The modern world brings along a new era of challenges for the next coming generations. Our hand-held devices give us the power to not only communicate with the rest of the world but also to compare ourselves. We can go into a gigantic Instagram wormhole of photos from our favorite celebrities to our close friends and compare ourselves to every one of them on a day to day basis. Spending hours of our time not getting any work done. We slowly lose motivation and self-confidence from such comparison like "oh, I didn't win that award like her" or "I can't lift weights like him."
Please stop comparing yourselves to others! Remember your life goals, beliefs, and characteristics don't match with that person. Sometimes we fail to achieve our goal. Acknowledge that failure and use it as a building block to a successful path. Don't hold yourself back because you didn't get what you wanted at the first shot. Some people magically achieve their goals the moment they touch an activity, while some of us have to work at it. There is nothing wrong with failure, as long as you can use it to build your resistance against it and persist.
Here is an intriguing story! Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba, was rejected from Harvard 10 times! Not to mention, when he finished college, he applied to 30 different jobs, including KFC. He got denied from every single position at the time. It takes a lot of guts to handle all those rejections at such a young age. Failure injured Ma's self-confidence to a high extent. But, he persisted through his entrepreneurial goals and is the billionaire his is today. If you were Jack Ma, what would you have done?
Not many of us would be motivated enough to handle so much rejection in our lives and end up so successful. The idea that we can't achieve a specific goal in our lives makes us less likely to achieve it because of our mindset. If you set your heart on an idea that everybody says is unattainable, that is what a dream is meant to be. The only way to make that dream into reality is to pursue it no matter what others tell you.
The idea of comparing oneself and determining one's self-worth on that is completely wrong and can lead to severe consequences such as depression, anxiety, and overexertion of the mind. Learning from past mistakes and go against them is the way to achieve your goals. Didn't get into your dream college the first time? Don't stress too much over it. Attend another college for a year and transfer your credits. Didn't get great standardized test scores? Create a consistent study plan to achieve your goal before the next test date. Did badly on your interview and lost your chance to work at your dream company? You should persist through that rejection, work somewhere else, build a new skill set for your dream job, and apply again.
Don't compare yourself to such an extent that you lose self-motivation to achieve your goals in life. Persistence is necessary to get anywhere in life. Don't let the world beat you down for your failures and mistakes, and most importantly don't beat yourself down. Keep your head high and strive on!
