Finding Success Where You Are
Turning 15 is something a lot of people look forward to with excitement. It’s the day you get your driver’s permit and can start driving. For someone like me, however, learning to drive was an absolute nightmare. I was a fast learner in school and picked new material up quickly. But when it came to driving? All bets were off. Mistakes were made constantly, and every little reminder my parents had to give felt like its own failure.
Driving became an experience I tried desperately to avoid. How could I not be good at this? Everyone else I knew could drive and do it so well. Why couldn’t I be like them? Surely my older brother hadn’t had this much trouble trying to drive. In the way people struggling do all too often, I started comparing myself to everyone else and how great at driving they were – something I firmly believed I could never be.
My dad was the one to help me break this attitude of comparison. He reminded me that my brother had been driving for two years already, whereas I had been learning for only a few months. I couldn’t possibly be as good of a driver as someone with as much experience as him, but I was pretty good for someone who had as much practice as I did. Rather than focus on where I was compared to his skill level, I should find success in the steps I had made in my own driving experience.
Throughout the many lessons life throws at us, it’s easy to focus on comparing where you are to where someone else is. But instead of comparing ourselves to others’ experiences, we should learn to take pride in where we are in our own journeys of success.