I’ve worked really hard getting a certification and landed an excellent part time job. I’m in college and my grades are the best they’ve ever been despite my increased workload but I can’t stop constantly thinking about the past. There isn’t a moment in time where I don’t feel anxious, as if I don’t deserve this relative success I’m having. I feel like a fraud. I don’t know if I’m making any sense.
but I can’t stop constantly thinking about the past. There isn’t a moment in time where I don’t feel anxious, as if I don’t deserve this relative success I’m having.
Let me ask you this: If you don’t deserve this success, who does?
I guarantee you there people far stupider and lazy than you but more successful than you that are riding the coattails of their family name or connections to earn more money and title than you. There are even more people on this planet that are absurdly smarter than you so much harder working than you that were born into different geographies, possibly other genders, races, creeds, or faiths with vastly different socioeconomic systems which means you’ll earn more in one year than they, their children, and their grandchildren will in their entire lifetimes.
You know what’s separating you from that first group and the second, and those in the second group from you? One word: LUCK
You were born in the right era, with the right brain, in the right part of the world, to learn the right skills, to be able to take the opportunity when it presented itself at the right time for you to arrive at this success. Yes I’m sure you worked hard along with the luck, but without the luck, you’d be in the second group that the amount of hard work you do would be immaterial to change your situation and station in life.
Understand that you are where you are because of luck, and that you need to continue to put effort in so that you can take advantage of luck when it arrives. There’s no guarantee it will last, but your best chance is to continue to learn, be true to yourself, be humble, and understand that life will throw some giant challenges at you in the future. Always work to be the best version of yourself you can be.
