Do not compare yourself to others!

[Heretolearn]

guilty party = me

When I first started to work, I compared my salary to everyone elses = unhappiness.

When I first started to work, I wanted a house like everyone else = unhappiness

When my relationship ended, I compared my depressed, crushed and rebuilding self to the image of my ex that I created in my mind (fine and happy, new relationship all that!) = PAIN and unhappiness.


Moral of the story. Look at what you have. Be Happy with this! If you are not, then make it work for you!

The beautiful thing about clothes is that they come in different sizes. Thus you cannot covet another man's clothes generally as they may not fit you.

The same can be said for everything else. Bill Gates money may not fit you. Mr Married for 30 yrs hapily with 4 kids life may not fit you.


Go try on some of your own clothes and be your own tailor!

 

[Heretolearn]

personal building block:

When I graduated university I wanted to make more money than my GF at the time.

Reasoning was to be able to be supportive and all that but also because I had studied and received a computer science degree with a major in psychology and THEN went to law school and got a law degree.

6-7 years with no stable income.

POINT is that sometimes you may compete with others but only do so for YOUR OWN REASONS. I.e the above want to earn more because of my wants not because she earnt a certain amount.


Perhaps my fellow posters have a different take on all this?

 

[Doctormad]

Well first I will say that you are totally right. Your life is made up of personal experiences, memories, and the lessons you have learnt while growing up. No person can have the same life so why even bother trying?

However, I have found that sometimes a good healthy dose of envy can work wonders for motivation. Case in point: my roomate. Both him and I are in our late 20s/early 30s. We are both tall, relatively skinny, and we even have similar hair color. On top of that we are both in the same field. Neither of us ment to have it turned out like this, it just so happens that we have very similar interest. However we are two completely different people.

He is quite established in the IT field. He just bought a new car and has been getting laid on a regular basis for a while now. As for me, I am in an entry level desktop support position, have a 14 year old minivan, and I have gotten laid, maybe 1/10th of the amound my roomate has (although I have been getting it a lot lately due to a very sexual gf). There was a period of time in which he was succeeding at everything he did and I was struggling. At that time I used the envy I felt toward him to wake myself up from mediocracy and force myself to enact positive changes in my life. To this day it continues, and its one of the reasons I have started to turn my life around. So although its not good to compare lifestyles, sometimes you can use it to your advantage to make you see what you have been missing and hopefully give yourself enough leverage to change.