Why It Feels Like Everyone Has Their Life Together But You

You open LinkedIn and the first thing staring back at you is someone announcing a scholarship. Scroll a bit further and another person is celebrating a promotion. Before you even adjust your chair, someone else is posting their “dream job unlocked” update. You close the app because, honestly, your mood can’t take it.

Instagram seems safer, until the first reel is your friend sipping cocktails, showing off a successful japa. Two minutes in, someone else is unboxing the latest gadget. Another friend is posting an aesthetic “day in my life” vlog where nothing ever seems to go wrong.

By the time you get to WhatsApp, it feels like your entire contact list is running a highlight reel of their wins. And you? Well, you feel stuck, downtrodden, and unhappy. It feels like everyone has their life together but you.

Social Media Is an Illusion

You’ve probably heard this a thousand times, but truly, social media is not real life. What you’re looking at is a filtered version of reality. People share the shiny parts, the successes, and edit out the boring, messy middle. Even when they post about struggles, it’s the romantic version: “I failed but look at me now.”

Nobody is uploading the unfiltered process. The crying. The doubts. The nights spent refreshing their inbox for an email that never comes. The failures that feel unending.

Behind those curated posts, plenty is happening that never makes it to a timeline:

• Some people struggled for years before gaining admission into the institution they’re now celebrating.

• Some repeated exams and dragged carryovers across semesters.

• Some spent seven years in a university meant to take four, thanks to endless strikes.

• Some had nothing in their accounts for months, living from hand to mouth before finally finding stability.

• Some sent a thousand cold emails and a thousand applications that went unanswered.

  
  

Those parts are invisible, but they exist. They are the real path to the shiny ending you mostly see.Yes, you might have it worse, but the people celebrating these wins didn’t necessarily have it easy either. Unless they’re coming from old money but if it is that then you should not be presurring yourself over a situation that is completely out of your control.

The Comparison Trap

Scrolling through other people’s highlights while you’re in the middle of your process feels like running a race with one leg tied. It builds pressure that doesn’t need to be there. Someone else’s “finished product” isn’t proof you’re behind. It just means their story is unfolding differently.

Not all timelines look the same. Some people cross big milestones quickly. Others move slower, and that’s not failure. Seasons that feel like waiting often shape you in ways the world can’t see.

So maybe you don’t have a LinkedIn announcement yet. Or a japa reel. That doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means your story is still cooking. Stop measuring your progress with someone else’s ruler. Move at your own pace and let the wins come when they come.

Kapish?(Capiche or the one thousand other possible variation)