How you've been conditioned to "get ahead"
For some the pressure to succeed comes from their parents, for others it’s from school or sports, and for many it’s become the increasing pressures and competitiveness of college applications, the housing market, and more.
No matter where it starts, there’s often a track to “get ahead.” The biggest problem is, getting ahead often lacks a place to ever actually arrive.
"Ahead" is actually an adverb, after all. Not a noun, and not a place. Instead, it is a condition of being - the personal propensity to push through and pay your dues, or get through everything on your to-do list before you can relax. But because by its very definition "ahead" is always - well - ahead, the idea that there will be a point at which we feel like we can slow down or stop simply defies logic itself.
But whether it was the college track, sports track, promotion track, or startup track, many of us were conditioned into this mindset, and rewarded by good grades, schools, jobs, and even early promotions. And thus we quickly become products of positive reinforcement.
And while this mindset can certainly have value to it, like all patterns, they can end up running our lives when not kept in check.
Below are just a few of the ways when "getting ahead" can actually hurt us more than it helps.
When “Getting Ahead” Comes at a Cost
Getting ahead becomes our primary operating system
How you do one thing is often how you do everything. So when you're conditioned to "get ahead" in some areas of your life, you often also become the type of person who has to carry in all the grocery bag in one trip, frees up 30 minutes and immediately asks what else can they can squeeze in, and who is always in a rush. We become not just human doings, but never-ending human to-do lists! If you constantly have the experience of finally crossing "enough" off your list, only to have something else pop up, perhaps it's time to shift your approach.
Pursuing "ahead" means there has to be a "behind"
No matter the age, high-achievers are constantly caught in a comparison trap to milestones they think they should be meeting, be it by 30, 40, 60, or 75. They then become too afraid ever to try something new out of fear of "falling behind."
But it’s important to question where we got such measuring sticks, and who divided the world into these 2 parts and called one “ahead” and one “behind”? It's a false dichotomy that ends up running so many people’s lives.
You go so fast you miss the scenery
One of the biggest tragedies of the “getting ahead” mindset is that it’s a lot like looking out the window of a high-speed train, and life just whirring by. You might keep checking off to-do after to-do, or racking up accomplishment after accomplishment, but eventually you get to the end only to realize you never really slowed down enough to enjoy any of it.
You go so fast you miss where we're going at all
It’s not uncommon for many high-achievers to climb a particular ladder for years, only to realize at some point that that they never took the time to truly question if it was actually the right one. When you’re more concerned with getting on the fast-track than where it’s going, sometimes you go too fast to know if you're even going the right direction at all.
"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you're going and why."
- Eddie Cantor
Next time you catch yourself saying "I'll [have more time / be less stressed / spend more time with my partner / finally use my PTO / do something for myself] when..." take a step back and ask yourself what you can do to show up in the way you want now.
After all, everywhere you go, there you are. If you can't slow down and live life in the way you want to now, can you really expect yourself to do it any differently when you finally never get to "then"?