Research suggests that people who constantly feel behind in life are often comparing their internal experience to everyone else's external performance - Silicon Canals

"When you assess your own life, you have access to every doubt, every false start, every 3 a.m. spiral about whether you picked the wrong career. When you assess someone else's life, you're working with curated data - the job title, the vacation photo, the confident keynote speech. You're comparing your behind-the-scenes footage to their theatrical release."

"Psychologists call the upward version of this 'upward social comparison,' and research consistently links it to lower self-esteem, increased rumination, and - here's the kicker - decreased motivation. The very thing you think should push you forward actually freezes you in place."

The feeling of being perpetually behind in life is widespread but largely based on psychological distortion. Social Comparison Theory, established in 1954, explains that humans automatically evaluate themselves against others. However, this comparison is fundamentally flawed: people assess their own lives with full knowledge of doubts and failures, while evaluating others based only on curated highlights. Upward social comparison—comparing oneself to those perceived as more successful—correlates with lower self-esteem, increased rumination, and paradoxically decreased motivation. The sensation of lagging behind is an emotional experience rather than an objective fact, rooted in this inherent asymmetry in available information.

Read at Silicon Canals