| Comparing yourself to your peers is the key for personal growth. It's often not easy, in particular in days of Facebook and other social networks but here why I think it's crucial for us: At the end of the day we are imitating our peers--everyday. When we start as babies we imitate our mother, our siblings and everybody we see. Later in school and university we see what friends and other peers do. Sometimes we think good idea I might try it. And sometimes we are surprised that in our eyes to us inferior peers try and accomplish stuff which is more challenging, advanced and just more exciting than our life. THIS is the key for personal growth: this feeling that somebody who was inferior all the past overtook us, frustrates us and will lead us into bigger journeys. Especially men who tend to be more competitive cannot stand this feeling and gear up. I started to raise money because of some 10 year younger guys I met who raised 500k seed with ease. And I found those guys are inferior to me, so I was forced to get on par. But when I was an office drone deep in corporations I imitated my peers there: worked as little as possible but still climbing the career ladder via office politics, complaining all day how bad the company is, worked just for the weekends (full of partying and girls) and the only goal was planning the next vacation. This was a hollow life where I lacked strong peers and I was slowly degenerating like them for years. I lost time. This is the good thing about Facebook. Because we have 1,000 of FB friends the probability that we see everyday some big achievement of someone is quite high (and so frustrating) and leads to a very restrictive posting behavior on our side because it tells us: only post if you achieved something special and this initially negative energy might be good: it pushes into new and more challenging activities. I know not everybody will like my answer but again peers who push us out of our comfort zone help our personal development. So we should see it as something positive. |