How do you cope with being mediocre among high-flyers in SG?
i’ve been struggling a lot lately. excessively scrolling through linkedin and just feeling so unaccomplished compared to my peers who are of the same age as me.
i understand the sentiment behind ‘living life at your own pace’ but it’s so hard to because everything is eventually about making yourself employable and you need to be competitive and make comparisons to understand where you stand.
seeing how much more competitive university applications into local unis here have become, i can’t help but wonder what is enough.
i’m trying to shift my mindset to understand that not everyone (including me) is exceptionally exceptional and that is perfectly fine. but it’s so hard when those around you are flourishing.
how do you deal with feeling mediocre in such a competitive country?
Netizens’ comments
It’s particularly bad in Singapore, where children are often raised to believe that achievements in their education and career are the only way for them to achieve the respect of their peers and to live with any amount of dignity.
The competitive culture in Singapore isn’t a competition to survive, it’s a competition for social recognition.
The way that I try to deal with this is to start by recognizing that this line of thinking, that your salary and education level should correspond to the amount of respect or value that you allocate to yourself and/or to others, is irrational and in many ways pretty toxic.
Your salary has very little to say about how much good you’ve done for the world, or how much good you can still do.
Of course, this doesn’t change how other people (particularly, Singaporeans) might perceive these things, but if you can learn to dismiss them as individuals who haven’t given these things much thought and find themselves in the same cycles of envy, insecurity, resentment and ultimately unfulfillment chasing fundamentally problematic ideals, it becomes a lot more easier to dismiss their opinion of you as well.