Letting Yourself Catch Up

This morning, my mind ran ahead the rest of me again. Imagine a ghost version of yourself peeling off and dashing straight forward. You see it, but you can’t keep up.

I was thinking about the roadmap at work, and all the case studies I have to make, and the research for the next year. I realized I hadn’t thought of my own personal theme for 2026, that I had to respond to some wedding logistics queries, and that there were still leaves in the garden to clean up. All my ongoing post drafts, my next book, figuring out my email list logistics…it was just a little too much bubbling to the surface at the same time. Ergo, my mind was over the hills, but my body stayed in place.

It’s not strictly a mind-body separation, by the way. But it makes the analogy easier. To separate the mental and the physical. Of course my physical self couldn’t have dealt with all these ideas at once. But neither could my mind. It was a small subsection of my brain darting too far into the future, that’s all.

Well, what do you? When there’s a portion of you standing 100 yards down the road? Simple: You let yourself catch up. Stop the dashing. Reset. And allow your body—and the rest of your mind—to reunite with the little phantom that went missing.

How do you do that? In my case, I closed the laptop. I put on some pants. I went outside, breathed some fresh, cold air, and walked to the bakery. Mostly in the shade, but there was a bit of sun, too. I asked for a coffee. I observed the friendly interactions between everyone in the store. I turned a corner while circling around the block, and there he was: future-ghost-Nik. Standing there. Waving. Waiting for me to catch up.

I kept walking. We reunited. And now here I am, ready to start the day.

“Getting ahead of yourself” is more than a metaphor. It can happen in ways that feel quite literal. It’s okay to fall behind—even when it’s also you who’s doing the running away. Simply take a beat when you notice. We all want to have fair chances. How about we first try to be fair to ourselves? Start by letting yourself catch up.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.