Honestly, I only began to notice this when I came to college. In such a fast-paced environment, it was so easy to get caught up in the constant race of life. It began to seem like life was moving too slow. I felt like I was never good enough so I had to keep working or to find other ways to improve myself in the face of others. It was always “What are my friends doing?” and “Am I working hard enough?” Sometimes, some of us do things and push ourselves to the brink of exhaustion because we wanted to build our resume or look successful in front of our colleagues. We aren’t ever happy with what we’re doing.

I’m here to tell you it is perfectly okay to slow down.

It’s really easy to forget that we have our whole lives ahead of us. College is only a small subset — only one of the stages of our lives. After college, we have so much to look forward to like getting our first jobs, creating a family, traveling the world, and even being adventurous and doing amazing things after college that we couldn’t have done before. It’s actually really exciting, contrary to the scary connotation of entering “the real world” after graduating.

You never have to feel bad about any temporary failures. One small failure only leads to more learning and more growth. The journey to success requires many setbacks and roadblocks or else it wouldn’t be worth it. Would you really be satisfied with your outcome if you didn’t have to work for it? If it didn’t stress you out? If it didn’t at least challenge you a little bit? Those victories are so much sweeter when you get there. So it’s okay to be perfectly okay with failure and taking time as long as you focus on the growth.

For example, I am perfectly okay with each publication of my photography on social media. I know that I am not the best photographer out there, yet. It will be a gradual process and as long as I learn better editing, framing or posing, I will get better and eventually get there. I also understand that everything takes time. I won’t get better overnight, not even over a fortnight. It might take me 15 years or it might take me 5 years to perfect what I want. So with each post and each critique, I understand that it’s okay to not feel down or discouraged. I have to keep moving forward.

So, take some time and remember to look at life as one big timeline. You are only one tick on that timeline right now, and it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even close to halfway on the timeline, let alone the end of the world, actually. So don’t beat yourself up ever. You will do better, and you will get there.

In time, my friend.