment.

Certain places, routines, and social circles slowly drain people without them realizing. But you actually feel the drain physically after enough time passes, and your ideas lose their sharpness.

Every day beings looking the same. Your conversations are repetitive, you stop meeting new people, and bit by bit, your worldview and sense of adventure shrink.

A simple change in scenery can be surprisingly powerful here. And even though I’m basically a full-time nomad now, I’m not saying you have to move to the other side of the world.

Sometimes it’s as simple as:

• Working from a new coffee shop

• Joining a gym

• Spending more time outside

• Traveling somewhere unfamiliar, even a couple hours away

• Rearranging your apartment

• Driving a new way home

Humans adapt very quickly to stagnant environments. Novelty wakes the brain back up.

7. Don’t Quit The Comparison Game…Reframe It Instead

When people say “comparison is the thief of joy” I think they’re right.

But I disagree with people who say you shouldn’t play the comparison game whatsoever.

The comparison game is hardwired into our DNA. It’s human nature to compare everything around us to other stimuli and to ourselves. This could be for threat detection, to determine status, or just because our brains can’t help but pick winner and losers. Whatever the case, don’t feel bad for comparing your current life to what you see around you because this is totally normal.

Where we’ve lost the plot is comparing ourselves to curated depictions we see on social media that, of course, make us feel bad about ourselves.

I used to do this all the time when I looked at bloggers and YouTubers (two of my main businesses) who were all making way more money than me. I would feel so behind and like I didn’t have the knowledge to succeed or keep my businesses running profitably.

Eventually, I realized that comparing my businesses and life to theirs was useful, but only in terms of reverse engineering some of the things they had that I wanted.

I learned to separate the fancy cars, watches, and social media flexing that was going on from the actual business models. The meat and potatoes of the whole thing.

I focused on tactics they were using to scale their traffic, which offers they were monetizing, how they built out funnels, and other stuff that actually mattered.

In other words, when you play the comparison game with people who make you feel behind, try to take a step back and view things more tactically. You can learn heaps from people who are ahead of you. It doesn’t detract from your position in life, and it can even inspire you to chase after some bigger fish in the pond.

On the flip side, you can also play the comparison game with the person you were a few years ago, or even a couple of months ago.

We forget to do this too often. But when you feel behind and lost, ask yourself: what would the teenage version of yourself say about your life right now? Or the person you were a couple of years ago?

Maybe they’d be pretty damn impressed. And, maybe, you can cut yourself a little slack as you keep marching onwards.

Extra Reading - How To Actually Change Your Life With A One-Person Business.

Final Thoughts

Feeling behind in life is an almost universal experience now. Modern culture monetizes insecurity extremely well.

But there will always be someone out there seemingly more successful, attractive, funnier, further ahead, whatever than you.

You cannot win this kind of comparison game in the long run. It’s also the wrong game to play.

Instead, focus on taking slow, consistent steps that are small wins. Compound those small wins into larger ones. Learn that you have autonomy over your destiny, and this life is what you make of it. Optimize for freedom and peace over status and the rat race. Give yourself a bit of grace, but don’t mistake this for a blank check to stop chasing your dreams.

When I look back on even the last few years, it’s crazy how much your life can change if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Sure, you’ll slip and backslide at times. Sometimes pretty far back, too.

But consistent optimism and action leads us to the right place for us. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible, and you’re in the driver’s seat after all! Take the wheel and go where you want to go. Even if there’s some detours along the way, you’ll have a way better time if you’re the one driving!

Thanks for reading all. Back to writing on Substack, feeling good!

Catch you in the next one.

Tom from WiFi Wealth.

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Life lately. A living room that’s lived in, catching sunsets, writing, and exploring. Cheers all.