Over the past week, I caught myself focusing on something that probably sounds familiar to many of us. I was looking at all the things that still haven't happened yet. The books I still want to write, the goals I haven't reached, the projects waiting for more time or more money, and the dreams that somehow always seem to sit just a little farther down the road than I expected them to. The list felt endless, and for a while it was easy to convince myself that no matter how much effort I was putting in, I wasn't getting very far at all.
Then I stopped and thought about something I hadn't considered in quite a while. When was the last time I actually looked at how far I had come instead of how far I still had left to go? The answer was uncomfortable because, if I'm being honest, I don't do that very often. Like a lot of people, I'm very good at noticing the distance between where I am and where I want to be. I'm much less skilled at noticing the distance between where I am now and where I started.
The more I sat with that thought, the more I realized that comparison doesn't just affect how we see other people. Eventually, it changes how we see ourselves and the progress we're making. We become so focused on the next milestone, the next achievement, or the next version of our lives that we stop recognizing the things we once hoped for that are already sitting quietly around us.
I think about that a lot when it comes to my business and my writing. There are still so many things I want to create and so many ideas I want to bring to life that it's easy to feel as though I'm standing still sometimes. But if I look back even five years, the picture changes completely. Five years ago, I wasn't publishing books. I wasn't designing products or learning new software programs that once seemed impossibly complicated. I wasn't building something that reflected who I am and what I believe in. Those things existed only as ideas, and if I'm honest, there were times I wasn't sure they would ever become anything more than that.
The strange thing about growth is that we become accustomed to it very quickly. The things that once felt impossible slowly become normal, and because they become normal, we stop seeing them as accomplishments at all. The skills that once intimidated us become part of our daily routines. The dreams that once felt out of reach move close enough to touch, and instead of celebrating the distance we've traveled, we immediately turn our attention toward the next mountain waiting in front of us.
I wonder how many of us are doing that right now. How many of us are standing in the middle of lives we once hoped for while feeling as though we've somehow fallen behind? How many accomplishments have we dismissed because they didn't happen quickly enough or dramatically enough to feel important? We tend to celebrate the finish line, but most of life isn't lived there. Most of life happens in the middle, in the quiet moments where we're learning, growing, struggling, and continuing anyway.
As I thought about all of this, I found myself thinking about dragonflies. They spend most of their lives beneath the surface of the water long before they ever take flight. The transformation happens slowly and almost entirely out of sight. If they judged their progress only by the day they finally spread their wings, they would completely miss the growth that made flight possible in the first place.
I have a feeling we do something very similar to ourselves. We overlook the quieter seasons because they don't look impressive enough. We dismiss the lessons we're learning because they aren't producing immediate results. We assume that because we haven't reached our destination yet, we must not be moving at all. But maybe those quieter seasons are doing more work than we realize. Maybe they're preparing us in ways we won't fully understand until much later.
So this week, instead of asking yourself how far you still have left to go, maybe try asking a different question. How far have you already come? Not compared to someone else's journey or someone else's timeline, but compared to the person you used to be. You may discover that you've grown in ways you never stopped long enough to notice, and you may find that progress has been happening all along, one small step at a time.
And maybe that's worth celebrating a little more often.