How To Not Get Discouraged By People Doing “Better” Than You
I know it can’t just be me that gets jealous when I see people younger than me who are more “successful”. I recently watched this speech and was dumbfounded.
Needless to say I thought it would have gone differently. I thought she would have talked about how hard it was for her to get started in STEM and all the trials she faced. Instead her list of accomplishments was longer than the Cheesecake Factory menu. The first thing I felt was jealously. It’s not to say that she didn’t work hard, because I’m sure she did, but it kinda stings when you see someone who’s roughly the same age as you succeding, with NINE job offers while you’re back at your parent’s house begging anybody to give you a job (even Target). This also isn’t to say that I didn’t work hard in school. I did. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I was passionate about until about a year ago, with 4 years of school down the drain.
Social Media doesn’t help either. In the time it took me to earn a Bachelor’s degree, 5 years, I know two people who have Master’s, and one is an MBA. My Facebook timeline is a never-ending list of “Congrats on the new job with Apple” or “Minneapolis here I come, I’m excited to be the new blah blah of whatever blah blah company”. It stinks. It stinks because it’s like that old form of Chinese water torture. Where one single drop of water falls on your face slowly until you go insane. You see someone get a promotion or start Medical school and it makes you self-critical. Every event making you feel worse and worse about yourself. I thought I did pretty well in school and had two internships to boot, but when I look at my friends’ resumes I realize I haven’t done much. It’s really hard to stay motivated and not get down when it feels like everone around you is doing great things and you’re not.
Then I think of something my mom told me as a child:
Look down at your hand. Are all your fingers the same length?
Everybody has a different path, but why would your pinky be jealous of your middle finger? They all serve a different function and they’re not supposed to be the same. When you compare yourself to others that’s like your index finger getting mad because it can’t hold on to a cup the same way your thumb does. But that’s not it’s function. Don’t be jealous of successful people. Be happy for them. Being angry at them doesn’t make you succcessful. It makes you mean. Let their success inspire you to get off your ass and do something about it.
Like Cassidy said in her speech, she’d been programming since she was in 8th grade. I just started 2 years ago. Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. We are our own harshest critics and no matter where you are in life, there’s probably someone out there who admires what you’ve done, even if it doesn’t seem like a lot to you. It may even be your parents, but don’t take that for granted. (My mom still wonders how I can type without looking at the keyboard)
