13 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing When You Live Like You’re Running Out Of Time

1. You have an intense fear of aging.

Even when you know it isn’t true, you think that aging means your time is almost up. You still cling to the belief that the time window to accomplish great things ends at the age of 30. Birthdays are the worst for you since they scare you into thinking that your time is running out and you need to hurry up or else you won’t be able to do everything you want to do when you grow older.

2. You keep track of the ages of when successful people have accomplished certain things.

Whenever you’re going down Internet rabbit holes, you look up random successful people and read about what age they did something commendable like creating a new product, making a scientific discovery, publishing a book, winning a national competition, and being promoted to a leadership position. Strangely, this motivates you in some twisted way, yet at the same time, it makes you feel like you’re never going to measure up to them.

3. You suffer from analysis-paralysis.

Analysis-paralysis occurs when you overthink the problems at hand, but due to how overwhelming and frightening they feel to you, you end up freezing up. Hence, you are mentally paralyzed and unable to take the first step after thinking so much about the difficulties you potentially have to face.

4. You frequently get disappointed in yourself.

You tend to make big plans and set strict deadlines for yourself, but most of the time, you’ve found that you can’t do it all, so you end up feeling guilty and disappointed in yourself because you equate doing more in less time with success.

5. You hold yourself to an extremely high standard.

You want to achieve so much, and you’re afraid of not being as successful as you hope to be. You set extremely high standards for yourself to make up for all the times you’ve felt inadequate and unworthy, even when nobody is forcing you to.

6. Your mind is racing at 100 mph without actually going anywhere.

Metaphorically speaking, your mind is thinking so fast, yet ironically, you’re not getting anything done. Your mind is like a fast car that keeps going around and around in circles. You frequently experience this cycle in your own life – you start a lot of things but scrap them (due to harsh self-judgment and the fear of not being close to perfect initially) and then start all over again.

7. You haven’t quite mastered loving yourself as you are.

You are still not at the point where you’re fully accepting who you are or loving yourself without any self-imposed expectations preventing you from doing so.

8. You are very impatient with how long you take to finish things.

You want everything to be done at a rapid pace, so you’re impatient. When it comes to doing high-quality work, you feel a bit frustrated that it is going to take much longer than you thought it would.

9. You frequently encounter periods of resistance when you do change.

When you’re doing something differently and changing some aspect of your life, you experience resistance, which causes you to procrastinate and have an intense fear of messing up. However, this makes you feel even worse about yourself, and thus, you end up feeling more resistance, which does go away eventually but returns again at a later time. You alternate between periods of resistance and flow way too often for your liking because you have such an irrational fear of messing up.

10. You stay up super late and don’t get enough sleep.

You feel like you can somehow make days longer when you stay awake way after everyone else has fallen asleep. This, unfortunately, makes you so tired and rely on caffeine too much.

11. You find it difficult to be satisfied with anything.

You’re never one to remain stagnant, which is good, but you tend to go to the other extreme – never stopping to fully appreciate anything. You rarely feel like anything meets your expectations, and you hate it because you want to be satisfied with everything good around you. It’s just that you’re making it difficult for yourself.

12. You feel incredibly rushed, even in the mundane moments of life.

When you’re eating meals, you shove food down your throat without chewing properly. You also either eat out too much or buy microwavable dinners and canned food, since you have “no time” to cook. When you’re drinking, you chug down your drinks (and often choke on them). When you’re walking, you walk super briskly and get mad if people walk too slowly in crowds. When you’re driving, you often speed. You try to rush through everything, even your note-taking.

13. You hate success stories.

You don’t necessarily resent the people who have something similar to what you want. You just hate how others are quick to search for the next shiny highlight reel to glamorize, promote, and shove in your face. You also don’t like how they make you feel shitty about yourself and how slow you are compared to them, even when deep down, you know that you should be staying in your own lane and working at your own pace.