NochNoch.com

When I log on to Facebook, read my friends’ blogs, or check status updates on Twitter, and other social media, a bitter taste creeps up, and I feel a bit disheartened.

I read about all the cool things my friends are doing, and some are coincidentally, things that I want to do too, and have tried to do indeed. So when someone else has “made it”, I become angry and bitter at myself. Why isn’t it me? As simple as why is someone else paid to write a review article in a magazine I had hoped to, when I had contacted the Editor previously and offered to write for free? Or more deeply, rubbing salt onto my wounds for the myriad of reasons that I was not able to attend an Ivy League college when I see the list of top universities my friends have attended one after another.

I muse over the disappointing facts and become discouraged. I feel my efforts are not rewarded. And I go into my thinking traps of negative thoughts – that I am not good enough, I am not qualified, I haven’t proved myself, I am not active enough to grab hold of the opportunities, I am not “out there”…

But why am I feeling resentful even though I am happy for my friends? Why I am making a comparison and unnerving my self-confidence? There are many factors out of my control. Everyone has his or her story. I cannot draw a conclusion simply by the end results my friends have achieved, regardless of whether it is something I would like to achieve too. We have skipped down different paths, and our trajectories for the future are different. My time will come too- once I figure out what I would like to do and who I am in this new era.

Plus, I forget to look at myself and at my own achievements. I forget that perhaps, someone out there is envious of what I have achieved, wishing that they could have done what I had done, and feeling stumped because they have tried but results were different for them. I should not discount my own career achievements simply because I am looking for a new course. In fact, I should be pretty proud of myself for rubbing shoulders with C-suite level executives and having the largest multinational companies and financial institutions as my clients one way or another by the time I was 25, and managing people older than me. My experience should also count, and my market value is high enough as recent encounters show. I have my own skill set unique from everyone else. Everyone’s experiences are significant in their own ways.

One of my friends, Lin Lin, gave me a profound reminder – “I wish you can look at yourself through my eyes… and through your loved ones’ eyes, it would be RUBBISH if you weren’t you!”

If you are in anyway upset at yourself for not “having it together” as other people have, then try this: look at yourself through the eyes of others, and feel their admiration for you.

Just be yourself, stop comparing.

You are beautiful too.