On Missed Opportunities
Explore the truth behind perceived missed opportunities and learn how to focus on your own path to success without falling into the trap of social media comparisons.
Many of us often feel like we're constantly missing out on opportunities. Your classmate is already a CEO, while you’re still a copywriter. The school underachiever has bought two cars, but you only have one scooter. Everyone around seems to travel, savor truffles, sip expensive wine, snap photos with celebrities, party at clubs, and know everything — and you feel like a loser? This feeling exists only in your mind.
Why Does This Happen?
Pause for a moment and ask yourself: where do you get all this information about these people? About their cars, truffles, and stars? Chances are, you’re just another fish caught by the bait of social media’s virtual reality. The people you idolize think about themselves just as you do. They scroll through their feeds while sitting in luxurious offices of multinational companies, envying the guy who lived on a tropical island for six months. Meanwhile, that island guy scrolls through photos of the best offices, thinking he’ll never know what it’s like to sit on a Herman Miller Aeron chair, enjoy a view from the 45th floor of a business center, or receive a Christmas bonus that helps pay off that annoying car loan all at once.
Both the islander and the office worker share only the best parts of their lives online — restaurants, cars, celebrities, and trips. By constantly following these people, you see no more than 10–20% of reality, just the highlights. The islander doesn’t know that the office worker often suffers from health issues caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, doesn’t spend enough time with their child, and must be somewhere they’d rather not be every day or at least every other day. The islander won’t tell you that huge insects roam their home, that they scrimp on everything, and that they are essentially powerless in a country with fewer rights than Russia or Ukraine (I won’t even mention Belarus, okay?), a place they left with pride.
What Should We Do?
When you work passionately on projects or ideas that keep you awake at night, you’re not missing out on anything. Neither the island blogger earning a minimal salary nor the office worker fighting corporate bureaucracy are missing out or losers.
A loser is only someone who constantly feels the itch to prove to everyone that they’re better than they really are. They do this through social media and pay a high price for it — a cost as hard to detect as the slow, invisible damage caused by low-level radiation.
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