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October 10, 2025 22 mins

Do you ever feel behind in life?

What are you comparing yourself to?

Today, Jay shares a powerful reminder for anyone who feels like they’re behind in life. Maybe you’re comparing your career path to a friend’s promotion, your relationship status to someone’s engagement photos, or your lifestyle to highlight reels on social media. Jay explains how natural it is to feel this way, especially after school, when the timelines that once kept us moving together begin to split apart. Drawing on social comparison theory, he shows how easily our self-worth can become tied to where others seem to be, instead of honoring the unique path we’re on.

Jay reframes the idea of being “behind,” not as a failure but an essential part of growth. Through psychology and real-life examples, he emphasizes that endings matter more than beginnings, and that setbacks are not signs of weakness, but proof that we’re actively building resilience. He challenges our attachment to comfort, which can quietly keep us stuck, and reminds us that what feels like delay is really unseen preparation for the skills and foundations that lead to future success. Jay shifts how we measure progress, from chasing empty wins to recognizing that grit matters more than perfection.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How to Redefine Success on Your Timeline

How to Recognize False Progress in Others

How to See Struggle as Strength

How to Turn Setbacks into Resilience

How to Trust That You’re Not Late

The struggles you face today are shaping your resilience, your wisdom, and your strength for tomorrow. You are not late, you are not lost, you are simply on your own timeline.

With Love and Gratitude,

Jay Shetty

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What We Discuss:

00:00 Intro

00:52 Do You Feel Behind in Life?

02:37 #1: You Aren't Late, You're on a Different Timeline

06:07 #2: Endings Define the Story 

08:42 #3: Comfort is What Really Keeps You Stuck

12:27 #4: Progress Doesn’t Guarantee Happiness

14:01 #5: Struggling Is Proof You’re Growing

17:49 #6: You're not Behind, You're Developing Skills

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Life isn't a race, it's a relay. Some people sprint early,
others save their strength for later. Some are still building
their skills. Stop comparing your life to the lives of
people you don't even want. Stop comparing your progress to
someone else's performance. Stop comparing your worth to numbers, likes,

(00:26):
or applause. Stop comparing, because the more you do that,
the less you see what's in your favor. The number
one health and wellness podcast Jetty Jay Shetty. Hey everyone,
it's Jay Shetty, author of New York Times bestsellers Think

(00:47):
Like a Monk and Eight Rules of Love. I'm so
glad you're back here today. We're talking about what to
do if you're feeling behind in life. If you felt
like everyone else has got their career right, this episode
is for you. If you're feeling like you should have
been married right now and maybe even ad children, this
episode is for you. And if you're feeling like everyone

(01:09):
else is crushing it but you've been left behind, this
episode is for you. I think it's really natural in
life to go from feeling like you were on track
to off track. But what's also natural is to feel
you were always behind. Now where does this come from.
It comes from the fact that for potentially sixteen, eighteen,

(01:30):
or twenty one years of your life, if you were
in formal education, you moved at the same pace as everyone.
So everyone went from seventh grade to eighth grade, a
lot of people went from high school to college, and
you went from college into your first job. But it
was at that point that the timelines changed. Maybe your

(01:51):
friend got promoted first and you got promoted last. Maybe
your other friend got proposed to first and you're still seeing.
Maybe your other friend had an amazing wedding and you're
sitting here just trying to plan your weekend. Maybe another
friend has already had a baby, and you're here just
trying to figure out what you're gonna watch you on
Netflix tonight. It can often feel that after high school

(02:13):
and after college, there was no system that kept you
on the same page, so you could watch what everyone
else was doing and feel completely behind. This episode is
to remind you that you're not late. You're not behind.
Lesser number one, you're not late. You're on a different timeline.

(02:35):
You're on a different clock. We measure our worth by
comparing timelines with others. In nineteen fifty four, psychologist Leon
Festinger noticed something simple but profound. We don't judge ourselves
in isolation. We judge ourselves by comparison. In other words,

(02:56):
we don't compare our life or ourselves to who we
were yesterday. We compare our life and ourselves to who
everyone else is today, or at least what they tell us.
Think about this. You might feel fine about your career
until you see a classmate on LinkedIn with a fancy
new job title. You might feel proud of your apartment

(03:19):
until a friend buys a house. You might feel good
about your relationship until you scroll past someone else's engagement photos.
This is social comparison theory. Our worth gets measured not
against our own progress, but against the timelines of people
around us. This study absolutely blew my mind. This study

(03:43):
at Harvard gave graduating students two options. They could either
earn fifty thousand dollars a year while everyone else earns
twenty five thousand dollars, or they could earn one hundred
thousand dollars a year while everyone else earns two hundred
thousand dollars. Which one do you think they chose? Which

(04:05):
one would you choose? Most students chose the first option,
less actual money, but more status relative to others. It
didn't matter how much they earned. In reality, what mattered
was how much they earned compared to the people next
to them. A twenty ten study by the University of

(04:26):
Warwick found that life satisfaction is more influenced by relative
income what you make compared to your peers than by
absolute income. Social media has magnified this effect. According to
a study in Computers in human behavior, time spent on
social media correlated directly with increased feelings of inadequacy due

(04:50):
to comparison. But here's the truth. Colonel Sanders launched KFC
at sixty five. There are so many amazing entrepreneurs who
built their dream at forty fifty, sixty seventy. But because
we live in an influencer economy, we all feel that
if we're not multimillionaires by the time were twenty one
or thirty, that were too late. The reality is there

(05:14):
is no universal timeline. What feels like late is usually
just different. Life isn't a race, it's a relay. Some
people sprint early, others save their strength for later. Some
are still building their skills. Stop comparing your life to
the lives of people you don't even want. Stop comparing

(05:38):
your progress to someone else's performance. Stop comparing your worth
to numbers, likes or applause. Stop comparing, because the more
you do that, the less you see what's in your favor.
Reminder number two. Endings define the story, not the start.

(06:01):
Think about a movie. It can be slow at the start,
un't even in the middle. But if the ending is powerful,
that's what you remember. You leave the theater saying, Wow,
that was incredible. It blew my mind. Psychologist Daniel Carneman
proved this with his peak end rule. We judge experiences
not by how long they lasted, or even by how

(06:22):
they began, but by their most intense moment, and above all,
how they ended. In one study, patients undergoing painful medical
procedures remembered the experience as less awful if the ending
was gentler, even if the procedure itself was longer. The

(06:43):
ending rewrote the story in memory. And the same is
true for our lives, our careers, our relationships. A rocky
start doesn't lock in a bad ending. A slow decade
doesn't cancel out the power of where you finished. A
failure today doesn't stop you from closing with the wind tomorrow.

(07:05):
So if you're feeling behind, if you're feeling stuck in
the middle, if your start has been messy, remember people
won't remember every stumble, they'll remember how you finished, and
most importantly, you haven't finished yet. Don't quit in the
middle of your story. Keep going until the ending makes

(07:28):
your struggle worth it, because the science is clear, it's
not the start that defines the story, it's how you
choose to end it. According to Carneman's peak rule, you
can spend half of your life behind and still end happy,
because that's what matters. One of my favorite quotes from

(07:51):
John Lennon is everything will be okay in the end,
and if it's not okay, it's not the end. We
end before we've even got started. We finish and quit
before we've even got going. If you're in the messy middle,

(08:12):
you don't have to feel stuck. No one cares how
long it took you. They care that you kept going.
Reminder number three, comfort is the real cause of delay.
People love to say they're behind in life because the
world is unfair, and yes, life can be unfair, but

(08:34):
often that's not the real reason we're stuck. Here's the
harsh truth. We're behind because comfort has us sedated. You're
not behind because the world is unfair. You're behind because
comfort is controlling. You take the parable of the frog
in warm water. Don't actually do this, but if you

(08:55):
drop a frog into boiling water, it jumps out immediately.
But put it in lukewarm water and heat it slowly.
It won't notice the danger until it's too late. That's
how comfort works. It doesn't scream you're wasting your life.
It whispers you're fine here, don't push maybe tomorrow. Before

(09:19):
you know it, years pass. This is called the status
quote bias. Our brain prefers the safety of what's familiar,
even if it's not serving us. Research shows that when
faced with change, most people would rather stick with a
mediocre situation than risk the uncertainty of a better one.

(09:43):
That bias is why people stay in unfulfilling jobs, toxic relationships,
or unhealthy habits, not because they can't change, but because
comfort tricks them into not wanting to. One of my
favorite quotes is from Tik nat Han. He said, we
will choose familiar pain over unfamiliar change. We will choose

(10:08):
something that hurts us because it feels familiar, instead of
choosing something that we don't recognize that might be better
for us. A twenty seventeen study published in Frontiers in
Psychology found that over eighty percent of people choose the
default option in experiments even when better alternatives are available,

(10:32):
simply to avoid change. Gallup surveys show that eighty five
percent of employees worldwide are disengaged at work, yet most
don't leave, not because they lackability, but because comfort feels
safer than growth. So if you feel behind, don't just
blame someone else. Ask yourself. Am I truly trapped or

(10:56):
just comfortably stuck? Because comfort is more dangerous then failure.
Failure wakes you up. Comfort puts you to sleep. You
don't get ahead by waiting for perfect conditions. You get
ahead by breaking free from the sedation of comfort by
choosing growth, even when it feels awkward, risky, or hard.

(11:19):
Life is unfair. You don't need fair You need focus.
Life can be unfair. You don't need guarantees, you need grit.
Life can be unfair. You don't need perfect conditions, you
need persistence. Life can be unfair. You don't need equal chances.

(11:43):
You can make good choices. Life can be unfair. You
don't need luck, you need leverage. Life can be unfair.
You don't need comfort, you need consistency. I agree with
you that life can be unfair. I agree with you
that things need to change. I agree with you that
we need to try and change them, but we also

(12:05):
need to take control of our life. Number four, Most

(12:25):
people ahead of you might not actually be ahead of you.
They might actually be unhappy. We look at people who
seem ahead, the ones with the money, the titles, the
perfect photos online, and assume they're happier. But here's the
counterintuitive truth. Most people ahead of you could be unhappy.

(12:45):
This is called the hedonic treadmill. Humans adapt quickly to changes,
good or bad. Promotions, new cars, dream houses. They spike
happiness for a moment, then become the new normal. That's
why someone can be ahead on paper but feel empty.
They're running faster, earning more, collecting trophies, but the treadmill

(13:06):
keeps moving, so they never feel satisfied. The hedonic treadmill
shows that external success doesn't equal sustained happiness. Here's the truth.
That person you're comparing yourself to may look ahead, but
may feel empty. Fast success often collapses because the inner

(13:27):
foundation wasn't there. Now, this isn't true for everyone, but
it's important to understand that person might be ahead, but
at what cost? At what sacrifice? Maybe that was a
sacrifice they were willing to make. But are you stop
envying a highlight reel and start studying the life they're living.

(13:50):
You don't know the price that they paid. You don't
know the sacrifice that they made. Reminder number five, Struggling
means you're in the arena. When you're struggling, it's easy
to think you're failing, but the truth is struggling means
you're in the arena. In nineteen ten, Theodore Roosevelt gave

(14:14):
a famous speech in Paris. He said, the credit doesn't
belong to the critic, but to the one actually in
the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat
and blood. A century later, psychologists are proving him right.
Take startups. Data shows ninety percent of new businesses fail.

(14:37):
That's brutal. But here's the twist. The people who try,
even when they fail, are far more likely to succeed
in the next round. A Harvard Business School study found
entrepreneurs who failed the first time were more likely to
succeed later than those who never tried at all. See
that's the interesting thing. If you're sitting there on the sidelines,

(15:00):
you may never ever win. If you fail the first time,
you could probably win the second or third. Failure wasn't
a dead end. It was evidence they were in the arena,
building resilience, building the skill, and building knowledge. Psychologists call
this stress inoculation and post traumatic growth. Facing challenges conditions

(15:24):
the brain and body to handle more. Struggle strengthens coping mechanisms,
emotional endurance, and problem solving skills. Neuroscience shows that when
we're tested, our brain rewires. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for
decision making and regulation, actually becomes more resilient through struggle. Hence,

(15:48):
struggling the first time, failing and losing sets you up
to win. A study in psychological science found people with
moderate adversity reported better mental health and higher life satisfaction
than those with no adversity. Too smooth a life actually
weakens us. I love this quote from Michael Hopp. Hard

(16:13):
times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good
times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
It's fascinating to me how some of our best times
can actually weaken us, and how some of our worst

(16:34):
times can make us strong and powerful. Resilience research shows
that exposure to struggle predicts adaptability in future crises. That's
the skill you develop. So if you're struggling, it doesn't
mean you're losing. It means you're brave enough to step
into the arena. The ones who never struggle, they're in

(16:56):
the stands, safe, comfortable, and potentially. Struggle isn't a sign
of weakness. It's a sign you're doing something real. Every
bruise is proof you're in the fight. Every setback is
a scar that makes you stronger. The dust, the sweat,
the blood. That's the price of the arena, and it's

(17:17):
preparing you. Don't confuse trying with failing. Don't confuse practice
with losing. Don't confuse learning with weakness. Don't confuse falling
behind with being out of the race. Don't confuse starting
over with starting from zero. And don't confuse scars with shame.

(17:43):
Their proof you showed up. Reminder number six, you're not behind,
you're developing skills. When you feel behind in life, it's
usually because you're comparing outcomes. Someone else has the job,
the relationship the house, and you don't. But here's the truth.
You're not behind. You're developing skills, and you're developing your story. JK.

(18:08):
Rowling was a single mother living on welfare before she
wrote Harry Potter. From the outside, she looked behind, no money,
no stability, no career. But those years weren't wasted. They
gave her the persistence to keep submitting her manuscript after
twelve rejections. They gave her empathy, which poured into her characters.

(18:29):
They gave her grit, which became the foundation of her success.
She wasn't behind, she was building muscles she couldn't see yet.
Think about the most beautiful building you've ever been inside
of a home, a castle, a hotel. No one ever
went in that building and said, I love the foundations

(18:52):
of this building. The foundations of this building must be amazing.
They must be so deep you never see the foundation.
But the taller the skyscraper, the deeper the foundations. The
taller the building, the deeper the foundations. Right now, you
could be working on the foundations that no one sees,

(19:15):
and maybe even you're missing, And one day, when everyone
sees that building, you'll remember the foundations and everyone will
forget again. Psychologists call this latent learning, knowledge and skills
that don't show immediate results but surface later when conditions change.
It's also tied to the concept of deliberate practice, and

(19:38):
as Ericson research shows that expertise isn't just about time spent,
but struggle invested. The slow, unseen grind is what creates mastery.
Ericsson's research found that world class performers typically accumulate ten
thousand hours of del practice before breakthroughs. Most of those

(20:03):
hours look invisible from the outside. You know, sometimes we
talk about whether athletes have a gift or whether they
developed it. I promise you every athlete that I've spoken to,
every athlete that I've worked with, the best of the best,
they don't doubt that they have some God given talent.

(20:24):
But they would be offended if you didn't count the
hours they put in, if you didn't notice the work
and struggle they put in, the amount of intensity, because
when we say God given, we want to imagine like
they didn't do anything. But if you sat down and
spoke to them, they would remind you of showing up.
When I had the opportunity to interview Kobe Bryant. He

(20:45):
talked about how he was training before anyone had even
walked into the gym, how he was training even after
everyone had left. When you hear the stories of Christiano Ronaldo,
there were players who were coming early to training. Christiano
Ronaldo was there earlier than them. That's what it takes.
A study from Stanford found that people often underestimate how

(21:06):
much their skills compound over time. Progress feels slow in
the moment, but accelerates later like compound interest. So when
you feel behind, it's not that you're failing, it's that
your skills are incubating. The world only sees outcomes, but
psychology shows that invisible skills, resilience, persistence, patience are the

(21:32):
very traits that predict long term success. Stop measuring your
life only by outcomes. Start noticing the skills you're building
in the struggle. Because you're not late, You're preparing, and
preparation always looks like you're behind until the moment it doesn't.

(21:54):
Thank you so much for listening to today. I hope
you'll pass this on to a friend who may be
feeling behind. As always, I'm sharing with you research, science,
spiritual wisdom, and insights from a three to sixty degree perspective,
and remember make sure you subscribe to you never miss
an episode on Forever in your Corner and I'm always

(22:14):
routine for you. If you love this podcast, you love
my episode with Lewis Hamilton. Lewis and I talk about
why you should stop chasing society's definition of success and
how to be more intentional with your goals. You don't
want to miss it. It's not about being perfect. It's
about just every day, one step at a time, trying
to be better, trying to do more. I'm learning a

(22:35):
lot about myself, how to break myself down in order
to be able to be better
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Host

Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty

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