I’ve been having this recurrent thought in my head, some people who put less effort than me have succeeded in life, while I put the most effort, struggled everyday and did all the right things failed. Everyone said that I’ll be successful and to be honest I thought the same too, but I didn’t. and It just shatters my understanding of how life works. Yeah comparison is the thief of joy I know, but fortunately I don’t have any joy to be stolen atm.
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The biggest lesson everyone learns is that life isn’t fair. You only have two choices. You can either give up and accept a life and career that isn’t fulfilling. Or you can dig in your heals and keep fighting until you reach where you want to be. But don’t ever expect for life to be balanced nor fair.
Life is a LOT more random than people think, but humans aren’t really wired to appreciate it
Remember Jean-Luc Picard;
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
Life’s not fair, but at least you live during the most prosperous time in human history. It’s something.
Bad things often happen to good people and good things to bad people.
HOWEVER.
The longer the time period, the higher the odds of bad actions catching up with the bad actors and the good actions resulting in positive rewards for the good person.
Still, there are no guarantees. But you absolutely CAN and should work on improving your odds of a good outcome.
Life isn’t fair. They used to tell kids that early and often. I guess they don’t now.
What is this in relation to? Life? Work? All of it?
Sure, comparison is the thief of joy, but there are PLENTY of things that go into successful outcomes and it is not just effort. For work, it can be polish and professionalism. You can be the best damn <insert profession here> on the planet, but if you rub people the wrong way, you’re going to have a hard time landing a job and moving up.
For relationships, same deal. Effort is one thing, but there are 1000s of things that go into building and maintaining relationships.
You compare yourself to others favorably, but what do others think of you? Have you asked for feedback? What is the feedback you receive from those close to you? What are things you can work on?
First, simply putting forth effort doesn’t ensure success. Second, the effort put forth doesn’t ensure a certain amount of success being returned. Third, there isn’t a finite amount of success to go around.
My advice to you would be focusing on wanting to champion other people’s success regardless of how hard they worked for it. If for no other reason than you know first hand how difficult it is to find success. And as you are learning that it would benefit you to look at not just what they did but how it is they did what they did to realize success in their endeavors to try and learn from them. As Scrooge McDuck said when we were kids: work smarter, not harder. Learn to focus your efforts in ways that are more likely to help realize success, whatever it is that success means to you.
Two things:
Life isn’t fair and that’s the fucking hard truth.
You have no fucking idea the level of effort people put into shit. Unless you are with them 24/7 you are at best guessing and I guarantee they ain’t telling you the hard shit they had to do.
You can do everything right and get shot down by random factors out of your control through no fault of your own. There’s no sense to be made of it. Fairness doesn’t exist.
Try to identify anything you could have done better, then stop dwelling on it and get on with the rest of your life.
Several things to point out here. 1. A lot of people ride the coattails of others. Your work is being taken by someone else for their success. When you see it, speak up. 2. Effort does not always equal productive. Sometimes having a lazy mindset identifies a smarter way of working. Work smarter, not harder. Some people try really hard to move that boulder until Joe Schmoe comes along and uses a lever. 3. Boundaries. When you learn to say no and respect your time, your life and your mental health, success means something different than the money hierarchy ladder. The most successful people I know, set their self ahead of the rat race. That’s respected by other successful people, whether they admit it or not.
I’ll also add that you only failed by your standards and the success you are perceiving is by your standards. It took me a long time to learn that how we measure success and failure is by our expectations not the expectations of everyone else. Anytime you’re feeling like a failure or a success it’s your metric against that situation. Not saying it’s easy to do but if you can better manage your expectations then you won’t feel that way as often.
Life isn’t fair. You put your maximum effort into things you know will work (don’t beat s dead horse) and more often than not you’ll have success.
But sometimes life want to mix things up and then you just hang in there
First things first, it doesn’t matter how everyone else is doing. Stop thinking about it. Second, you can’t say you put in the maximum effort and they didn’t. You only know what you feel like you did, not what they feel like they did or what they actually did. Lastly, effort does not guarantee success. I can push a 10th square with all my might, and it won’t move. Someone else can move a 10 ton sphere with a 2×4 and a fulcrum with relative ease. At the end of the day, they were more successful at moving weight from A to B. Maybe the deck was stacked, maybe I failed to innovate a solution for myself, but again it doesn’t matter. Their success has no bearing on my life or my future. The only thing that matters is me and what I do.
Focus on yourself. Don’t resign your life because you’re trying to compare to other people. They don’t care about you, and then living rent free in your head isn’t helping you. You don’t want to be on your deathbed saying “why the fuck does Marty have a nicer casket than me?!?! I worked harder than he did!” I promise ya Marty doesnt care.
You didn’t do the right things if you failed.
2+2=4 if you do the right things. The only way for that not to be the case is if you either:
A. Didn’t do the right things or B. Aren’t in the right system.
In mathematics you could be operating on a different numerical system where 2+2=🐟 but in life you could be in the WRONG ENVIRONMENT, that make it harder for you to find successful given your actions and character.
You didn’t even put maximum effort into this post.