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"A LOT with Audra" is the podcast for women juggling big dreams and full lives. Each episode, host, Audra Dinell, Midwestern wife, mom and neurodivergent multi-six figure entrepreneur encourages women to embrace their many roles holistically by living a values-based life with confidence and joy. Through candid discussions, practical strategies and inspiring stories, this podcast is your guide to designing and achieving success without losing yourself in the process.
Ep58
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Introduction: Are You Feeling Behind in Life?
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[00:00:00]
Audra Dinell: [00:01:00] If you've been walking around with the quiet fear that you're behind in life, I want you to pause with me for a second. What if being behind in air quotes isn't a personal failure? What if you've just made a misdiagnosis? So I wanted to talk about this because it's such a common and universal thought, especially as we hit different milestones in our life.
I battle this, people in my life battle this. So what we're gonna do today is do a little dive into what to do if you're telling yourself the story that you feel like you're behind.
Personal Anecdote: Cooking Misadventures
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Audra Dinell: And this sort of all came to me a couple of weeks ago. I'm recording this in January. It's snowy, it's cold, and I have gotten into cooking over the past year. [00:02:00] I've talked about it on the podcast, but it is something that for the first. 15 years of my relationship, I didn't do all that much of at the beginning of Corey and I moving in together in college.
We both sort of took our fair share of cooking, but the tides quickly turned as he developed a real interest in it. And I. Did not. And then you know, you have kids, your life gets busy, your career gets full. You're kind of sandwiched and have some caregiving or support needs on the other side, life just gets so full and I wanted to help out and start doing a little more of the cooking.
Kind of like take the burden off of my husband who. Is the weekly nightly, you know, meal preparer. So I knew I had to have fun with this. And in fact, what really actually turned my mind onto the idea of this is [00:03:00] I started cooking around the holidays one year and making fun things and people were liking them.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I made a fun thing that someone liked. Now, as you know. The fun things, the recipes, they were out of magazines and cookbooks and off of the internet. It's not like I came up with them myself. I mean, oh my gosh. Definitely not at that level, but I find myself this year in the cold weather scrolling through a cookbook I had bought myself last year, and this cookbook is called Super Simple.
It's by Tegan Gerard, and she is the. Creator Chef behind the half-Baked harvest account. So I buy this very specific cookbook because it looks aesthetically pleasing. Check, like that's a must for me.
And the front of it said super simple. I mean. That feels right at my alley. And I flipped through the cookbook and you know, I do this. [00:04:00] I'm like, well, what they think is super simple might not be what I think is super simple. So I was flipping through the cookbook and I was like, oh, these are some good looking recipes.
I could see my family eating that. Okay, I'm gonna try it. So on one of these cold, snowy January days, I begin to make ramen. I have looked at the recipe deemed it. An acceptable level for me to try. I know my husband loves ramen, my kids like ramen, and I was like, all right, let's give it a go. So I get started on this and you know, there are a couple freakouts along the way, but I make this meal and we start enjoying it together and my husband is like.
What's the crunchy stuff in there? And I was like, oh yeah, those are bay leaves. And he's like, bay leaves aren't supposed to be [00:05:00] eaten. And I was like, oh, well, like. That's what the recipe said. And like, I chopped 'em up really as small as I could get them. I know they're not quite as small as they're supposed to be, but you know, then I, I mixed them in a Pohto with some other stuff and they were supposed to like soften and we go back and reread the recipe and it was basil that I was supposed to do that with, not bay leaves.
I was supposed to lay some bay leaves on the top for aesthetic purposes. Dang it.
Reflecting on Milestones and Progress
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Audra Dinell: If I am one thing I am not afraid to try, but the reason I thought about this moment when I was thinking about this idea that we start feeling behind in life at some point is because it's so easy to look at something and think we should be further along.
I could look at myself and think, oh my gosh, I am a 39-year-old woman [00:06:00] who has a family of four. I have been a mother for almost 10 years now. I really should be able to cook some edible meals. I really should know that bay leaves, I guess, are not meant to be consumed news to me. And there's like that temptation in anything that I'm doing in this season of life, I'm okay being a beginner, but I still fight those thoughts in the back of my mind that they're not living at the forefront.
They're not stopping me from doing something. They're not in the driver's seat of my car, but they're definitely back there in the trunk. Sometimes I don't even notice that they're there. I fight those thoughts about shutting myself. I should know how to do this by now. I should be here by now. My home should look like this by now.
I should have traveled to this place by now. So that's just my [00:07:00] personal moment that relates to this thought of feeling behind. But there are so many other examples and stories we can think of, of feeling behind, but it's just something that hits and. I think it hits at these pivotal points in life. And when you're in your second act, when you're shifting, maybe when you're reaching a milestone birthday like me, I think they can be louder than ever.
I feel behind. I should have this by now.
Tool 1: Looking Back
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Audra Dinell: So today I wanna talk about three tools that we can use when we're feeling behind. And the first is. Looking back, so you've probably seen that trend on Instagram. It's the one where people show what their life looked like in 2016 versus now, so they kind of rewind it back 10 years.
And I love this trend so much [00:08:00] because I love looking back and that is one thing that I think we don't do enough of. But if we look back. We can give ourselves credit for where we are. So for example, 2016 for me was a major year. I became a mother that year. Ugh. That was a long, hard fought battle. Corey and I had never really put a date on when we wanted kids.
We were just kind of like. Feeling it out. It wasn't a huge priority to us, but when we decided it was time, then we were like so excited. We were ready, but we had several miscarriages and it took us, you know, a full 18 months to conceive and to have our suite. Little first born baby Remy. And so when I think back, and I [00:09:00] look back on 2016, I turned 30 that year, just like I'll turn 40 this year.
And I just think about what I wanted so much back then, which was too, become a mother, start a family, have a baby. And that's something that I'm super thankful for that I have. So that makes me wonder. What in 10 years am I gonna be super thankful for that? I am doing or having now. When I'm thinking about looking back on my own life, I see the way that I'm showing up now and. You know, in retrospect, I can put together all of these pieces of work that I have been doing over the past decade, and it really did all start with motherhood. For me. Motherhood sort of cracked me open, and then I feel like entrepreneurship was like the final crack in that shell to, to fully break it open and let the egg fall out.
But [00:10:00] I look at the work I'm trying to do now and the way I'm trying to show up in the world in this version of myself that feels authentic and true.
It really all started way back then with motherhood and the ability to see how little that was in my control. And I think as I've worked on myself over the past 10 years and through relationships and different jobs and opportunities, that ability to release control has been like hard. One hard fought, so to help me battle feeling that I'm behind, I love to look back and just think, look how far I've come.
All of these tiny seeds that have been planted over time, some of them have sprouted, so I'm not really [00:11:00] behind. I just think it's a good starting point for anything. My husband and I do this with finances. We often like to start our finance meetings, like our big yearly ones by, you know, fast or rewinding back a decade or a year or 2, 3, 5, and say, look how much progress we have made, because someone's always gonna have more money.
There's always gonna be more opportunity to earn. I mean, it's just. Endless and unfathomable how much is out there. So it's like we can always look and think that's not enough. Right? There's always a bigger house, that we could look at and think, oh, what we have isn't enough. We need more.
Yeah, so that's why just being like really grounded, I guess is the word that this tool has helped me personally do just be grounded in what is, by looking back first, remember when, remember when what we're doing [00:12:00] now was the dream. Gosh, if my 2016 self could see my vocation now and what I get to do for work, oh my goodness.
She would just. Be thrilled beyond her mind. Probably not even believe it. Really, truly, probably not even believe it. And so I just wanna encourage you look back. Maybe it doesn't have to be 10 years, maybe it can be three or two. I think when we look back, it also helps us realize that everything really is a season and.
What we're doing in this season and how we're spending our time and our resources and our priorities in this season are likely different than the season we were in 10 years ago. There's A quote that's often attributed to Bill Gates and it goes like this. We usually overestimate what we think we can accomplish in one year, but we grossly [00:13:00] underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. It shifts our focus away from feeling behind in the moment, to focusing on consistent efforts that pay off over the long term.
Okay.
Tool 2: Looking Up
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Audra Dinell: Second tool.
The first tool is looking back, the second tool is going to be looking up and here's what I mean. So often when we have this feeling of behind, it's because of a couple of things. Number one, we are measuring. Our progress or ourselves against outdated timelines. This might be a script we came up with for ourselves when we were younger about what we would have achieved by a certain point, or when we would be married, or when we would have kids, or what our home would look like or what would midlife look like.
So number one, [00:14:00] we need to look up and see what timeline am I actually measuring myself against, because. Almost all timelines are made up. There is no limit to when we can hit our career peak. I mean, my husband had a 97-year-old grandfather who taught classes at university until he was 90. We went to celebrate him at an amazing retirement party at 92, and the room had hundreds of people in it.
There is no timeline for when we can quote unquote, feel successful. So I encourage us to examine where did these timelines come from in the beginning? Are they from ourselves? Are they outdated? What are they based on? What's real? And also, I don't know about you, but [00:15:00] what I thought about the world when I was.
20 and maybe creating all of these imaginary timelines for myself is very different from what I think about the world now. Almost 40, with two decades of wisdom under my belt. Okay, the second reason I think we might struggle with this is because comparison, comparison, comparison, comparison. It's the worst.
It's the thief of joy. We all know that quote. But it is actually the worst, and I think that's why looking up is helpful because we need to look up and see who we're comparing ourselves to. Oftentimes I think it just plays again in that the back of our head, I feel like this feeling of behind just doesn't come outta nowhere.
It's not like we craft it intentionally. It's just all of these sneaky little inputs that we have to slow down and sift out. So who are you comparing yourself to? [00:16:00] Is it your neighbor? Is it someone on the internet? Whenever I start to feel this way and start to feel behind, I almost always can identify a group of people, like a genre of people whose values are very likely different than mine and whose.
Life experience has been different than mine. And so for me it's really helpful to look up and think about who am I comparing myself to if I'm feeling behind, that's like the first question I ask myself. Who am I comparing myself to? What timeline am I living off of? Who created that?
Who gave that to me? And is it practical right now? I think when we're younger, when we're green, when we're fresh, when we're starting out, everyone's starting it out. But when we're in our second act, it can look like [00:17:00] everyone else has it figured out and it's just not the case. But we don't actually know this because you know, we have to be intimately involved in people's lives to know.
What they have going on. But we can see so many things on social media today especially that makes us feel like we are behind and everyone else has it figured out, and it's just not true. So tool number two to use when you are battling feeling behind is to look up, ask yourself some good questions.
Figure out who you're comparing yourself to, what timeline, imaginary timeline you're working with, and move yourself out of it. I heard this quote on a podcast by Rachel Hollis a while back, and she said. I'm afraid of living a life that works for other people, but doesn't work for me. And I thought, gosh, that's so true. I feel that too. But there's so much [00:18:00] pressure to make life look a certain way.
And if we're doing that, if we're working to build a life that looks good to other people. We're likely not building a life that's based on our values. So of course we're gonna feel behind because that's like a race that we never really chose to run. We just sort of like caught along with the crowd and started to jog and we're like, oh, okay.
Hey, what's up? Where are we going? Oh, wait, that person's all the way at the front. I better hustle to get there. And it's like, no focus on your own race. Focus on your own race. Be mindful what you consume. Be mindful of who you surround yourself with. Be mindful of how those things make you feel because I just, I really, really bet that the people we surround ourselves with, the people we compare ourselves to, the content we consume, it just has a super sneaky way of making us feel.
Behind [00:19:00] if we let it. So those things should really be considered when you are looking up in your life and making edits mentally, or making edits to what you're consuming or making edits to the people you spend your time with.
Tool 3: Looking Ahead
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Audra Dinell: Okay, so the last tool that I have in mind is to look ahead and what that means is.
Show up for yourself and the way you're feeling if you're feeling behind. Try and drill that down to like an actual feeling. I've talked about this app before, but I've got this great, great, great app called How we Feel, and it helps identify specific feelings so that you can be more nuanced in the way you are describing what's going on with your emotions.
Show up for that. Take [00:20:00] a breath and slow down and feel where it comes out in your body. Like is it that tightening of your chest? You know, when you think that thought I'm behind, like where does that show up in your body and what are you really feeling there? Like, are you feeling disheartened? Are you feeling excluded?
Hopeless? Pessimistic, ashamed, trapped, troubled. I mean, there's so many feelings. I really encourage you to download that, that app. So when you're using this tool, when you're looking ahead, show up for the way you feel, and then step out of that thought, step out of that feeling, I should say, and examine what thoughts caused that.
So one trick I really, really like. And I think I learned this from, I don't know who I learned this from originally, but just thinking about our [00:21:00] 80-year-old selves. So as I turned 39, 1 way for me to really look ahead is to think about what would my 80-year-old self say to 39-year-old Audra, if she could talk to her now and 39-year-old Audra saying.
I feel behind, like what would that 80-year-old woman say? So I would encourage you to ask that question of yourself, show up for the way you feel, but then identify the thoughts that are causing those feelings and step out of them and get some perspective by tapping into your 80-year-old self. Another way to do this would be to look at those thoughts from different angles, so. Four questions I like to ask when I've showed up for my feelings. I'm aware of where they're coming up in my body, and I'm ready to examine my [00:22:00] thoughts and sort of just step out to see if I'm hooked anywhere.
Four questions I like to ask. Is this thought true? What else could be true? What am I making this mean? And what neutral thought could I choose instead? So let's take back to that moment where it's like I'm cooking my ramen so I could have easily had the thought, I should really know how to make a meal for my family.
I would ask myself, okay, is that true? Should you really know how to cook ramen? You've never tried it before, so then I would answer, no, it's not true. I'm trying something new. So then that would be an answer to the second question. What else could be true? What else could be true is that I'm trying to expand skills in areas I'm interested in and I'm trying something new.[00:23:00]
So the thought of, oh, I'm so behind of where I should be. I'm a horrible wife. I'm a horrible mom. I dunno how to make edible dinner for my family. What am I making this mean? That I'm a horrible mom because I put some bay leaves and some ramen now, I mean, I don't think they're poisonous. We should check into this.
I really, really don't. But that on the other hand would actually be a dangerous situation that is not here nor there. What neutral thought could I choose instead? And for me it was, I'm trying something new. I'm proud of myself for trying something new. I didn't get it right this time, but I'll try again, and now I'll know better.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Audra Dinell: So I just wanna encourage you as we wrap up this solo episode today. Like I said, I am so in this season with you, and I'm not teaching from a mountaintop or speaking on things I've necessarily conquered this year as we're talking all about second act stuff. But this is a [00:24:00] common thought that I really, really wanted to address because I know I battle it.
I know others battle it and. These are three ways, looking back, looking up and looking ahead that we can all tap into. They're very accessible to help us choose thoughts that are growth, more growth minded, choose thoughts that are true, but welcome and helpful because when we think we are behind, when that's the story we're telling ourselves.
That is not helpful. That is not ever going to allow us to show up from a place of abundant, solid energy when. My husband and I first moved back to Kansas. I remember thinking, wow, I'm so behind. There's so many people my age who have lived here their whole life and who have this figured out or that figured out, or their friend group [00:25:00] solidified.
I never thought that when I moved to other markets because I was just a beginner. I was new, but something about moving back to my hometown. And I remember even saying to my parents, I feel so behind. I feel like I just have to sprint to get my life where I want it to be because I feel so behind. And when I self examined that I realized I was comparing myself to people who did not have my lived experience.
I was comparing myself to people who never left. So of course, if you're in a place for 30 plus years, your life is gonna look different than. If you've been gone for 10 years and are coming back. So these tools, I hope help you and encourage you if you are ever in this place where you are just feeling behind.
All right. Thank you so much for listening. If this podcast was helpful for you, would you share it on social media? We have clips running that you can share, or you can [00:26:00] just grab the link and put it into your stories. I would love for as many people to hear this as possible, so thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk next week.