I’m confident this is a famous quote. But once I heard it, it kept resonating.
Then years later I watched Bluey with my kids and mom says, “just run your own race” and it all clicked. I’m so thankful that it clicked because I feel liberated from this self-imposed sense that I need to absolutely maximize my time here, which is an impossible task.
I realized it didn't matter. What mattered is that I progressed toward my goal at whatever pace I could muster, not making it a race. Interestingly, this mindset has made me willing to take on much larger and more complicated challenges in general, one day at a time, without feeling overwhelmed by the mountain to climb ahead.
This is the mindset that got me to do so many projects where a younger me thought, “someone smarter has already done a better job at that…”
I now write software for me. Sometimes I publish it.
"However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
There are many people who are fortunate in material or circumstantial ways, but you see ways in which they’re enslaved by it or it somehow dictates their life. The classic “owned by what your own” paradigm which is eerily common in western culture.
This can have the effect of making you feel fortunate for having less, rather than envious.
I love Seneca. What I haven’t got a good grip on is time. On the Shortness of Life is a bit of a gut punch for me.
(Seems like a good site for verifying quotes, it's crazy how many commonly-believed-to-have-been-said-by-X quotes simply never were...)
If you want some advice on how to avoid having your "joy" stolen by comparison, you could always go with
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/10/03/life-success/
Though I suppose "Z" these days would logically include "avoid replying to online forum comments..."!
I've seen it phrased better elsewhere, but otherwise yes.