Often, it seems that I find myself very close to what I want. My fingers are always grasping the edges of what I’ve come so close to. I’m the consistent runner-up in life. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride -- if the wedding is life and the bride is the person you know who manages to be good at everything or good at getting what they want. This is a seemingly terrible fate, but if you also find yourself always feeling like the second, third or fourth place winner in life, then I have good news for you: this is in fact a good thing.
It seems like for our wholes lives, we’ll be the kids with the good grades, but still lagging behind the 4.0 kid next to us. We lose out in leadership elections. We seemingly watch everyone flourish around us, while we wonder when luck will finally turn our way. For me, this has been happening since high school, when everyone I knew was getting into their dreams schools, while I was accepting the prospects of attending my safety school. And this continues to happen; in fact losing out seemed to be the theme of my 2015.
But I’ll let you in on this tidbit; you’re going to become better by not getting what you want. Though it seems like the bad luck never ends and the odds will always be stacked against you, you can rise from this.
First of all it makes you a little tougher, even if you don’t know it. Cheesy as it is, your losses are your own gains. Nothing is going to get handed to you and you can accept that. It makes you work harder. Catching the short end of the stick is what’s going to force you to put in the extra effort to get where you want. You’ll never get the real rewards unless you put the work in. At times, it seems like all our will never produce any profits, but they will one day. Even when it one day seems like a million years in the future.
Secondly, it’ll make a realist of you. When you’re always losing out it’s easy to blame it all on bad luck and other people, but if you adjust your perspective it can also make you a realist. You’ll start to see the world as it is and realize that life is unfair and you can’t change that. You can only change what your doing. And it makes it a little more fun when something actually does happen the way you want it too.
Because it also makes you a secretive optimist. When you feel like nothing is ever going your way, it’s easy to get into the swing of the negative, but at rock bottom, you know the only way is up. You’ll start to think that things are going to go your way someday. And the effort you put into everything is going to pay off one day.
When you’re like me and you find nothing in ever in your favor it’s easy to be get stuck in the mindset that this is a forever state. It’s not. And you’re going to be stronger because life hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows for you.
So cheers to all my runner uppers in life. Let’s raise a glass to 2016 becoming the year that we stop feeling like perpetual losers and crazy, lucky winners.
