One of my mother's favorite stories (and believe me, she had many) centered around a family gathering when I was about four. The adults asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. Doctor, lawyer, astronaut, baseball player?
According to my mother, when they got to me, I responded with, "Don't ask me. I don't want to be anything." Who knew a four-year-old could have such a firm grasp on the future?
Don't get me wrong. I accomplished a few things in the almost 60 years following this prescient declaration on the predicted arc of my career. The challenge comes when you compare your life to others instead of just looking in the mirror and into your heart.
For far too long, I measured myself against the performance of my peers. Maybe that was a side-effect of working in sales for 30+ years, where my performance was tracked monthly. Stack ranking the totality of my career against my peers, the picture didn't look so bright.
High school and college friends who are now CEOs of major organizations, partners in law firms, physicians, and successful business owners. It's a long list of peer accomplishments.
At the time, I thought there must have been a career banana peel I slipped on, or maybe I accidentally accepted an ACME delivery from Wile E. Coyote.
After I retired, I had more time and (healthy?) space to reflect on my career. And one of the things I realized is that I had invested too much effort in benchmarking myself to others. I was always looking at the people who were more successful than me and feeling "less than" by comparison.
But then I realized that was a fool's errand. There will always be people who are more successful than you. Especially if you look hard enough. The only thing that matters is how you measure yourself against the goals you establish for yourself.
Perhaps my difficulty was linked back to that conversation as a four-year-old. I didn't want to be "anything," so I never set a specific goal. You know the kid that says, "I want to be a CEO when I grow up." Not me. I jumped into the river of life and let the current take me. I went with the flow.
If my career was a river, then I am pretty happy with where the current took me. Lots of different jobs. Lots of different companies. Two constants. Learning and friendship.
I always tried to learn something from each position and carry it forward. And I made lifelong friends along the way. Looking back at the end of the line, nothing else mattered as much.
So, if you're deep in your career and think things are not going according to some "master plan" and that failure is just around the corner, stop comparing yourself to others. Just compare yourself to yourself.
Ask yourself if you're better off today than you were yesterday. If the answer is yes, then you are not a failure. You are a success.
The only competitor that matters is the face in the mirror.
Focus on being the best version of yourself that you can be. And don't worry about what everyone else is doing. The river and the current will carry you exactly where you are meant to travel in the end.
Dan Troup is The Sunny Side of 57. He loves to reflect and write about life, family, career, and retirement. Check out more of his reflections on his blog site. Also, consider subscribing to The Sunny Side of 57. When not playing pickleball or hiking with Sue and Rigby, he writes a new post about twice a month.
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