The following is a gentle reminder to myself. While being a student, I think it's easy to get into the mentality that we’re all at the same place in life; on the same path, moving at the same pace. We forget that this thing “success” we’re all trying to achieve through higher education, has a very fluid definition; and that no definition is bad. In short, self, calm the fuck down. A message I think we could all use a reminder of.

I think it’s fair to say that living as students in a Westernized society, we are conditioned to feel the need to be the best. Make the most money. Be the smartest, skinniest, strongest; choose any superlative of your choice. And, in order to achieve our superlative, we have to drag everyone else down (?). The idea that we are in competition with one another is ingrained into our brains as children. We are separated based on test-taking abilities in elementary school, ranked as high school students, and then judged based on what college we get into, if we even decide to go on to college. And when we thought it was over, things only gets worse! In college you have to get the best grades to get the best internship to get the best job. The competition never ends. And we get so focused on achieving our “best” that we forget to enjoy the process.

We forget to enjoy the process.

What constitutes being the best? Being successful, right? Well, what’s success? Uh… There is no clear-cut example of how to “do” life. We all come at life with different experiences and different talents. So when thinking from this angle, it makes little sense as to why we spend so much of our energy trying to be the “best.”

This summer I have friends who have internships in New York, as well as major companies like US Bank and Medtronic. And as I work at my desk job, I can’t help thinking about what I did wrong in the internship search process. Am I not good enough for opportunities like this? This is when I pause to hit myself in the face, because girl you gotta calm tf down!

Other people’s successes do not constitute your failures. And if we get hung up on all of the things we “could be doing better,” we’re gonna drive ourselves insane. Everyone should have goals, but goals that are set for the sole purpose of proving superiority over others are not worth your time or energy. Then small wins like reading your favorite book again or telling someone you loved them become worthless. We need to remember that self worth comes from the self; it’s not relative to anyone else. Our competitive nature makes this easy to forget.

Other people’s successes do not constitute your failures.

It’s not about having the best job, hottest partner or most expensive house. Putting in as much effort towards perfecting the society in which we live as opposed to trying to perfect ourselves on an individual level could do a lot of good.

And I think it’s something worth trying.