When you're feeling stuck.

By Hannah Preikschat

Hannah is a dreamer, a book enthusiast, and an aspiring author. She's happiest when she's making other people laugh (or when she's napping). You can usually find her with her nose in a book, daydreaming, and eating homemade cookies.

For pretty much the entirety of January 2020, I really didn’t feel like myself. I was crying every few days. I was having a hard time sleeping. Everything in my life felt boring, mundane, and generally unsatisfying. 

Basically, I was stuck. 

I’m barely eighteen, so maybe I’m too young to be having a midlife crisis. But I’ve definitely done my fair share of worrying and wondering about life. I know that it’s a terrible habit, but I feel like I’m constantly comparing my life to other people’s. And honestly, it’s really hard not to. In the media, but also just in our daily lives, there are so many people we can compare ourselves to. So many people whose lives seem perfect. 

There’s this one girl I know, and for the longest time, I wanted to be just like her. She’s pretty, she has a great fashion sense, she’s funny and smart and talented and everyone seems to like her. To me, she was living the perfect life. The kind of life that I wanted. I modeled the idealistic dream version of me after her, and I hoped that one day I’d be just like her and have the exact same life and be super, super happy. 

Of course, the flaw in this thinking is that I was inadvertently telling myself that the only way I could be super, super happy was if I became just like this girl. I was telling myself that if I wanted happiness, I needed to change who I was. I needed to become someone else. Which is super messed up and untrue, right? I can see that, and you can see that, but we still do it all the time. We look at others and tell ourselves, “If only my life was as exciting as theirs, I’d be happy. If only I had as many friends as he does, I’d be happy. If only I was as pretty as her, I’d be happy.”

Again, I’m only eighteen, so I don’t know everything. However, I’m beginning to know that we should not wait to be happy. Yeah, goals are great and we should always be trying to improve. But if we’re always placing our happiness in things that we don’t have yet… well, it’s just not going to end well. 

Why can’t we just focus on being happy now?

Yeah, maybe we’re not where we want to be. You might wish that you knew more, or were healthier, or more confident. But even if you’re not where you’d like to be, you can still love where you’re at. The goals that you’re working towards and the person you want to be are going to be amazing, but the progress that you’re making and the person that you are right now is pretty amazing too. All of the quiet little steps that you’re taking each day, the ones that you’re worried are too small to matter? They SO matter. You matter. And you are so, so exciting. 

If we can be happy with the process, rather than just the outcome, suddenly things are going to be so much brighter. 

And if we’re feeling down because we feel like our lives aren’t “enough” (exciting enough, busy enough, fulfilling enough, you name it)... we need to make our lives enough. We need to find joy in our morning cup of coffee. We need to make time for adventures. We need to fall in love with our lives, rather than wishing we had someone else’s. Sometimes I think we forget how cool we actually are. I mean, there are so many things about you that make you different from literally EVERYBODY ELSE in the WHOLE WORLD. There are so many things that only YOU bring to the table and so many important things that only YOU can do. Yeah, maybe you’re not mega-famous and super-rich. But you are kind. You are loving. You are loved. You are exciting, and you will do (and are currently doing!!) exciting things. 

If you’re not happy with where you’re at, that’s okay. Sometimes we all get a little stuck. I just hope you can remember that it’s not a competition or a race. Your life does not have to measure up to somebody else’s definition of “good enough”. If you take your time and try to have some fun as you go, you’re going to be just fine.