Lately the topic shows up everywhere: in any meeting, in a group chat with friends, in the feed. That feeling of being behind, like everyone's crushing it except you.
I'll be honest with you: doubting myself at that level has almost never happened to me. And for a second you want to just say "don't compare yourself." But no. I know a ton of people have a really hard time with this, really hard, and I don't find it funny at all.
So what follows isn't a theory I've got nailed down. It's more me thinking out loud.
What I did see up close, especially back in my music days, is this: people who played the same bars I did. Same level, same hunger. Some of them fill stadiums today. One guy ended up playing with Duki, at the Bernabéu. And others, who played just as well or better, with more technique and more years of training behind them, went nowhere.
Why do some make it and others don't? I don't have a clean answer. But it wasn't talent. A big part was being at the right moment, in the right place. Luck. And also making your own luck, there's even a book about that. Sometimes it's just the planets lining up, and you can't control that no matter how hard you kill yourself.
And that's where it gets rough, because you start comparing yourself.
To me, comparing yourself is like fighting age: a fight nobody has ever won. No matter how hard you try, you can't stop it. And the worst part is it has no floor. It's like the skinny person who looks in the mirror and still sees someone fat: it's never enough.
And I'm not acting like I'm above this, by the way. It gets me too. Some days I think that by now I should have bought my mom a house, and if I haven't, then what was all of it for. I see some kid who raised 10 million dollars and for a second I feel like I'm behind.
But when I catch myself thinking like that, I try to hit the brakes. Because you can't win that game. If you play, you've already lost.
I don't have the magic fix. The only thing that sort of works for me is to stop measuring myself against the other guy and try to respect what I did with what I had. And with what I didn't have, too.
Not all of us have to be Steve Jobs, and we don't need to be. Maybe you hit your best version at 60, like the old man from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or maybe never, who knows. Both are fine, even if it's hard to believe.
Sounds like something off a coffee mug, I know. But if you've got things that matter to you (your people, your health, doing what you love), you've already won something, even if the guy next to you has more zeros in his bank account.
So what do I do in the meantime? Work. Sounds boring, but it's the only thing that gets this out of my head.
I close the customer in front of me. I sell. Without telling myself the story that this is the customer who's going to make me a millionaire. Just close, execute, bring in cash.
And on to the next thing. One more thing, and on to the next.
Honestly, I don't have a better formula than that.
