S3E29: Self-comparison week: It should have been me

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Thursday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for those who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And every day this week, we’re talking about practical things we can do to help us to get the most out of our language learning spaces, to enjoy the people and the content, and to be inspired by other people’s journeys without self-comparison making us feel behind, or like we don’t belong there. 

And today, I want to talk about a really cruel form of self-comparison that comes up so much, in language learning and in life in general. And that is, comparing yourself with the person that could, or should, have been you. That one person who has everything that you wanted the most. The person who’s living the language life you thought you’d be living, but it hasn’t worked out for you, and it has for them. The person who just embodies everything that you wanted to be.

It’s the person that’s happily living abroad, while for you getting a visa is now almost impossible. It’s the person graduating from the foreign university that you were rejected from, on both tries. It’s the person posting every day about raising a multilingual family when you’ve been told that children are just not an option for you. The person living out your dream of travelling all over the world while you’re ill at home. You knew what you wanted. You took all the steps. And they got it, and you didn’t. 

It feels like they are flourishing in exactly the places where you feel like you’re failing, and that’s really hard to accept. 

And there’s nothing more frustrating than platitudes that say we’re all on our own path and we should focus on our own gifts. Because our plan A got taken away from us. And we don’t want to hear that they have their own struggles either, because it’s even worse if they are living out our Plan A as their Plan B, because it wasn’t even what they were working towards.

I’m not going to tell you today to love your own journey. I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing.

I’m going to tell you that it’s okay to take time to grieve what you can’t have. It’s okay to have a hard time accepting the doors that were shut for you by decisions or circumstances that were out of your control.

And then I’m going to tell you that if the last three years have shown me anything, it’s that when Plan A is no longer possible, getting to Plan B is a process. And as part of that process, it’s fine to switch off from the things that make you mourn the journey you thought you’d had. Hide that content, or limit the time you spend with those friends for a while. You don’t have to prove anything to yourself by forcing yourself to metaphorically “stay in the room” and watch other people around you live out the life you planned.  Give yourself the space to start dreaming again. See what other people are doing. Go into it slowly, gently, and just see if there’s anything that catches even a flicker of your interest. Something that you just want to explore a tiny bit more, just for ten minutes here and there. And slowly but surely, you’ll realise you’ve uncovered options that you didn’t even know existed. And then your journey will start to feel exciting again. 

When your Plan B starts to come together, all the things that you’re doing now that you’re dismissing as “well, not really what I wanted to do” will have a purpose. All the things that right now feel like a consolation prize are leading to something but you won’t see it yet. Some time in the future, you’ll look back and it will all make sense. And then you can go back to that content if you want to. It won’t carry the same sting any more.

And before I go, just a reminder that the doors are open for my 100 Conversations project, where I would love to speak to 100 listeners of the Language Confidence Project, to meet you, to hear about how your language journey is going, and to find out what carving your own path means to you. It’s a really informal 30 minute Skype chat over tea or coffee or whatever beverage you should like to bring, it’s completely free, nobody’s going to try and sell you anything, it really is just a chat, where we can just hang out and chat about languages. If you would like to book a call, I have a Calendly link in the shownotes, and it’s also in my Instagram bio at @teawithemily.