Their Story Is Not Yours

Maybe this thought is more reassurance for me than anything else. I had people I looked up to a lot, brilliant minds of my generation or past ones. I would look at their achievements and compare them directly to mine and feel defeated. It took me a long time to realize that we're all on very different journeys. Some leveraged obsession for something specific (e.g. physics) to escape a harsh environment. Some were never able to find out what to pursue in their life. And some are exceptions, bigger than life.

There are a few mental traps you can fall into. One is the belief that if you haven't achieved greatness or success (whatever these terms mean to you) compared to other people you look up to, then you're a failure. You think you'll never get a chance to shine and you just...give up. When I grew up I didn't have the awareness to understand that this is not true. I was so focused on the specifics (this person did this and that at my age already). That made me feel defeated for longer than I'd like to admit, so I carried on letting life take me anywhere. I felt late in life for everything I was trying to accomplish, which in turn sucked the joy out of anything I did. That started to wear off when I discovered more stories like mine. Individuals who started hustling at my age to eventually reach greatness later. You only fail when you give up.

The second trap is using comparison as a justification for what others achieved and an excuse for what you haven't. People who had an incredibly strong drive and will to escape their life condition (e.g. abuse, poverty). That's why they achieved so much (I thought), nothing else could have saved them. I have a decent life, but I would be stupid to take risks and bet everything on one thing (e.g. sports success, business). You now have a mental paralysis, you have an excuse for your current condition and a valid justification for others' success. Rather than seeing my condition as an advantage, I saw it as an excuse. So there was no reason for me to even try. You only fail when you give up.

Then I learned to look around and behind me more. Around me to the people who can do so much, and got there at their own pace. I look behind and see myself 10 years ago being a very different person, far away from who I am today.

Thoughts

This was prompted by a random thread on X, someone sharing the early work of Ken Thompson (the creator of Unix). They were denigrating themselves for not having achievements anywhere close to that. Or they were approaching a similar age and panicked they would never get to that level of "greatness". As I shared there, take a deep breath. Life is different for each one of us. You can start writing your story today. You just need to want it hard enough. I studied the "secret" to mastery, and it's all about deliberate practice and discipline. Leverage your condition instead of looking at it as a crippling mechanism.