Are you behind in life, or just following the wrong timeline?

It's easy to look at your life and feel that certain things should've happened by now. The relationship, the career, the dream you've been carrying around for years, or simply the courage to begin. But what if everything that arrives late isn't necessarily delayed?

Sometimes it feels like everyone else received the memo about where they're supposed to be. Someone finds the love of their life, someone else starts a company, while another buys the house, has the baby and gets the dream wedding. Watching other people's lives unfold, it's easy to wonder: Why hasn't this happened for me yet?

But maybe the problem isn't where you are. It's what you're using to measure your progress.

I've always loved the idea of an inner compass. A compass doesn't care how quickly you're moving or whether someone else arrived before you. It only tells you whether you're heading in the right direction.

Maybe that's a better way to measure a life.

Not everything that comes later is late

Think about what you wanted five, ten or fifteen years ago. If you'd received everything you wanted then, would you have been ready for it? Would you have had the boundaries, experience and understanding of yourself that you have today?

Some things need time, not only to happen around you, but to develop within you.

You meet the wrong people, take detours, lose something you thought you needed and discover things you didn't know you were looking for. Those experiences don't necessarily take you further away from where you're going. Sometimes they're what recalibrate the compass.

And by the time you reach something you once desperately wanted, you might discover that you don't want it anymore.

There is no universal timeline

Some people meet the right person early, while others need a few relationships to understand what they're looking for. Some know their direction from the beginning, while others build an entire career before deciding they want something completely different.

Neither is late.

Someone else's timeline can tell you where they are, but it can't tell you where you should be.

Follow your compass

If you measure your life by the clock, you'll always find a reason to feel late. There'll always be someone who got there younger, faster or before you did.

Your compass measures something else: Are you still moving in the right direction?

You can move slowly and still be heading exactly where you want to go, just as you can move incredibly fast in a direction that was never right for you.

Maybe that's the better measure of progress. Not whether you've reached every milestone on time, but whether the life you're moving towards still feels like yours.

The clock can tell you how long you've been travelling, but your compass tells you whether the journey is still yours.