Ekim 25, 2025
Aşırı başarılıdan kayıplara
Ben(24M) her zaman harika bir ÅŸey yapacağıma inandım. Ãœniversitede baÅŸarılı oldum, ders dışı derslerde baÅŸarılı oldum, okuldan hemen sonra saÄŸlam bir iÅŸe girdim. Farklı olduÄŸumu sanıyordum. ben istemedim "sıkıcı 9’dan 5’e"Böylece tutkulu olduÄŸum bir alanda giriÅŸimciliÄŸe adım attım. Ancak ilk giriÅŸimim baÅŸarısız olunca kendimle ilgili inandığım her ÅŸey yerle bir oldu. Gerçekte ne kadar kırılgan olduÄŸumu, duygusal açıdan zayıf ve hazırlıksız olduÄŸumu ve dışarıda benden çok daha yetenekli ve daha tutkulu sayısız insanın bulunduÄŸunu fark ettim. Onlarla rekabet etmek aslında ne kadar ortalama olduÄŸumu görmemi saÄŸladı. Beni en çok korkutan ÅŸey artık ortalama olmaya alışmam. Uyanıyorum, çok az iÅŸ yapıyorum ve kendime her ÅŸeyin yolunda olduÄŸunu söylüyorum ama derinlerde bu beni öldürüyor. Bu ateÅŸi nasıl yeniden alevlendireceÄŸimi ya da kendimin bu versiyonunu kabul etmeli miyim bilmiyorum. Düşündüğünüz kiÅŸi olmadığınızı anladıktan sonra nasıl toparlanırsınız, yoksa ben hala hayal görüyor muyum?
Etiketler:
Those people you seem to think are better than you, are you. Don’t give up, don’t get stuck comparing and do what you are passionate about. I had a mentor show me this video countless times, I hated it at first. But it’s helped me push through adversity so many times. And really is solid if you ask me.
https://youtu.be/IdTMDpizis8?si=9PZplU_cKIy4lyr3
You didn’t know what you didn’t know and so understandably, your expectations were shattered. It feels like all the decisions you made were based on a false idea, so how can you justify making any more decisions before you are certain in who you really are?
My impression is that the weight of that all that is motivating you to think in a dichotomy of “Either I’m still the hyper-successful person I’ve always been destined to be and just need a spark, or, I was delusional and should resign to being an average joe.” because it quickly solves the uncertainty. (I’m gathering what I can from a short reddit post; i could obviously be wrong.)
The reality is there is way more grey to it than that. Was everything unique about you proven false by that failure? Are you letting that failure over-define your entire self-concept? Are you over-assuming the competence and passion of your peers? Is there a way to improve your resilience or is it set in stone? Are you willing to be ambitious even if your success level isn’t guaranteed and there is a learning curve involved? (and why or why not for each)
The way you answer questions like this depend on your mental health. Mental health can be comprised by being in a rough spot, it can be recovered and strengthened through skills and training critical thought.
It’s hard to offer clear actionable advice over text, but hopefully I’m making a good case for why the box you’re in is not nearly as small as it seems right now.
Hi!
In my fridge I put this:
“A humbling mistake is better than an arrogant success.”
So, if you ask me, it’s okay to be average at my work.
But, it’s not okay to not be nice and lose temperance.
A lot of thoughts on this, but TLDR: you can, but this is a learning for yourself as well
I similarly always did the “right” thing and pushed and pushed and pushed. But I had this gnawing feeling that I had these moments that I was great at stuff, but then just slower / it was harder for me to do other things that my colleagues found easier. A few years ago, I had lost all motivation for work which was so unlike me. Every other job I looked at I wasn’t sure about any more and found myself stalling out. It was quite simply my worst fear, I just didn’t want to “stall out”. I think from my experience I’d call out two things in particular for you:
1. **Where do you get energy?** I also was in the tech / startup world and felt like I’d only be successful if I built a massive business, or was in VC etc. I knew a 9 to 5 would kill me and constantly was trying to find something I was passionate about. Thing was, I also was taking on other narratives about success from other people and chasing that. Example, I know B2B has better margins.. can be a more stable business than B2C so I would never consider it as B2C was too “fluffy”. After a while of therapy, healing burnout etc and starting to be really honest with myself I started to realize that in my pursuit of “success” and “passion”, I really wasn’t being honest about what I cared about and what lit me up. I couldn’t keep going in my career and get any energy because I was constantly trying to convince myself I cared / this was the right thing to do, versus really flowing with it. I learned to start identifying the areas that lit me up and figuring out how to go after them to reignite the passion.
2. **Careers are hard, messy and a long-term view will ultimately bring success**. We are so used to seeing the wonder stories in their teens, 20s already achieving. And it sucks getting to those ages and being like well wait what do I have to show for it? Why am I so behind? The reality is that there’s an insane combination of luck, skill and circumstance that play together for these stories happen. Our jobs are to try upskill ourselves, do what we can in our circumstances and be ready when luck hits us. My husband runs a SV VC-backed tech start up now. We’ve been doing it for five years. As I’ve gotten deeper in the space you understand how unusual, and how it’s really not the case that “overnight” successes happen. When you dig deeper they were working and failing for a long time before that (even if during their teen years). Even with investors, they expect you to fail, in fact a lot of investors like seeing 1-failed founders. You’ve learned lessons that someone who hasn’t done this path before doesn’t have and now are higher likelihood for success. You should look up some stats of average CEO age, average failures, it helps to baseline that this is a long-term game. All CEOs that we know now are similar (except one! ha). To be honest, my entire perspective shifted when I met my husband. I just couldn’t get over how he looks at life and his career — it’s always been long-term. On days that this is hard, he is still able to see the learnings and he has trust that we will be better off for it in the long run. Now, when we’ve a shitty day, we wake up the next morning and chuckle to each other with a “We go again”. Some days that is a GRIND, and some days it feels good and we enjoy it.
For right-now, try to give yourself a bit of a break mentally. Find small things to re-commit to. You can get back to having a passionate, fulfilling career. Try not to berate yourself, but do start to reflect on what you enjoy, brings you energy and just go start doing them again even in small ways. Get back out there and into the world, show up and keep showing up. Luck won’t necessarily come tomorrow, next week or even for sure this year. But it will eventually, and in the meantime you are learning, working and meeting with fun, cool people and finding yourself.
Good luck. Know you can do this.