Frank Ramos recently shared something that caught my attention: "If you feel behind, you’re not alone. You’re just honest. Most careers are built quietly. Social media only shows outcomes, never process."

That short thread hit a nerve because it names a feeling many of us carry around in silence. We scroll past promotions, big verdicts, new titles, shiny launches, and perfectly framed "day in the life" posts and we assume everyone else is moving in a straight line. Meanwhile, our own path feels messy, slow, and uncertain.

Frank also pointed to what we do not see: "The years of doubt. The stalled momentum. The seasons of grinding without recognition." And then he offered the reframe I wish more people would say out loud: "Growth doesn’t feel like progress while it’s happening."

I want to expand on that idea, because if you are in a season that feels like confusion, it might not be a sign you are behind. It might be a sign you are in the middle of becoming.

The hidden math of modern career comparison

Frank Ramos is right that social media shows outcomes, not process. Outcomes are easy to post. Process is harder to photograph. It is also harder to explain in a caption because the process is often repetitive and emotionally complicated.

When you compare your day-to-day to someone else’s highlight reel, you stack the odds against yourself in three ways:

You compare a finished product to an unfinished draft. Your work-in-progress will always look worse next to someone else’s final version.
You compare your inside view to their outside view. You feel your doubts, fatigue, and uncertainty. You only see their confidence.
You ignore timing. You might be looking at a ten-year outcome and judging yourself by your last ten days.

Frank’s line, "You’re just honest," matters because honesty is often the first step toward growth. If you admit you feel behind, you can finally ask: behind what, exactly? A timeline you chose? Or a timeline the internet handed you?

Why growth feels like confusion in real time

"Growth doesn’t feel like progress while it’s happening," Frank wrote. I agree, and I think there is a practical reason for that: growth often shows up first as a loss of certainty, not a gain of mastery.

The competence dip

Anytime you level up, you temporarily feel worse at your job, not better. You take on harder matters, bigger clients, more responsibility, or unfamiliar tools. Your old habits stop working. Your confidence lags behind your capability.

That is not failure. That is the adjustment period.

"It feels like confusion. Like uncertainty. Like wondering if you chose wrong."

Those feelings are common in law, tech, medicine, sales, education, and basically every field where the stakes are real. If you are stretching, you will feel stretched.

The delayed feedback problem

Many careers have slow feedback loops. You can do months of diligent work before you see a result you can point to. A trial, a deal, a product launch, a promotion, a body of writing, a reputation in a niche, a book of business, a credential, a research program, a leadership track - all of these mature on long timelines.

So you can be making progress and still feel stuck, simply because the scoreboard has not updated yet.

Discomfort as evidence of movement

One of Frank’s most useful lines is: "But that discomfort is evidence of movement."

That does not mean all discomfort is good. Burnout, chronic anxiety, or a toxic environment are real problems that require real boundaries and sometimes real exits. But the specific discomfort Frank describes is the kind that comes from stretching into a new level of skill and identity.

Here are a few signs your discomfort might be growth discomfort, not derailment:

You are learning faster than you are performing.
You care deeply, but you are not yet fluent.
You are getting more nuanced feedback (even if it stings).
You are asking better questions than you used to.
You feel challenged, not crushed.

If any of those are true, you may not be behind. You may be in the middle of building the foundation that future people will mistake for "overnight success."

Careers do not climb ladders - they spiral upward

Frank wrote, "Careers don’t unfold in straight lines. They spiral upward." I love that image because it explains why you can feel like you are revisiting old problems even as you grow.

In a spiral, you pass near the same themes again: confidence, communication, leadership, negotiation, time management, business development, creativity, boundaries. But each time you come around, you handle the theme at a higher level.

For example:

Early career: You learn how to do the work.
Mid career: You learn how to do the work through other people.
Later career: You learn how to choose which work is worth doing at all.

The topic might look similar, but the altitude is different. If you expected a straight line, the spiral can feel like backtracking. It is not. It is depth.

A practical way to "trust the process you’re in"

Trust is hard when the evidence is invisible. So I like to translate Frank’s encouragement into concrete practices that make progress easier to notice.

1) Track process metrics, not just outcomes

Outcomes matter, but you cannot control them directly. You can control the inputs. Pick two or three weekly process metrics that match your season, such as:

Hours of focused practice (writing, drafting, studying, training)
Number of outreach touches or relationship deposits
Reps: pitches delivered, briefs written, calls made, demos run
Feedback conversations requested

When you measure inputs, you reduce the sense of "I did nothing" that comes from slow outcome cycles.

2) Keep a simple learning log

Frank highlighted "still curious, still learning, still showing up." Capture that. Once a week, write down:

One thing you learned
One thing you would do differently
One small win you would have ignored

Three bullets. Five minutes. Over months, this becomes undeniable evidence that you are moving.

3) Replace vague comparison with specific benchmarks

"Behind" is a blurry word. Make it concrete. Behind in what skill? Compared to which role? On what timeline?

Sometimes you will find you are not behind at all. Other times you will find a real gap you can close with a plan. Either way, clarity beats self-judgment.

4) Build a feedback habit that matches your ego

If you only seek feedback when you feel confident, you will get it too late. Schedule feedback like a professional practice:

Ask one trusted person a month: "What is one thing I should keep doing and one thing I should change?"
Pick one skill per quarter to improve, so feedback feels targeted, not personal.

5) Design your environment for showing up

Frank’s phrase "still showing up" sounds simple, but it is a skill. If you are struggling to show up consistently, reduce friction:

Create a start ritual (same time, same place, first small step)
Protect one deep work block
Make the next task obvious (a checklist beats motivation)

Consistency is often the real differentiator, not intensity.

The quiet reassurance in Frank Ramos’s message

The most hopeful part of Frank’s post is that it gives you permission to be mid-process without turning that into a verdict about your potential.

"If you’re still curious, still learning, still showing up - You’re not behind. You’re becoming."

That is a standard worth adopting. Curiosity keeps you flexible. Learning keeps you relevant. Showing up keeps you in the game long enough for the spiral to rise.

So if you are in a season of grinding without recognition, consider the possibility that nothing is wrong. You are building the part no one claps for, the part that makes later work look effortless.

And when the discomfort shows up again, you can treat it as data, not drama. It might be telling you the same thing Frank Ramos told the rest of us: trust the process you are in.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Frank Ramos, Best Lawyers - Lawyer of the Year - Personal Injury Litigation - Defendants - Miami - 2025 and Product Liability Defense - Miami - 2020, 2023 🔹 Trial Lawyer 🔹 Commercial 🔹 Products 🔹 Catastrophic Personal Injury🔹AI. View the original LinkedIn post →