How I Removed ‘Myself vs. Others’ From my Vocabulary
Growing up, I always wanted to be just like everyone else.
When I was in grade one, I was grouped with my dad and another girl for a field trip to the farmers’ market. During the trip, the other girl wanted a Bottle Pop candy (see image below) because her friend who was in another group had it. She wanted to have the same thing.
My dad agreed, and within ten minutes, the candy was in the girl’s hand.
When I asked for the same candy, my dad replied he couldn’t get me one because he didn’t have enough money.
As someone who couldn’t grasp the concept of money at the time, I became extremely upset over the situation. Even though my dad bought me one the following Saturday, it just wasn’t the same.
Why couldn’t I have the same things as everyone else?
From grades four to six, I was one of the few kids in my class who didn’t make it into regionals for track and field. I wasn’t particularly athletic, but being singled out like that and seeing all of the kids wearing their competitor numbers before they took off in the yellow school buses made me boil over with jealousy.
I would become even more envious when I noticed that the kids who didn’t make it the year before got in the following year.
Am I just not good enough compared to everyone else?
Once I hit grade seven, puberty forced me to become extremely awkward and self-conscious over my own physical appearance for the first time. I would look at my classmates, and compare them and their seemingly “perfect” bodies to myself. I wanted to have their smooth skin, shiny hair, and straight teeth, not my acne-filled face, greasy hair, and clunky metal braces.
I wanted to be confident in my own skin, but it’s extremely difficult when it feels like no one can relate to how I was feeling.
It wasn’t until the summer after grade eight when I got Instagram for the first time. I never had any medium where I was able to share my life with the rest of the internet, and I started to experiment with filming videos using Instagram’s story filters, like the boomerang filter, around my house and posting them on my story. However, one of my classmates from school messaged me and told me to not do that because that’s not what Instagram is for.
High school is a whole other story.
With everyone’s main goal being to get into university, I often see classmates with 99–100 averages, a member and/or an executive for more clubs than I could fit into my schedule, and winning all sorts of contests and competitions. Whenever someone shares on their social media that they have gotten into a competitive program/position, I would usually reply with something along the lines of “Congrats!”
However, the back of my head would be filled with thoughts of shame and jealousy. It stings even more when someone I knew got into something that I was wait-listed/rejected on or if someone younger than me achieved the same things that I did at an earlier age.
What is it about them that made them better?
Why are they accomplishing things so much quicker than I am?
Why can’t I be better than them?
It was even worse when my reputation/aura in the school was being “the smart kid.” Everyone would expect me to get a mark of at least 98–99% on a test or an assignment, and I would beat myself up over and over whenever I got a mark that disappointed both my classmates and myself.
From the second half of grade 9 onward, I refused to share my mark with anyone.
Throughout grade 10, I couldn’t even bear to look at any of my marks to begin with. In fact, I didn’t know what my final mark was for my grade 10 English class until last February, halfway into grade 11.
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, people would suddenly be founding clubs and other organizations, and it made me feel even more inferior about my own accomplishments.
Am I even doing enough to even be considered “successful”?
It’s so easy to disregard what you have achieved when others are achieving much greater and more reputable things than you will ever achieve.
It had taken me a while before I realized and was told that social media platforms are places where people post what they want you to see. Other things, such as rejections, mental health issues, etc. don’t make it on there because they are considered to be private information. No one needs to know about that.
No one puts any of their rejections or all of their failures behind every success on their resume. The same goes for any other platform where others have the ability to see and judge anything and everything about you.
However, it just makes us feel bad about ourselves. It makes us feel unworthy and self-conscious of what we have accomplished.
By scrolling through Instagram, I’m comparing my personal life with a compilation of the best parts of someone else’s life.
Online platforms trick us to believe that life is perfect. That everyone whose life is not as successful and accomplished as those that we see online are deemed unworthy.
I also realized that people accomplish certain things in life at different points in their life. Just because someone achieved something earlier than me does not make my accomplishments inferior.
Instead, I look up to people who have accomplished more than me as a source of inspiration and a place to learn from their accomplishments rather than feeling bitter or jealous because they achieved something that I didn’t.
Finally, I’ve learned that people always want to accomplish more and are never satisfied with what they have. As a result, I acknowledge every one of my accomplishments, no matter how big or small they are, and only compare my current self to my past self.
For example, although my last article received just over 100 views, the number of people that have reached out and said how much they could relate to what I wrote made me extremely grateful that I’m able to share my story on this platform and impact other people in some way or another.
Your definition of success is incomparable to anyone else’s definition of success.
