29 lessons learned in 29 days

Lesson 8 — No Need To Rush

Don’t get frustrated if it’s not going fast enough for you

A few days ago, I successfully completed my 29-day writing #KainosChallenge. I’ve shared 29 lessons I learned, during the challenge, on the 29th day of writing. Today, I’m going to develop lesson 8,

Go at your own pace; there’s no need to run. — Me, Gabriel (Kainos)

Why? What if?

Sometimes when you look at other people around you, you think,

“That guy is way ahead of me. I don’t know how I can be on the same level.”.

I recently watched a documentary about Squeezie, the #1 French YouTuber. It shows how he became a French star on the Internet.

He is the same age as me. Squeezie started in 2011 just like me. He made several faceless channels before the one that made him famous. I also made several faceless channels. I had a friend at the time who became one of the first French YouTube partners. The thing is, I didn’t continue with YouTube. I was interested in other things growing up.

The thought quickly took up a lot of space in my head:

What if I never stopped making videos in the early days of YouTube? What if I would have done B instead of A? What if I would have…

The thing is, while watching the documentary, I had a constant “what if?” in my head.

I used this example to illustrate that sometimes we can feel like things aren’t moving fast enough for us. Whether it’s our growth on Medium or our business or our 9–5, we can be tempted to think that we’re not moving fast enough.

The lesson: stay calm and go at your own pace.

To do that, you have to stop comparing yourself to others. That’s step #1 to staying calm. When you compare yourself with others, you’re going to feel emotions. Either pride or sadness, frustration. These emotions come because you are either superior or inferior (according to you).

Now that you have stopped comparing yourself to others, and that calmness has been established in your journey, you need to go at your own pace. This means that you need to take one step at a time. If you want to be a singer, you’ll start by learning how to sing (even if you have a natural talent for it). You’ll need advice from other singers, a coach, etc.

Since we’re on Medium, I’m pretty sure there are some writers who will read this story. So I’ll be addressing them this way:

Don’t get frustrated because you’re not growing the way you want to. You’ve seen the profile of a successful writer such as Tim Denning, Zulie Rane or Sinem Günel and you’re envious. You probably want to blame yourself and think that your content sucks. But calm down: it’s not true (I hope 🤡). These people didn’t grow overnight. It was over time, developing their writing skills and own style. They develop at their own pace.

Have you ever been tempted to rush your journey because of comparisons? Let me know in the comments 💬.

Sincerely yours,

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