Are you already 25, 30, 35, 40, 50 years old? You look around, and it seems that all your friends and classmates have already achieved so much, but you are stuck in one area, or in several at once. And you desperately want to catch up and prove to yourself that you are no worse than them. Imagine a mountain that everyone is crawling up. Someone is already at the top, someone is in the middle, and you are standing at the very bottom, and you understand that you haven’t even started yet, simply because you had low self-esteem, toxic parents, little support, illness, failure. But at the same time, you would like to be at the top, or at least halfway there with everyone. And you want to somehow find an excuse for yourself why you are not there yet. And in order to avoid pain, the brain becomes very creative in finding excuses. But to hell with excuses, you want to prove and show that you can do this too. And you start looking for some shortcuts. So everyone is walking along a gentle slope, and it takes a long time, and you decide to go straight up a vertical plumb line - what if you get lucky? Or you decide to walk without spending the night, and in a couple of years you will catch up with everyone. But without having the skills to climb a mountain, you just fall and you hit yourself painfully. Feelings of guilt and shame. And again the challenge is to catch up and overtake, and again disappointment in yourself, and you already say to yourself: “I knew that I was a loser, and it’s not even worth trying.” It’s like a woman who just got pregnant at the age of 30 wants to catch up with her friends who already have two children, and therefore hopes that her pregnancy will not last 9 months, but somehow accelerated - in 4.5 months. But it doesn’t work that way. And moving towards success takes as long as it takes. And it is important to allow yourself this time. Yes, perhaps you will reach the top later, or not at all, but you will get off the ground. Your self-esteem will no longer be scratched at the baseboard. It doesn’t even matter where you end up, because life is a journey. And we have fun while we go. And it doesn’t really matter at what height you go. And wherever you go, there will always be people behind you and in front of you, and with you. And this is better than standing at the foot of those who never decided to go, or who have been looking for a magic elevator all their lives that will allow them to catch up with some “others” who don’t care about you at all.