A couple of attributions to this that I make:
Continuous cycles of unhealed trauma and scarcity mindsets (There are just more and more people)
More “friendly” tools that fuel COMPARISON. (Comparison is the thief of joy). Internet. Facebook. WeChat and WhatsApp. Glassdoor. Reddit. Zocdoc. Google Reviews.
How many of you or your friend’s can’t even select a restaurant unless you go on yelp and make sure it has 4*+?
When confronted with a problem, how often is your first step “Try to Google it”?
To be clear – There is absolutely nothing wrong with using tools at hand to solve what is in front of you, or help make an informed decision. The problem is when it is your ONLY means. Are you putting you and your values first, or are you leaning on the social amalgam’s truth? What happens is a cycle of crowdsourcing “What is good” which eventually replaces “What do I like?”.
How early the comparisons started in our lives!
Thinking about mine as well as many other’s childhoods – I didn’t conceptualize it back then, but looking back at it now, it was non-stop pit fighting trying to rise to the top.
Between:
Comparing grades in school
Where we sat in orchestra
Comparing SAT scores
Comparing which colleges we got into
Comparing what jobs we got, salaries, and titles
When we got married and had kids
We did a lot of it certainly to set us up for our futures, but how much of it was towards our desired future? How much of it was what we were told to desire instead of seeking out for ourselves? How much of that was I need to compare and show that I’m better than the next person, just to feel good about myself?
It’s a part of the vicious cycle, where many parents feared their kids wouldn’t be “enough”. Would “struggle”. Wanting to come off as a good parent.
So back to my original metaphor, even if a restaurant has 4.5 stars 1000+ reviews, do we have any idea if the food is made to a taste that we truly like? Have you figured out what you truly like? (I like an amount of garlic that would make vampires uncomfortable to be near me)
Are we so anxious at the possibility that we might have a mediocre meal, that we spend 30 minutes researching restaurants that will take 30 minutes to finish eating?
Is just trying a bunch of solutions and failing and learning from the failures that painful?
How did we get to a food culture where half of the food isn’t made with measurements (Idk, add ‘vague amount’ of soy sauce), and yet we belabor recipe sites that don’t have exact measurements.
This has been the super long windy way of saying: Things will be ok. You can be happy and satisfied with whatever action, regardless of how well it came out. Yes, these words are easy to say, hard to transform all those years of brain wiring into a healthier mindset. I encourage you the reader to work with a professional, either me or others, to be a helping hand through the transformation.
The next step / level is when we talk about the joy and satisfaction of being a LEADER, which by default, often times mean there is no clear path forward; you need to cut it out for yourself. You carve out your happiness too.