When I was running competitively, I always remember how we were constantly told not to look back at the person behind us. We weren’t supposed to be worried about how close or far behind us they were because that meant we weren’t focused on looking ahead to the finish, to passing the person(s) in front of us.
How true this is for life: how much time do we spend thinking about what other people are doing? Of course this is made easier by social media where we are sharing more of our lives in ways we obviously weren’t doing when I was in junior high (it was a big deal to have an answering machine then and how primitive that seems now). But it’s easy to get wrapped up in other people’s lives. We look at what they have, what we don’t. We think about the good times they are having while we are struggling with something.
What’s the point? If we took all that time that we spent thinking about what others are doing, we’ll realize how much time we’ve lost being productive in our lives, spending time with our loved ones.
We all know that life is short and if those thoughts aren’t helping us move forward, then let the thoughts go and replace them with what inspires you and you’ll see how much you gain by making that change.