Nothing can make you reevaluate your life quite like attending a party where most of the people are much more successful than you.

Not because it’s humbling. Not because it inspires you to do more or make more money (which is what too many people focus on in these situations)

But because occasionally you will run into someone–a person who has objectively done more or has more success than you will likely ever have–who, nevertheless….

-Has less swagger
-Talks less about themselves
-Is more interested in other people
-Is still willing to learn (has less emphatic opinions)
-Dominates the conversation less
-Undersells their accomplishments

You can’t run from or deny this–this implicit counterexample right there in front of you. It is a wordless indictment of you and the hubris and pride you’ve picked up over time.

And then you have to ask yourself, what’s my excuse? Where do I get off being such an asshole? It doesn’t look so good in comparison, does it?

Or I suppose you could miss all this or lie to yourself–giving yourself a bunch of disingenuous answers as to why you act like you do. But that’s another flaw on top of all the others.

Let’s stop and ask ourselves a question: What are we doing right now?

Does it fall under “doing what you love” or “being a good person?”

To categorize real quick: the first category is our passions, it’s the people we care about and whatever our life’s task happens to be. The second is our duties–moral, personal, civic. It’s our obligations to ourselves and others as talented and unique individuals who have something to offer the world.

Then of course there is the third category. The “I have no idea why I am actually doing this.” You don’t want to, you don’t actually need to (though someone may have told you “have to”) you’re just doing it. Maybe because everyone else is doing it. Or because it’s easier than saying no or doing nothing.

But then you wonder why you sometimes feel that your life is not your own. You wonder why other people have accomplished what you dream of, while it remains elusive to you. You complain about not having enough time or that you struggle with difficult decisions.

These things are not unrelated. They are no difficult to resolve either.

It begins with a question and standard from which to measure things. And then following it. That’s it.

Here’s some of my stuff from around the web for the last few weeks.

Great Lessons From Bad People — Learning From History’s Most Hated
Exposing the Racket: A Simple Stunt Reveals How Blogs Will Print Anything for Pageviews
The Secret That Defines Marketing Now (Fast Company)
How to Travel: 21 Contrarian Rules (Tim Ferriss’s site)(a shorter, altered version of the piece also ran on ThoughtCatalog)
So, You Want To Be a Writer? That’s Mistake #1

You can comment here or on the articles, happy to take questions.