1. Thanks to the internet/social media, you will _always_ see people who more successful than you are, sometimes a lot more successful. You need to get used to

1. Thanks to the internet/social media, you will _always_ see people who more successful than you are, sometimes a lot more successful. You need to get used to it and learn to deal with it [1]. 2. It may be helpful to think that this is probably also true for the person you're looking ahead to: she's also looking at somebody "ahead" of her. So, even if you get there, not much will change, you'll just keep looking at people ahead (also see "hedonic treadmill" [2]). 3. A lot of the time you're just seeing PR, and they're in fact not ahead of you. For example a recent trend is "winning startup competitions". I had friends who went to these, kept winning them, they got futured in newspapers... but then the product had no traction and they shut down quickly. Don't confuse PR with the real thing. Social media can be misleading. 4. In my experience, a lot of it is down to luck. For example, for our group, if a friend gets a juicy job at a FAANG, it will feel like they're ahead. (And they will be.) But having been at a FAANG and done interviews, believe me, a lot of it is down to luck --- esp. when it comes to getting a juicy job. Same is true for startups, I would say most of it is down to luck. 5. Often, other than luck, there's really something the person has done to get there; a lot of the times the major component is _hustle_. Ask yourself, would you want to do that to get there? For example, some startup founders who achieve initial success (Series A and later) end up working for their own company for 10+ years. Would you want to work for the same company (even your own) for that long? Eg. I had a startup, it failed, and since then I'm "just" an employee, and I switch jobs every 2-3 years, and I'm loving it, because I keep learning new things, meet new people, go to new countries, etc; right now I wouldn't want to trade this to be a Series X co-founder having to explain to my board why we're not growing like I said we would in the pitch deck (most companies don't end up growing like they were "supposed to"). [1] unless you become the next M.Z. (unlikely), this will always be true. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill