When Steve Jobs was quoted as saying this he was intending it to be taken as a caution to others to not be tempted to just follow the crowd, to be your own person and believe in your true self. This is the rest of the quote...
'Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary' - Steve Jobs
Sound advice there from Mr Jobs. This quote helps to remind me that my life is pretty special.
Envy or jealously is hard to fight sometimes, especially in this age of Facebook, Blogs, Instagram and Twitter, where we share so much of our lives online for the world to see (that makes me sound old). It used to be the case that we would occasionally get a glimpse into the celebs high-life in a magazine or on TV, these days just search through the twitter feeds of your favourite movie stars and get a real time photo of the premiere's they are attending. It is not only movie heros and pop princesses that we envy these days either, our friends and people we admire within our own industries are sharing their achievements online all the time too. Us bloggers are particularly prone to sharing all the fabulous things we get up to (It is what we do), even being a blogger myself it is hard not to fall into the trap of envying those opportunities 'other' people get to experience.
I often read other peoples blogs, or scroll through Instagram thinking 'How cool would that be, I wish I could do/ have/ go to/ create/ be a part of that' I think that is only natural, What is not natural however is feeling that because I am not doing/ having/ going to/ creating/ being a part of whatever it is, that my life isn't good enough. There is a difference between striving to achieve better for yourself and trying to be something that your not, sometimes it is hard to know the difference. We all have to remind ourselves that what people choose to share online, is just that, what they choose to share. Everyone has bad hair days, bad outfit days, messy home days (weeks/months) times when their kids are screaming the house down and when we just go and buy a cake and eat the whole thing....just me, OK... moving on - we just rarely want to share them with the world. So what you see online is the best bits, the cinema edit, as opposed to the directors cut if you like. Those unflattering moments left to languish on the cutting room floor.
It is hard to remember that everyone is as real as you are, being jealous of others achievements and opportunities is a waste of our time and as Mr Jobs put it our 'time is limited'. We need to learn to treasure our own lives. We can all still strive to be the best version of ourselves, but that needs to be the very best of who we are, not anyone else.
Sammy xxx
Read Pt. 1 of my quotes series here : Jack of all Trades, Master of None
and Pt.2 here : Never Making Mistakes is a Mistake
