I don’t know why things like this have to keep being said, but here we are. We need to stop encouraging people to compare their success or failure to other people to attempt to justify why they are better or worse.
I saw a post on Facebook last week from a page called Betches that really fired me up, but not in a good way. Here it is:
What if someone had been having a rough day and overslept but tried to persevere and push forward, and then they saw this post? It could make them backslide.
Instead of scrolling by and ignoring it, I shared the post on my Facebook page with the following caption:
This line of thinking is really harmful. Success can and should mean different things to different people. Someone else’s success shouldn’t take away from your life and what you’ve accomplished because their life isn’t yours and vise versa. If all you’ve done today is wake up, be grateful and proud of that. If you’ve accomplished a goal, be grateful and proud of that. It doesn’t matter what other people have or have not done. Do what you need to do, even if it seems small and insignificant to you in the moment. Nothing you do is insignificant, especially if it’s for your mental health.
Your mental, emotional and physical health are too important to base their worth off of someone else who’s doing better or worse than you.
I’ll say it again: you don’t need to think of yourself as doing better or worse than anyone else because they’re going through different life experiences than you.
How about instead of comparing our successes and/or failures to other people, we show compassion to ourselves and others?
Show compassion to yourself so that even if you’re not exactly where you want to be in life, you can be grateful and appreciative for where you are now.
Show compassion to others so that even if you’re jealous (or maybe they’re jealous of you), you can be grateful and appreciative for where you are now.
We are not inherently better or worse than anyone else just because someone has surpassed certain perceived milestones of success before someone else. We don’t all have the same exact goal or mission in life, so why would our paths all look the same? And besides, wouldn’t that be so damn boring?!
So I don’t care if you feel like you’re wildly successful or a huge failure or somewhere in between. You’re human, I’m human, we’re all human. We all just need to do our best in our individual lives without getting caught up in other people’s business and their perceived success and/or failure.
You are doing so great in your life, even if it doesn’t feel like that all the time (or in case it never feels that way). The world is better because you’re here. Your overall health and wellness is more important than reaching societal milestones by a certain age.
You do not need to be any better or worse than who you are today. Just keep on keepin’ on, and don’t get caught up in other people’s bullshit.
Photo by Dietmar Becker on Unsplash
