Everyone Seems to Be Winning Online. Here’s How to Use Your Own Metrics

With the number of success stories online, it sometimes feels like everyone is winning, except you.

It is very normal for life not to turn out the way you imagined. Let me explain why that feeling hits harder as we get older.

Same track, until it isn’t

Until school, everyone is on the same track: same people, same classmates, everyone doing the same things. Then comes university. Even after the change of environment, there are still people doing the same degree as you. If you aren’t very outgoing or mixing with others, it is the same pattern again.

Once adulthood arrives, the paths become very different. And our source of information becomes whatever people want to show us. Unless you know them personally, you only follow their activity online.

You are watching the highlights

That can be very discouraging. I remember watching someone I knew post big things almost every day: big words, big stories. It seemed they would become the next big thing. A few months later, I saw the reality behind the posts, and it put things into perspective.

My own story has a part you don’t see too. From the outside, One Click Solutions might look polished. But the only reason I was able to build anything alongside my other work is my parents and my first clients for the ERP. Without that early support, I wouldn’t have made it in tech. I almost quit, to be honest.

How to stop comparing yourself to others

If you want to stop comparing yourself to others, you do not need to delete every app. You need to use these platforms better:

• Take what benefits you and ignore the noise. There is no point feeling bad about what others put out there, especially when you don’t get the full picture.
• Decide what winning means for you. Write it down for this year. There isn’t one way of winning; what matters is that you are winning at what you set out to do.
• Measure yourself against last year’s you. Not against someone else’s feed. Progress against your own starting point is the only comparison you have the full picture for.

Once we put things into perspective, accept that we all have our own journeys and put in the hard work, results tend to follow.

Have you had those moments where you think, “What am I doing with my life when everyone else seems to be doing so well?” Most of us wonder that, and almost nobody says it out loud. We are all surviving. Tell me in the comments if you have been there.