the youthful pressure to suceed

you feel it, i feel it, we all feel it.

The above picture is essentially the summary of a conversation I had with a friend of mine some days ago.

She was telling me how she feels like she’s “not achieving anything with her life” and how the mere thought of being “behind” makes her sad and gives her a lot of anxiety.

My response to her was, “You know you’re just 21, right? There’s literally nobody rushing you.”

But while I know she agreed with my perspective, I also know that my casual “reality check” would do little to dispel a thought as nerve-wracking and as persistent as:

“See what everyone else is doing. Time is going and you’re not doing anything with your life.”

I think we’ve all been there before.

I think many of us are there right now.

Many of us might be relatively “young”, but that pressure is still very real.

Personally, I won’t say that I “feel” it as much many people do, but I know it exists, and it’s kind of heartbreaking because it seems to me like as more generations pass by, the age “bar” for achieving “success” keeps reducing, and the determining factors for what is perceived as “success” become more and more tangible and less and less intangible.

Still with me?

Essentially, what I mean is that there’s this silently loud imposition that once you’re a certain age (let’s say between 18 and 27) you’re supposed to be doing all sorts of “amazing” things already.

You’re almost perceived as “unserious” if you’ve not figured out your path and direction for the upcoming 20 years of your life.

Sometimes, you can even be the one that’s harshly criticising yourself, and this leaves you constantly weighed down by the unsatisfactory feeling of being “unproductive”.

It’s worse when it now seems like everybody around knows what they’re doing and is up to one thing or another, while you just remain there… existing.

So while this “pressure to succeed” is often external, and is often the part talked about the most, it can also be internal.

I want to provide you with a perspective on both.

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The External and Internal Drivers

My perspective is this:

The External pressure to succeed is often triggered by things like: Family/Parental demands, Social & peer group comparison, Materialism, Societal/Financial conditions, etc.

The Internal pressure to succeed is often triggered by things like: Desire to be impactful, Fear of wasted time/potential, Desire to be validated by others, Low self-esteem, etc.

This means that what I define as “success” could be completely different from what you define it as.

Someone driven by impact could consider sending 100 orphaned children through secondary school as them being “successful”, even if they don’t have a million-dollar bank balance and nobody praises them for their work.

While someone driven by validation from others would never consider themselves or anything they do as “successful” if it is not acknowledged by people and they are not given the proper recognition for doing it.

Do you get that?

Therefore, depending on your driver, this “pressure” you’re feeling to achieve or get or be something could either be “good” or “bad”.

“Good” in the sense that it’s a healthy drive that’s potentially benefitting to you and/or the people around you.

“Bad” in the sense that it’s an unhealthy drive that’s rooted in a skewed perception of how you view yourself or how you think other people view you.

So, before you continue reading, take one moment to ask yourself:

“Why do I desire the things that I desire?”

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Why We Think We’re Behind.

Our world today emphasises speed.

Fast life. Fast food, fast cars, fast money, fast devices, relationships that move fast, and so on like that.

We’re slowly losing touch (that’s if we haven’t already) with how it feels and what it means to just slow down and exist in the moment.

This rush to nowhere has infiltrated so many spheres of life and living, and that also includes the way we perceive success.

Today’s world is deeply impatient with people who are still learning and in the process of knowing or finding themselves, and you can see this everywhere.

You’re not allowed to be slow.

You’re not allowed to be unsure.

You’re not allowed to make mistakes.

You’re not allowed to not know it all.

It’s in the way companies want you, a fresh graduate from the university, to have “a minimum of two years experience” before you can apply for their entry-level, below minimum wage salary job.

It’s in the way your parents are already subtly talking about marriage and having your own family, without even knowing if you like what you see and feel every time you look in the mirror.

It’s in the looks and comments you get when people ask you, “So, what do you want to do as your career?” And you simply say, “I don’t know yet.”

It’s in many of these ways and more.

Of course, our phones, the internet, and our ability to know what’s going on in everybody’s life at the same time also doesn’t help matters.

Every day there’s a new “I’m excited to announce” or “I recently just {insert impressive feat}” post on your feed, and it serves the illusion that everyone around you is either building, launching, or achieving something great.

Meanwhile, you look at yourself, and you can barely get out of bed in the morning.

You refresh your inbox to see another “Job application unsuccessful” email.

You sit in the dark and fight the raging thoughts in your head that tell you you’ll never be good enough.

You look at your bank balance and you laugh because the only “summer” activity you will be able to afford is to somersault.

It’s a terrible, draining feeling.

A feeling that becomes worse if you’ve sold yourself the lie that if you can only get this and be that then you would feel better about yourself or that people will look at you differently and maybe finally love, respect, or accept you.

So when those things you want don’t come, you end up suffering in two places.

While you feel bad for not reaching your goals, that nagging voice returns to remind you that you will always be a failure or that nobody will ever take you seriously.

It’s a very vicious cycle.

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On the same spectrum, we’ve also greatly equated success with material markers: the car, the apartment, and the expensive clothes, and we’ve relegated the importance of success that is not seen by people, or success that cannot be quantified physically.

Even if you don’t care about these physical things, the world around you cares and will treat you differently based if you do have or do not have them.

It’s almost like if you don’t keep up, then you will be left behind.

So even someone that just wants a comfortable, meaningful life, could often still feel burdened by this weight of having.

I just want to say that all this is not true.

So many people have bought and are still buying the lie that your life and whatever you do with it does not matter unless it looks successful from the outside or you have a million possessions and all the attention on the internet to show for it.

It’s beautiful, well-lit, aesthetically curated trap.

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Maybe Trying is Good Enough.

I really want to help you ease this pressure by saying that “You have time,” and then backing it up with hundreds of examples of people who “made it” at an old age.

I mean, technically, you do have time since the average age expectancy for men and women is between 70 and 72 years (minus your current age from that), and the examples of people who made it later in life are very valid, you think of J.K. Rowling and the likes.

However, merely saying, “You have time,” doesn’t help because sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have time.

Especially when you don’t even know what you’re doing or what you should be doing, or when you have so many interests, talents, and potentials that you’re scared of not being able to be all the things you know that you can be.

It doesn’t feel like you have time when the bills are piling up and your parents are asking hard questions. Or when you’re just fed up with watching life happen for other people while it seems like your own life is on pause.

However, in the midst of all this, I want to gently remind you, me, and all of us that we have the permission to move at our own pace.

Life is not a race.

If it was, what would the race even be for?

Death? A billion dollars? Global recognition?

People have been getting all of that and will continue to do so till this world ends.

Your hunger to do something meaningful is valid.

Your dreams are valid.

The pressure you feel is real.

You just don’t have to feel like you’re limited by timelines and expectations.

It’s okay to have life mapped out and to list out a bunch of things that you want to have done by this age and by that age.

But you must remember that you are becoming and that life does not always go according to plan.

Becoming is a messy, uncertain process, and it is one that requires a lot of resilience and patience.

So, maybe the fact that you’re trying is enough for now, even as you quietly and steadily start to live and grow on your own terms.

You’re not wasting time as you try, you’re investing it.

No time spent learning, failing, and re-trying is ever a waste.

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What If Failure Is the Path?

Maybe you’re not even trying at all, and the reason for this is because you’re scared.

Maybe you’re scared of failing, scared of being embarrassed, or scared of wasting time.

To be honest? Those things might actually happen.

More often than not, all three of them do happen and happen at the same time.

But what if that’s the cost of entry?

The “small” price to pay for you to get the things you want.

I strongly believe that the only way I can stand out and achieve my goals is for me to fail more times than most people even try.

I try to make trying, failing, and being rejected a staple part of my expectations when it comes to going after something I want, because I know that nothing worthwhile will ever come easy.

At least for most people.

The fear of being laughed at holds so many people back, and the ironic part for me is that they’re often scared of being laughed at by people who are also scared of being laughed at.

So it’s a psychological loop of people unconsciously holding themselves back because they’re attaching too much importance to the opinion of people who are also unconsciously holding themselves back.

Or do you think someone that’s so focused on their journey will have time to be mocking someone else’s journey?

It’s all very ironic.

Almost every successful person we admire today was once an unknown failure, and the only reason we know them now is because they kept going.

They shunned criticism, ignored naysayers, and pushed through all adversities till they overcame.

That’s a blueprint that’s easy to type out and easier to say, but is inherently difficult to execute.

Which is why so many people don’t end up achieving greatness.

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We’re Young; Now Is the Safest Time to Try

Now is the best time for you and I to fail in life.

Seriously.

And I don’t mean failure as in “full stop, this is the end of your journey”.

I mean the failure that comes as a result of trying something that did not work out as planned.

Now is probably the best time for you to try as many things as possible until you find the one (or ones) that work for you.

You have flexibility. You have energy. You have curiosity. You have opportunity. You have the wisdom (and mistakes) of those who have gone ahead of you. You have space to develop.

You have the ability to learn new things. You have the ability to unlearn old things. You have the ability to relearn things that have changed.

Like it or not, admit or not: You have TIME.

So use it.

Try new things. Build. Experiment. Start that channel. Write that story. Launch that product. Apply for that internship. Go to that audition. Learn that new skill.

How do you even plan to figure anything out if it’s not by discovery through trying?

That’s about the only way.

Unless you choose to accept whatever is handed to you and risk living a potentially mediocre life.

Yes, you love vanilla, but there are over a hundred more flavours that exist. How will you know if there’s a better flavour if you don’t try others out?

You have the time advantage; use it.

And if you’re older, I won’t pretend that it will be that easy for you.

I can’t say I know how it feels, but I imagine that it’s much harder to reinvent yourself when you’re weighed down by so many responsibilities.

However, you’re still alive, which means it’s not too late.

Your path is much harder and requires a lot of willpower to persist, but it is not impossible; you too can also become.

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So, What Now?

Despite whatever pressure we might feel in this speeding world that’s passing by, I do not think that we are behind.

I do not think that we are failures.

I do not think we are “wasting our lives” just because we are not where we thought we would be or where someone else expects us to be.

I do not think that at this age we must all have million-naira bank accounts and GLEs parked in front of our duplexes in Ikoyi.

Not because it is bad, but simply because it just has not happened yet.

And we do not need to be in a hurry to make it happen.

We are learning. We are becoming. We are still writing our story.

And while the worry feels valid, while anxiety feels overwhelming, they will never build the life that we want for us.

Only action will.

Action that’s focused on success, the right kind of success. The one that doesn’t leave a person empty.

The kind of success that brings peace. Purpose. Joy. Impact.

The good kind.

That kind of success takes time.

So take your time, use it wisely, and go build something that matters to you.

You’ve got this.

And if you’re still figuring it out, then take your time.

Remember that no time spent learning, failing, and re-trying is ever wasted time.

Keep breathing as you do this, and one day, you too will become.

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