Delayed Life Syndrome: Why We Keep Postponing Our Lives

I vividly remember the first time I told myself, “No, not yet- you have to wait for the perfect moment.” My mother had bought me a sticker book and a pink fuzzy diary, and instead of opening them with the reckless joy of a seven-year-old, I decided to “save” them. I wasn’t ready, I told myself-not until my handwriting was better, not until I had the right pens. Today, I can still picture that graveyard of unused childhood toys and stationery- things I saved for a “better moment” that never actually came.

That childhood impulse to “wait until we’re better” doesn’t disappear. It grows with us. In adulthood, it turns into perfectionism and decision paralysis. It’s a sense that the grass is always greener somewhere else.

I believe much of this is fuelled by comparison culture. We’re living in an era where everyone’s curated highlight reel is on display, and it becomes almost impossible not to measure our raw, unfiltered lives against someone else’s filtered wins. One woman’s anniversary post about being surprised with a trip to the Maldives from herpartner can send another spiralling into evaluating her own relationship. We compare someone else’s peak moment to our ordinary Tuesday and wonder why we feel behind.

Professionally, it’s no different. LinkedIn- aka the Self-Congratulatory Echo Chamber- can make even the most grounded person feel inadequate. When you look at everyone else’s updates it can feel like everyone is accelerating while you’re stuck buffering.

In the therapy room, especially with Millennials and Gen Z, I see this sense of existential “lateness” all the time. A quiet panic that everyone their age is further ahead engaged, married, expecting, promoted, thriving. Lives get reduced to checklists, and anything short of rapid forward motion feels like failure.

Here’s the truth: If you're waiting for the perfect moment to arrive, you’ll be waiting forever. Readiness is a myth we cling to out of fear; fear of failure, fear of choosing wrong, fear of being seen trying. But waiting doesn’t protect us; it only delays us and keeps us feeling stuck. We catastrophize failure as if one misstep will define our entire lives. But here’s the thing, you can be terrified and still move. Before you feel ready, fear will almost always be in the room with you. It’s going to be important for you to remember in those moments that fear isn't a sign that you're doing anything wrong and should turn back, instead learn to think of fear as just an indication that you're trying something new for the first item. Anything you try for the first time feels uncomfortable and a little daunting. The goal isn’t to eliminate fear, but to learn to move alongside it - you can be scared, and still do the thing that scares you.

Maybe the invitation, then, is to live before things get better and to begin before we feel ready. To finally stop saving our lives for later the way we saved childhood diaries and sticker books for a “better moment”-and instead, open them, use them, and allow today to be the moment.

// Judy Seoud, Thrive Wellbeing Centre