<p>i bet he works hard for those grades as well.</p>
<p>I held a 98-100 average in all most all my classes from 10th - 12th, it is very hard. I had almost no time for myself, i was up all hours of the night, etc.</p>
<p>there is no need to get jelous of others because it will mearly reflect badly upon yourself.</p>
<p>I used to think that people who did well in things that I tried to do were just naturally good at them. After I started asking people how they managed to be such good writers, dancers, singers, etc., I found that they spent far more time practicing than I did. For instance, when I asked a college acquaintance who was an incredible writer how he managed to write so well, he told me that he extensively read great literature, researched his own writing meticulously, and then spent a lot of time revising it.</p>
<p>I applied his advice and became an award winning writer myself. I am not as good as he is, but I don’t work as hard at it as he does.</p>
<p>When I was a college prof, I had a student who was good looking, popular, gregarious, and who was also getting straight As. To his peers, he seemed like he was always goofing around because he made a lot of jokes in class. Truth was, though, he was one of the hardest working students I had. He spent a lot of time writing and revising, and stressed over everything he wrote.</p>
<p>Now, I know a thirtysomething woman who is drop dead gorgeous: classic American blue eyed, blond haired beauty. She has her own business, is learning to fly, scuba dives, and flies to exotic places for vacations.</p>
<p>I assumed she was born wealthy and lucky. After I got to know her, I learned that she was abused as a child by her father, went to college completely on her own dime, was steps away from homelessness as a child, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, and also has some kind of chronic intestinal problem. She would love to have a romantic partner, but her last romance – several years ago – ended horribly with the guy breaking up with her by e-mail when she was going through a personal crisis.</p>
<p>She works hard to do all of the things she does and manages to do them by, for instance, getting a group of friends together to rent a boat ($25 per person for half a day) to go snorkeling and scuba diving. </p>
<p>She also spends a lot of time giving back to the community: serves on boards, fosters animals, mentors young people. </p>
<p>I have learned a lot from her, have had a lot of fun with her, too. I’m glad that i got to know her instead of just looking at her with envy assuming things about her that weren’t true.</p>
<p>It’s nice to revisit this thread after over a year.</p>
<p>Very interestingly, I ended up being involved with him again recently, after a 1.5-year period of not seeing each other.</p>
<p>He is a 2nd year med student right now and I’m still in undergrad, though I am a year older than him. I recently signed up to be one of the volunteers for a project that he is leading (the project is led by a med student and volunteers are undergrads). Yesterday was the training, and what really struck me was that, near the end of the powerpoint as he was about to finish going over the basic info for volunteers to know, he included and went over a slide where he basically bragged about him. The slide had like five bullet points, saying that he graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA, that he would’ve been the first person to enter grad school in my school had he not chosen to go to med school instead, and that in his third year, he had gotten into six med schools including Yale and Harvard but chose a local med school instead.</p>
<p>1.5 years ago, whenever I encountered him in several undergrad classes, I always resented his stuck-up attitude giving an offensive air of arrogance, as if he believed he was better than anyone else, though he wasn’t openly cocky or anything but rather he was arrogant in a quiet/introverted way. </p>
<p>But I was dumbfounded by how he could be like that in the recent training presentation. It really didn’t have anything to do with the project. I’m not entirely sure of his motivation for creating and going over that slide at the end of the training.</p>
<p>I had always thought that the more accomplished/great a person is, the more s/he tends to be humble/modest. I guess I was wrong. Or maybe he is an exception. I think he deserves to be like that because his ability/achievement matches up to that, but still, I was turned off by his disgustingly high sense of self-importance.</p>
<p>See. It’s counterproductive to compare ourselves to others. Everybody has flaws. I hope discovering his helped your own self esteem to heal.</p>
<p>If it bothers you that you think he’s somehow “better” than you are, get off your keyster and work harder to become that which you aspire to be. Worry about yourself and keep putting one foot in front of the other. </p>
<p>FWIW, there were several guys like that in my college class. Decades later, most of them have far more “ordinary” lives than you might have expected. Not that they aren’t stunningly competent, but none of them became president, a general, a famous scholar or actor, etc etc. In fact, one of them, who was a minority kid, was escorted into positions that he wasn’t remotely qualified for, and in the final analysis, I believe, was damaged by it. He never had a chance to work his way up the ladder through a normal chain of responsible positions, and therefor never gained the valuable experience that accrues to people who’ve followed the typical path. He didn’t crash and burn or anything like that, but I think his career simply fizzled out a bit (particularly in light of what everyone would have guessed lay ahead of him). I think this happened to some of the others also, who weren’t minorities.</p>
<p>The guys who have had the most stunning success often come out of the blue. They aren’t the ones who stood out so singularly in school. Not that they weren’t very good, but the skills that it took to obtain the positions they attained weren’t fully visible in college, and weren’t reflected in grades or even the social interactions that occur at those ages.</p>
<p>OP, watch the movie Amadeus. Closely.</p>
<p>OP,
Would it help to know that every person on Earth feels inferior to somebody else? This includes even people towards you feel inferior. We all have it, but not all are tormented by it. So, just stop torturing yourself, accept it as part of life. Somebody else will always be smarter, more beautiful, richer, have better house, car, more talented and better looking kids and look happy all the time. So, why not you are happy with what you have? Are you sick, starving, living on the streets, not having enough to wear? I have an answer - NO. You know how I know - you are at college, you are privileged, you are supported and loved. Feel so and smile…for the rest of your life. And yes, hard work always pays off…genius…sometime when genius mathes his destiny, but what happen if he never does? He is a looser, unless, he knows how to work hard.</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll take another tack with this one, and point out that there are a lot of things this guy never will be very good at…and more importantly, someday he is going to run into people that are going to make him like like a dolt, no matte r how good he is. The irony with someone like the person you describe is chances are, he has his own issues with inferiority, in fact I almost guarantee it. People who go around blowing their own horn like that, telling everyone how great they are, etc, are generally doing so IME because that is how they make themselves feel better. </p>
<p>The other thing to keep in mind is that people like this character have a long way to go to actually accomplish something. Yes, he has done well in school, he is going to a med school, etc, but what happens down the road? Will he end up actually doing something, or become a doctor who became one to feed his own ego and bankbook, and otherwise hasn’t really done much? People with the kind of attitude you say this person as often have a rough time out there, because quite honestly, though some people will look at him as a god, other will look at him as an arrogant jerk and want nothing to do with them…</p>
<p>I am now well past the college years, and there are people my age who are millionaires and billionaires, there are people who have played sports and achieved fame and fortune, there are people doing all kinds of things I never will have done…and I look at my life at times,and wonder. On the other hand, though, I literally helped create entirely new businesses, have done a lot of things, even if most of them are not going to get me into Forbes magazine or page 6 of a newspaper (gossip column), and am raising a son I am very proud of…do I feel myself inferior to those who have achieved so much? No, because my path was different then theirs, I didn’t take that path, and while I wish I had more money (who doesn’t?) I think I have things those people probably don’t…</p>
<p>And if I met someone who goes on about their accomplishments, who is busy trying to tell everyone they meet how great they are, all I can really do is pity them, because they may find a lot of people bowled over by their accomplishments,in awe of their wealth and fame, etc, but they also won’t make many real friends or have real connections…on the other hand, I have met a number of very accomplished people, who I would love to simply sit down and talk to about what they have done, for they enjoy sharing what they have done and learned, but they also appreciate what everyone else does, too, and it is the joy of sharing information and knowledge and laughing and crying that makes them share, not ego. Nicest guy I ever met was at a car show once, guy was busy tinkering under the hood of a (typically) unreliable Italian sports car, and we got to talking, sharing war stories, etc…I later found out the guy was worth more then the national debt of greece, had done all kinds of wild stuff, and yet was as friendly as chatting with my next door neighbor…go figure:).</p>
<p>I have learned that many people who appear to have charmed lives have things going on under the surface that you know nothing about. Maybe he was physically abused as a child, or has an alcoholic parent, or lost a sibling at a young age. Remember the Vh1 series Behind the Music – here are all these bands that appear to have it all together and behind the scenes there is always a love triangle, an accident or injury, a problem that doesn’t come to light for years? It’s a metaphor for life IMO. Don’t envy others – you never know their inner demons.</p>
<p>I prefer to be in the middle of the pack. I thinkit must be pressure to be that accomplished always worrying about being toppled. o r receiving you r self esteem from extrinsic awards. Anyway, be happy you are you. There are many people who would love to be you. Glad you reported what happened it gives all food for thought!</p>
<p>Wherever you go in life, there is going to be someone more X than you (even if you don’t have to run into them, they exist!). In this case, you’ve met someone who is probably truly more intelligent that you and most other people. It happens. I too know such people. </p>
<p>I think it can be normal, and sometimes motivating, to envy someone. The key though is to admire, maybe learn something, but THEN move on and stop using him as your reference point. If you find yourself unable to move on, that is when you need professional help in doing so. No, the magic bullet doesn’t show up after a meeting or two with a professional…it might take months of therapy to dig deeper and find out why this is hurting you so and you can’t let go. And if you write a therapist off after a visit or two, you are missing the point and power of therapy entirely. </p>
<p>There are a few ways to think about such folks. 99% of the time, this person will have no impact on your life. Not your outcomes, your success, your happiness. So they don’t matter. You are far far far more than just some relative statistic, some ranked number. </p>
<p>Another way to think about it is this: do you really want to BE this person? Sure you see some positive attributes, but would you really want to swap lives? Give up all of who you are, including those you love and who love you? Do you know the demons they might carry, the private struggles they might face? Do you have any clue about challenges they’ve faced, or ones they may encounter down the road? No, you don’t. You just see a facade, some attributes you’re hung up on. You don’t actually know the real or whole person. Some of THE most successful people I know are actually deeply driven because of insecurity, but I only learned this many years after knowing them. (I just now saw Pizzagirl said the exact same thing! I only read it after posting). </p>
<p>I once worked with someone who envied his coworker for most of his professional life. It ate him alive…he was truly bitter, competitive, and mournful of the fact that this other guy seemed to find life so easy and all the accolades went to him. Then one winter the envied coworker died suddenly and way too young in a car accident. Who to envy who now? Life and people are like that- package deals.</p>
<p>Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.</p>
<p>In other words, don’t compare how you feel inside to how this other individual appears. You don’t know anything at all about how he feels inside himself. </p>
<p>Actually, maybe you do now have a clue: If he felt the need to “brag” at his recent presentation, maybe he feels inferior inside as well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Very well said.</p>
<p>If we live long enough, everyone eventually has their life turned upside down by heartbreak. No one is perfect nor lives a perfect life. </p>
<p>I also try to be compassionate towards people who brag about themselves. It’s a form of insecurity.</p>
<p>This is an odd thread. I am sure we all have the odd moments when we look at someone and think “wow, she is stunningly beautiful and talented and wealthy - how come *one *person has so much in the way of natural gifts?” (Ok - I confess, I occasionally think that when i look at people like Jennifer Lopez or Beyoncee). But they are usually fleeting moments of natural envy and then we move on. It is certainly not healthy or normal to let those feelings dominate our lives.</p>
<p>OP, I’m one day older than Michael Jordan. Think of all he’s accomplished, and I’ve had an extra day!! </p>
<p>But as far as I know, he’s quite humble despite it all so I’m happy to be birthday neighbors with him.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago there was a piece in the NY Daily news that the actress Uma Thurman was in therapy for body dismorphic syndrome (basically, she feels her body is ugly or otherwise is wrong/weird)…and she is generally considered one of the more beautiful women around by many people…</p>
<p>Many years ago I worked for a company where the head of the company seemed to have it all, he and his wife were really accomplished, they both made a lot of money, enjoyed all the trappings, you name it…they had a son who died in his early 20’s rock climbing…and later on people who knew the family said the surface level was not the reality, that there were real problems despite ‘having it all’. </p>
<p>And want a classic example of image not being the reality? Take a look at what happened with Bernie Madoff and his family, lots of people were in awe of them, thought they were the cats meow and all I have to say is that was as illusory as the ponzi scheme they were running.</p>
<p>OP, if that very accomplished young man really believed he was very accomplished, he wouldn’t insert it into a powerpoint presentation!</p>
<p>Why is this person even a blip on your radar? Seriously, maybe this guy is an arrogant jerk, or maybe you are scrutinizing his every word in order to find fault and somehow calm your jealousy and find a way to convince yourself he is not worthy of your of envy.</p>
<p>Focus on yourself and those you love and value. Understand that there are those around you who are just extraordinary, whether it be in academics, athletics, the arts, the sciences, business, parenting, whatever. Wherever we go, we meet those who excel, really excel in what they do. There have always been extraordinary people. History is full of them.</p>
<p>Let it be…move on and live your life…be a good person, do your best in all things, live and love and learn and work, and be happy…</p>
<p>Ok, I had this problem too last year in high school. Once I got to know the person, however, I realized that he has his own faults too, and that nobody’s perfect. Even if they seem so, no one is. Once you’re friends with the person, it becomes a lot easier to stomach every “perfect” thing he does. Try getting to know him better!</p>
<p>“Why is this person even a blip on your radar? Seriously, maybe this guy is an arrogant jerk, or maybe you are scrutinizing his every word in order to find fault and somehow calm your jealousy and find a way to convince yourself he is not worthy of your of envy.”</p>
<p>You ask this to a person with obvious problems. An unhealthy obssession anchored in sexual attraction comes to mind. This thread should have remained buried.</p>