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rewward

5 karma · joined December 31, 2014

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rewward··on Ask HN: How can I stop being jealous of people who succeed before me?
One, because "success" often comes with more responsibility and less choice. More people depend on you, in more ways, and you can't let them down if you want to keep your "success".

You might find it annoying to unfollow your successful acquaintances, but imagine how it feels to be on the other end, with multiple investors threatening to pull funding and kill your company when your "social media presence" is waning -- and you can't even express your frustration on Twitter because that would be company suicide.

Secondly, it gets worse because your standards of comparison change. You compare upwards to people with even more success. And, since "success" metrics are exponentially distributed, so is the gap that you feel between the people more "successful" than you.

rewward··on Ask HN: How can I stop being jealous of people who succeed before me?
Three things.

1) Success is a fashion, and a very dynamic and fickle one. Opinions of success (your own and everyone else's) are constantly changing. While it might seem today others are beating you, tomorrow could be your day in the press without you doing anything differently. This should help you see how little opinions of success really matter.

2) You are in control of the fashions you choose to follow and how you let them affect you.

3) Entrepreneurship is tough, and this is one of the reasons. The feeling will never get better; you'll find the more "successful" you are the worse it gets. Learn to accept this feeling and leverage it rather than fight it.