This is how I imagine myself; very slowly running a race (more like a plodding walk, let’s be honest) while everybody else has completed the race and is busy celebrating, drinking champagne and jeering at me from the top box.

I feel left behind, and I don’t like it.

Perhaps you can relate. Or perhaps you’ve got things figured out a lot more than I have.

Here is the trap: I assume everyone else is winning at life because they have the things I want.

But the more I talk to people, even the ones who have the things I want so badly, the more I realise they don’t feel so much like winners.

I assumed we were in the same race, but to them it’s a different race altogether. And they often feel left behind too.

The more I think about this, the more I realise there is no race.

So why do I put myself in one?

Or perhaps there is a race but we’re all running our own individual one, with our own goals and obstacles.

If the race is my own and I’m the only one in it, I can’t win or lose. I can only keep going forwards, at whatever pace I can manage right now.

It’s liberating to let myself off the hook occasionally. After all, if comparison is the thief of joy, why do I let it rule my life?