Day 62 (Sixty-two) of 365 days
You’re supposed to have accomplished your greatest life’s work by now, right? Achieved all your major goals. Changed the world. But what if you’re still working on that? What if you’re just now starting to figure out what you’re really supposed to be doing with your life?
You can say many things about yourself over the years, but one thing you can’t say with a straight face is that you still have your whole life in front of you. At this point in the journey, life has shown you many of its cards. Not all, mind you, but you’ve got a pretty good grasp on how the world turns. If there are still any surprises, they have mostly to do with learning to change the way you see things.
But something else happened that was very difficult to escape. Much have hated to admit it. I found that I was looking around and comparing myself to my peers. When we view life this way, there’s always going to be someone who you feel is ahead of you by your estimate. And you’ll never catch up to them. So that leaves you feeling behind in some imaginary race that can’t be won. And when the game is “comparing yourself to others”, you will never have enough.
Unknowingly, you build this imaginary scale to see how you measure up against your peers. Let’s call it the success/happiness curve. Yet, no matter where you believe you fall on that curve, the moment you mark your place is to engage in a losing battle.
You believe that if you can just obtain that (cash in the bank, job title, certain car) that you’d have arrived at your destination and will find happiness there, but you won’t. Because it’s not out there. Not in any material things you can obtain.
Whatever it is will begin to lose its luster the moment you acquire it. Then you’ll have to look for something new to replace it and give you another fix. And the cycle never ends.
So how do you break out of this destructive cycle?
