How do I stop jealousy of others' achievements?

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I seem to find myself sometimes feeling like an "under achiever" because I've seen people who achieve great things before they are even 30 for example. I mean like musicians, professional sportsmen and women, people who run businesses only in their 20s.

I had little interest in doing a sports career, or building and running a business. I do remember at one stage playing bass guitar and aspiring to form a band during school but I found it hard and lost interest in the lessons after a while.

I seem to have ideas of what to do in life that just come and go and nothing is made from them such as running my own zoo then it was playing bass and being in a band and then I did art at college and uni and lost interest in that and now I'm trying to be a writer but ideas of what I want to write about keep changing.

You might feel less jealousy if you focus more on your own achievements.

I don't know where all there high achievers are to be honest but where ever they are they more than likely will have made a lot of sacrifices to achieve all the great things you speak of

Maestro Chris,

My heart goes out to you, not in pity, but in recognition as I have held similar feelings looping through my conscious mind as well for a long time.
Is there a one-size-fits-all, golden advice to give here... I think not as this is a personal issue we all have to find a personal solution to. For me it came in the lived experience of my children; when I felt extremely down one time I was playing with my young son in the yard and I saw my neighbor doing the same with his son and having a much more explosive physical way of doing so. I felt extremely down... and made the error of stating to my 6yo old son: "I'm sorry I'm not more like our neighbor." And to this day I Vividly remember my son's befuddled, confused face looking at me when I finally dared to lift my head and look at him; "I hate that man, daddy, why would you want to be like him ?!?!..." he said to me and I physically felt my world brightening...

We all need our personal moment of insight, to understand that: the only one you should be comparing yourself to, maestro Chris, is yourself of yesterday.

No one else has walked in your shoes, has had your obstacles caried what you do everyday. So try not to get seduced to compare apples to oranges

best of luck,
Kada

As others have said, you really need to learn to accept yourself. It is not easy to do, as I struggle with that every day. Live your life the way you want it to become. It may be hard and require work to get there. That is part of setting and accomplishing goals in life. Just be careful in making good choices in your life goals, as bad ones will just drag you down. Becoming rich and powerful seem like good goals, but they can have major complications you never see at the time.

Remember this:

In the race of life, it is not who crosses the finish line first who wins. It is the ones who took a much different route than others to get there. They got to experience things no one else did.