It was good. Too good, in fact.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. How had he done this? The year was 1999. It was a time before there was Facebook and Twitter. Before there were apps and smartphones. The Internet was new, and I was a web designer. I had been fighting the fight, pushing with no relent, no give, year on year, day on day, and I was sure as sure that I had arrived. Big things were coming. Then came this. This thing. This site – years ahead of its time. In that instant I knew everything would change forever. And I would be on the sidelines.
I could feel the well of inferiority pooling in my gut. Knowing I was less. Feeling I couldn’t be more. I hated the hurt. That feeling when you see something not just better than you, but beyond you. Beyond your knowledge and beyond your talent. Beyond your vision. As if someone operated on another level. As if they lived in a world that moved at one quarter the speed, absorbing everything in Matrix time, so much fuller, so much richer, so much deeper.
For so long, so often, that feeling has defined my life. I’ve worn it, sometimes in shame, sometimes in defiance. Always gnawing at my gut, as I trudged step by step, hoping I was more.
And I’m here to say, it doesn’t matter.
Ignore better and worse. Superior and inferior. Don’t play that game.
Because that type of better misframes the challenge and misses the point. It leads you down a path of rights and wrongs. Full of this is good and that is bad, and this is how it’s done. What you want is exploration and freedom. What you get are rules.
It’s a prison with four walls that kills creativity and limits vision. The whole point of life is to figure it out for yourself. To love the challenge and live in the process. It can’t flourish in the light of others. Comparison is the surest path to bitterness and grief. Explore. See your power. See what you can do. Success is not being better than everyone else. It’s finding you.
When you frame your value in the context of others, you place yourself on their roads in their journeys. But the problem is you’ll never see the whole puzzle. You’ll never hear about their failures and hardships – the challenges they overcame to become who they were. You will only know their successes. You will only witness their best. It will give you none of their insights, but it will leave you empty and miserable, drained of the very energy you need to live like you.
So, sure, go ahead and enjoy what others can do. Be inspired. Let them move you. But remember, learning from others is one thing. Chasing them is another, and when your gut churns, and you feel you have less, do less, or are less, let it go. Because it’s the surest sign you’ve checked out of your life to go after someone else’s.
Spencer, I swear you read my mind sometimes to write exactly what I need. Or maybe you’re just so perceptive that you can identify our most constant and unconscious struggles — the ones we can barely grasp ourselves — and put them into words.
My mentors in the industry are a husband and wife commercial photography team who are very successful in our local market, and I feel that I’m slacking off by not trying my hardest to emulate them and get my business off the ground. But the honest truth is that I look at their hectic lifestyle and realize I don’t want that for myself. I need to find my own direction and my own goals. It’s really fucking hard, but it’ll come together eventually.
Or, I’m just lucky. 😉
I’ve often felt like everyone was getting it, and I was the only one screwing up, not figuring it out. But I’ve come to think we all share so much in our experiences as an industry and even as a society, that in reality, it’s more that few people share their anxieties and troubles with one another, so we just never hear about it.
Thanks so so much for sharing Tyler. I really appreciate that you did.
Wise, wise words – and just what I needed to read tonight. Thank you.
Glad to hear it! Thank you!
“Success is not being better than everyone else. It’s finding you.”
“But remember, learning from others is one thing. Chasing them is another.”
Oh I love your articles so much! I totally get what you mean and I still need to keep reminding myself from time to time to stop with “better” and “worse” comparison.
Much appreciated, Oy. I’m the same way!
Love it! I learned this the hard way & fight every day to be me & do things my way vs chase the next BIG thing. Thanks for posting!
The hard way is the best way to do it, Petronella! 🙂
Thank you, Spencer. Small things are beautiful, and very very important!
Sometimes I can by my side with me on his nice apartment and found the same book. I would be very happy to make your stay in my holiday home and see you soon for me.
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Hello mates, how is everything, and what you desire to say regarding this paragraph, in my view its actually amazing for me.
Spencer, genius stuff. Seriously, mint. Listed to you a while back on a Podcast, impressed with your ideas.
Thanks so much, Max!
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