What's wrong with being number two?

Feeling of falling behind.

Hello everyone,

Hope you are doing fantastic! I am doing great as well.

In this newsletter, I want to talk about the hurry to figure out life within us. It is overwhelming to scroll through Linkedin these days because it is filled with very successful young people and their extraordinary accomplishments. While it makes me happy and proud, it somehow gives me a dreadful feeling of falling behind. It fills me with anxiety and doubt about my abilities. The modern world is so competitive and young people are excelling in every field that is hard to feel accomplished. I have thoughts like ‘why am I not able to figure out my life?’ and ‘why am I not where they are?’ running in my mind. Especially since joining college, there has been an urgency to answer all the questions in my head about my future, to have an identity and to have a stand. Everyone wants to know, what do you want to do? What are you doing? After all this, I remind myself that I am 18 years old! I don’t need to have my life figured out. This wonderful quote from one of the most eye-opening books I read called Letters to a Young Poet helps bring things to perspective-

“You are so young, so before all beginning, I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I don’t think we realise how much we need to hear this. We spend so much time looking for answers that we forget to live our young lives which should be full of learnings and mistakes. We look at others’ lives and want that for ourselves because we equate self-worth with being successful. Even if we are ‘successful’. we are always unsatisfied with where we are in our lives. However, who is measuring this? Who declared that your self-worth is based on where you are positioned in 775.28 crores of people in this world? When was it decided that if you don’t accomplish something by the age of 20, your life is ruined? Who said that being the best in everything you do is the norm? Why do we create this scale in our head in which we always fall short? Why do we do this to ourselves?

We are hustling and bustling to find perfection on the first try in everything we do rather than trying something new. We are always comparing ourselves to the best person in the business considering that as a standard and anything below as not good. We have raised the stake for everything in this world that we all are set up for failure. We all have our own paths, and we all have our own journeys. There are no two same or equal paths. Then why are we worried about falling behind?

Why is there this obsession with the hustle mentality? This thinking that if you are not the best, you are not worth it. We are not able to enjoy any accomplishment because there is always someone better than us. We don’t enjoy our achievements as there is always something more to achieve which has been achieved by someone else we know.

It is good to be motivated but it is toxic to be motivated by the need to beat others in this imaginary race to the top. It is true, “The only person you should compete with is you.” Nothing other than jealousy stems from this type of unhealthy competition. Moreover, once we reach the peak by pushing just to be the best rather than finding happiness and being grateful for what we have, then what? Would it be worth all the self-hate, lost relationships and burnout?

I believe this race to be crowned the best has actually demotivated more people than motivate them. Most people feel worthless and are afraid to try something because they think failure is the end of all ends. Imagine if being second is considered detrimental to your self-worth, imagine what failure would mean for your confidence.

We are always sceptical about doing something we aren’t sure about due to the possibility of failure. The constant looming question of ‘what if I mess up?’

However, it is only if we fail we learn.

Your life should be filled with ‘Oh wells’ instead of ‘What ifs’. It shouldn’t be ‘what if I had done that’ but rather filled with ‘oh well I did it, it didn’t work out but it is fine.’ Live the questions, embrace the uncertainty and trust your intuition. Questions like “Will this make me successful?” is practical but I think always stops me from trying. I had a question in my mind in 2019, “Should I write even if I am not sure about my skill?” I went ahead with it thinking oh well let’s try it out? It was the best decision I ever took. Am I the best at it? No, I am far from it but I am constantly improving and that is victory enough for me. I am grateful for my life.

I want to end with the title of this newsletter which is a brilliant quote from the book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom which I want everyone to think about-

“What is wrong with being number two”