I Am Just Not Where I Want to Be in Life

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In today's world, where social media and reality TV are the norms, we are constantly bombarded by how everyone else lives their life and, more importantly, what life milestones everyone else is reaching and ticking off the 'life achievement' list. In your 20s and 30s, this is particularly acute, where frenetic engagement, pregnancy, and new home announcements can come thick and fast, leaving those who haven't reached those milestones experiencing anxiety, worry, and frustration about where they are in life or the so-called milestone anxiety.

What Is Milestone Anxiety?

Milestone anxiety is not a diagnosable anxiety disorder but rather a term coined to describe the pressure people can feel to reach certain traditional life milestones, such as finding a partner, getting high up the career ladder, having children, buying a house, and so on. Understandably, this pressure can have a negative impact on well-being. Research by Relate (2022) shows that the generations feeling the most pressure are millennials (defined in the study as 25–39-year-olds) and Gen Z (16-24-year-olds), with a third (35 percent) of millennials feeling the most pressure to have children.

Signs of Milestone Anxiety

• Worrying or ruminating that you are not reaching certain life milestones.
• Experiencing internal pressure to achieve certain milestones might appear as unhelpful rules: "I should be married by now," or "I must have children by age x."
• Feeling a sense of falling behind other people your age: "Everyone else has a partner/has kids/knows what they want to do in their careers."
• Worry that people are judging you negatively or thinking badly of you.
• Not feeling good enough for not having reached particular milestones.
• Being self-critical about not reaching certain milestones.
• Feeling hopeless about never reaching certain milestones: "I'll never find a partner/move out of my parent's house."

The Social Context of Life Milestones

One way of looking at life milestones is that they are socially constructed ideas that have permeated societal narratives and become internalized as accomplishments we must achieve at certain ages. Of course, this is true for many socially accepted beliefs and norms, but they become problematic when they don't fit with our actual lived experience. Currently, traditional life milestones include getting married, owning a home, and having children. But consider the sociopolitical and economic landscape we live in now.

There has been a 50 percent decline in opposite-sex marriages since 1972 (ONS, 2022). Younger generations are less likely to own their own home and are more likely to be renting compared to older generations (ONS, 2015). The age of women having their first child has been steadily increasing for decades, with age 31 currently being the average age for having your first child, compared with age 22 for people born in 1949 (ONS, 2019). Essentially, we are achieving life milestones at an older age than previous generations. So, it's no wonder that over a third of Gen Z and millennials feel that traditional life milestones are outdated and cite adopting and leaving an unhealthy relationship as the top milestones society should recognize as important (Relate, 2022).

How to Cope With Milestone Anxiety

If you are experiencing anxiety about not having reached particular milestones in your life, here are some tips on how to manage:

1. Have a broader perspective — Traditional life milestones, such as marriage, having kids, etc., permeate our social narrative, but you do not necessarily have to buy into that. You can choose what life goals you want to pursue. Ask yourself: What life milestones are important to me?
2. Identify the meaning you are making of not having reached particular milestones — How you interpret or perceive things makes a difference to how you experience them. If you have not yet gotten married or bought your first home, what meaning are you making of that? If you are interpreting this as your failure, something you have done wrong, or it means you are not good enough compared to others, you will most likely experience distress. Try and step back from this internal narrative—consider how societal behavior has changed over the years; we are having children later, renting for longer, and marrying less. Society has changed, and the traditional milestones may well be outdated and irrelevant.
3. Compare yourself to others less — Your journey through life is unique to you, and excessive comparison to those you perceive as "ahead" of you is unhelpful and does not help you move forward the way you want.
4. Shift your focus — Focus less on goals, milestones, and where you are going on your life journey and more on the actual process of your journey; in essence, pay more attention to the here and now, be more present in your life and be less focused on the "next thing." Practicing mindfulness can help with this. If you are new to mindfulness, you can start by incorporating mindful moments into your day.
5. Manage difficult thoughts — Notice, label, and step back from unhelpful rules and worries.

Takeaways

• If you are experiencing anxiety about reaching particular milestones in your life, you are not alone.
• Our ideas about life accomplishments and milestones do not exist in a vacuum: They are socially constructed and reinforced by the social narrative in social media and popular culture.
• Knowing this will help you identify the life milestones that are important to you based on your values and how you want to live your life.