I think it's human nature that no matter what position a person holds in their working life, whether it's a carpenter, an executive assistant, a nurse, a professional sports player, or what have you, they're going to compare themselves to someone else in their profession at some point.
And in some cases, after doing so, a person will feel that they've fallen short, that they're not being the best they can be.
While it's good to have a role model to look up to in one's professional endeavors, someone who can help fine-tune the skillset and provide invaluable guidance, spending too much time trying to be as "good" or "perfect" as the other person is counterproductive in large part because it hinders you from being uniquely you and what you have to offer the world.
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I admit I've done this in several positions I've held in my working life. In my early years of blogging, for instance, I'd see other writers whose posts would get shared by the "bigger" bloggers, while mine more often than not went nowhere despite the fact that I thought what I'd written was pretty good.
I'd see some of those writers on TV and/or at blogger conferences, and I would be so envious of their confidence, the ease with which they did things, and how well-prepared they were, not to mention how well-received they were by others around them. I began to think that if I wrote in a style similar to two or three of them whose work I really admired, my work would get more attention.
The attention was, for the most part, minimal. But at one point, after social media became a thing, I had a couple of people on what was then known as Twitter tell me that it looked like I was trying to be the "North Carolina version of XYZ Pundit."
Though I laughed it off at the time and told them it was a compliment, my fragile ego had taken a bit of a hit, and deep down, it made me wonder if I was sounding more like them than I was myself.
It took me a while, but eventually I found my voice again, after also coming to the realization that sounding more like everyone else and not myself was actually working against me, not for me. After all, there were plenty of XYZ Pundit wannabes, so how in the world would being just one more name on that list earn me any more readers and, more importantly, respect?
It wasn't long after learning that valuable lesson and growing more as a writer that I started being offered occasional guest blogging stints, and then "side hustle" opportunities to write in my spare time when I wasn't working my 8-5.
The income I saved from that helped pad the small nest egg I needed for when I lost my full-time administrative job of 18 years, and decided to finally take a chance on a full-time freelance writing career, where hopefully I would be able to earn a living doing what I had loved to do for most of my life: write.
And here we are. There are days I still pinch myself thinking about how things ended up working out.
Being myself and relearning to stay true to who I am has paid off in my life in more ways than one, far more than trying to emulate someone else ever has. And that has held true not just in my career but in my personal life, where it's been easy to compare myself to family members or friends or neighbors and (wrongly) find myself lacking.
Some people learn this early in life, but it took a while for me. Better late than never, though, right?
