I heard this quote the other day when I was watching an interview with Jim Parsons (my latest entertainment obsession, because I think he’s a comic genius and an amazing person, and because The Big Bang Theory is outstanding television). After talking about how many years he survived on unemployment, the interviewer asked Parsons the best advice he’d ever been given. Parsons said:

Someone else’s success isn’t your failure

The quote stuck with me initially because, as a writer, my life is full of comparisons. I mean, how can you avoid it? Someone else gets the big book contract. Someone else sells oodles of their latest novel and makes the bestseller lists. Someone else’s book is made into a blockbuster movie. It can feel disheartening, when you trudge your way through countless early mornings and late nights and weekends writing and editing and sweating over scenes that just won’t come together while juggling everyday life in between. And while you’re toiling away, wondering what in the hell you’re doing, someone else releases their THIRD book in ONE year and, guess what? Suddenly they’re discovered and, sigh, you’re not.

Someone else’s success isn’t your failure

It doesn’t seem fair that someone else can have such good fortune when you feel like you’re spinning wheels and you should have it instead. But I think that’s why this quote offers such perspective. If you’re truly doing your best and giving your all and working on what you love—be it writing or anything else you’re passionate about—then are you really a failure? I think we’ve become far too preoccupied with money and fame and all the trappings to recognize what true success is. More than that, we now live in a society that lives and breathes through social media, giving us even more opportunities for comparison. But all that means is this:

Someone else’s success isn’t your failure

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