Wow. You Intimidate Me.

I think I know a secret about you.

Deep down, you harbor doubts about yourself and your abilities. Maybe not about everything but when you look at what some other people can do, it makes you wonder if you’re good enough or smart enough or will ever achieve their level of greatness. This other person has their act totally together while you simply don’t. It might appear that way to others at times, but if they really knew the honest truth, they’d not listen to or follow you any more. Maybe you even sometimes feel like a fraud and that someday, someone is going to figure that out.

Does that sound about right? If it doesn’t, congratulations! You’re part of a very special minority of very confident people… or you are self-delusional. Either way, run with it. For the rest of us, we are conditioned to question ourselves and to think that we are not as good as others.

Look at social media. People capture snapshots of their lives that make it seem like they are doing everything right while we’re barely holding things together. They’re on the perfect vacation or just landed an awesome job or just have the oh-so-perfect profile pic. They are simply better than me.

Well, here’s the real secret. Most of the time, that person you’re comparing yourself to isn’t really better than you are. They just have good marketing. In fact, most of us harbor the same fears that we do; we just don’t get to hear their doubts most of the time.

True, people around us have some great things going on in their lives but so do we. Maybe not right at this very moment, but there are amazing things about each of us. But most of us are just trained to discount that on a regular basis.

I’ll give you an example. Recently, I sent my resume to an old friend. He wrote me back and was very complimentary of everything I’d accomplished and said how good my resume looked. I had to check to see that I’d really sent him mine and not the awesome sample resume I downloaded. My response to him was humble and self-effacing. He wrote back and repeated how impressive everything was. It was about then that I started to pick up on the theme for this post.

I looked at my resume and realized what was happening. For every seemingly awesome bullet point, I knew the full, murky history behind it. I just had done a pretty good job at distilling the best elements to summarize my accomplishments. “Oversaw $5 million in technology investments” was true enough, but it took much longer than I’d wanted and was probably half of what I really was hoping to get put in place. The same thing was true for every accomplishment. Bottom line – I wrote my resume as an optimist but was reading it as a pessimist.

I then started to look at what other people were doing and saying about themselves. I realized that I was guilty of accepting a superficial view of their stated greatness but was more than happy to dig deep into the messy details of my own life and was unfairly comparing the two.

I know this is going to sound cheesy but each and every one of us should consider ourselves a miracle. It’s a universal truth that we are unique and that there never has been, nor will there ever again be, someone like us. In fact, the sheer odds against any one of us existing to read these words is incredible. For our parents to have met, fallen in love and conceived us at just that right moment for us to be born are seemingly astronomical odds. Multiply that thousands of times over across all our ancestors and you’re left with the realization that we really shouldn’t be here… but we are. That by itself should give you a sense of worth.

Granted, we are not good at everything nor do I think we can do anything we set our minds to (sorry, but I have two left feet and will never win, much less appear on, Dancing with the Stars). Still, our sheer uniqueness instills in us an intrinsic value that we would all be better to recognize in ourselves… and one another.

So, the next time you find yourself comparing your life to someone else’s and you fall short, take a step back and try and put some perspective on it. Don’t tear the other person down or falsely build yourself up. That doesn’t help anyone. But celebrate the good in others and – most importantly – yourself. It may take some time and reflection to accept this, but you’re pretty amazing… and just a bit intimidating.

I’m pulling for you!

(Let me know what you think in the comments. Have you ever fallen into this trap of discounting yourself or – even better – recognized it when it was happening and pulled yourself out? I’d like to hear about your experiences.)