Hi everyone

I believe that evaluating my life success based on comparison with others is a great way to push myself into continuous unhappiness.

Instead I like to evaluate my life success based on how much I can have a positive impact on the life of others and based on how I can improve compared to my past self.

In this newsletter I will explain my believes about these topics in a bit more detail.

Why I don’t like comparing my success to others

First of all let me mention that my thoughts here are not my own. All I do is repeat some of the ideas that some very intelligent people already had before me.

For example Jordan Peterson, in his book ‘12 Rules for Life’, has this rule: : “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” He argues that measuring your worth or progress against others is a flawed and often destructive approach because it ignores your unique circumstances, struggles, and starting point. Someone else’s achievements might be the result of different opportunities, talents, or timelines—factors irrelevant to your own journey.

In addition to that I also think that it does not make sense because different people might not have the same goal. For example comparing people according to their salary and job prestige might be entirely meaningless for someone that pursues a different type of impact.

Another problem with this comparison is that there is always someone else who is more successful than you (unless you are Elon Musk). In that sense any kind of progress just moves you up into a different group where you are behind again. It is an infinite hamster wheel and I think a brilliant design for eternal unhappiness.

What metrics of success I like instead

As I mentioned in the introduction, I have two metrics of success I really like.

The first one is how I can have a positive impact on the live of others. So for example if I can bring together two people who become a happy couple for many years (perhaps their whole lives) I find that extremely meaningful.

Or if I can help someone improve their German speaking skill and see that they can improve their communication skills, that also gives me a lot of satisfaction.

That’s why it is for example very meaningful to me that all my German students so far give me very positive feedback and often say that they would like to continue German specifically with me. That’s just fantastic.

The other way of comparison I like is the comparison with my former self.

For example when I look at how I can now produce videos compared to 1 year ago it is obvious right away how much better I got. There are many different Skills I had to improve to get where I am now and many things I can still improve, and it is just obvious that I got better.

Eventually that is also measurable by external metrics like view numbers, but that is more of a long term metric which should also not be overvalued for individual videos.

I believe that this focus on positive impact and growth is great because it makes the whole journey meaningful and positive, and allows myself to enjoy it along the way.

And isn’t that what life is all about in the first place?

Perhaps what I write in this email should be obvious, but I know many people who primarily measure their success by comparing themselves with others. Intrinsic happiness is nothing those people can really feel because they are obsessed with status games and comparisons. So even though what I am writing here is obvious to me, I still feel the need to writ it down (again) in this weekly email newsletter.

And that’s it again for this week.

Have a great one!

greetings from Olten

Gregor