Success

So I read a quote recently that said

“People want you to be successful, as long as you’re less successful than them”

And it really got me thinking about success and support.

I feel like people have different opinions on what success is… For some it’s money, for some it’s fame, for others it’s happiness – it varies from person to person.  I’m not gonna go into depth about what success means to me (mainly because I haven’t fully formed an opinion on it…) but I think it’s somewhere along the lines of happiness and recognition for the effort I put into things.

Reading it brought back memories of some of the toxic friendships I’ve had in the past (I have a whole post about how to spot toxic friendships here).  Back in year 9 I got pulled out of my school and it took the government 5 months (In which I just sat at home doing nothing) before they found me another one, so initially I was quite behind.  However, after a summer of working incredibly hard to catch up on year 9 work and be a little ahead of my GCSE’s, I managed to get back to a good place, and my grades started to get a little higher.  I was still quite new and never really spoke about my grades unless my friends asked me (I’ve never really been one for talking about my grades), and I remember my friend being really proud of a grade she’d got in a test, then ignoring me for the rest of the day when she found out I did better than she did.  At the time I thought nothing of it, I was new and still walking on eggshells around people, so I decided I would just hide my accomplishments to avoid upsetting others.  Next thing I know, the rest of the group started being weird around me, and I eventually found out she’d been telling the others that I was “stuck up” and “braggy” and “acted like a know it all in class”.

Truth is, the quote I started with is unfortunately very realistic; you do find a lot of people in life that can only be happy for you if they’re doing better, but are those the type of people you want to associate with?  Yeah, everyone wants to strive for some type of success, whether it’s grades, or career, or side projects, but there’s no reason you can’t succeed just because someone else does.  One of my favourite sayings is blowing out someone’s candle won’t make yours shine any brighter, because it’s sad how things have become more about competition and less about appreciating the success of those around you.  I get so excited when my friends succeed, or start some new sort of venture – it genuinely makes me happy inside; I don’t have a moment of being like “Why wasn’t that me?”, because I know that if I find my thing I can get there too.

At this point in my life I’m incredibly lucky in the sense that my friends and family are s0 supportive of whatever I want to do.  There’s no hostility around when things go well for me, and I love that and them for that so much.  Life isn’t a competition, there is room for both you and those around you to grow.  

Hope you liked this, I feel like my content lost its way about in February (mainly because I lost my way a bit… I’ll probably post about it at some point) But yeah this is the kind of content I want to do, so I’d love any feedback in the comments…

Lots of love,

Jas xx

 

BLOGLOVIN’ |  TWITTER  |  INSTAGRAM