I'm in my 30s, and despite being a gifted kid, moving to a first world country, speaking 3 languages and making great pay as a senior eng, I still feel like a failure for:
- Not having my own business
- Not managing people at the moment or doing many leadership activities
- Not having 7 figures networth
- Being a homeowner, but still paying mortgage for the next 10 years
- Not being yet an excellent communicator, and oh boy, I did invest sooo many hours into this
We all feel like this sometimes, despite many achievements, it's part of being a human to desire for more, and admire others for making it much further than us.
Nevertheless, I think we need to appreciate what we've got going for us, no matter how small that thing is, because life is full of surprises and if I look back, many of my achievements were because I kept fighting no matter how unfavorable the odds were.
Another aspect is that time in our lives is limited. With my poor upbringing I've already spent countless hours dedicating myself to making more money and becoming more successful and optimizing for certain outcomes.
Is it worth to keep doing this endlessly, until I have no more days left, or just give me time to enjoy what I have now? That's why it's important for us to understand what we want out of life outside of what is expected from us. So removing a few items of your "life TODO list" and accepting to be a failure on them is okay.
Maybe all you needed was more summer days in a park and you are wasting your time looking to become more prestigious in your field of work.
Comprehending the price of success and allowing yourself to "be a failure" seems to be more interesting to me lately... also more challenging, as I've been trained to win. I took years of therapy to reach that conclusion, hope it helps you and calms your heart.