What to do when friends or family are way ahead of you in their career?

I think the way to tackle this requires self reflection. Here's a few tips you can try:

1. 5 Whys. Asking yourself why you are feeling jealous or insecure. For each answer you come up with, ask "whys" in succession until you feel that you get to the root of why you're feeling this way.
2. You should only compare yourself to who you were yesterday. This sounds cliché but you only see the top of the iceberg of someone else's life. If you're not willing to swap your whole life with someone else, the good and the bad it's not worth thinking about.
3. Negative visualization. Imagine how much worse your life would be if you didn't have what you have right now. This is a mindfulness hack I like to do to feel gratitude for what I currently have. This doesn't work for everyone so take it with a grain of salt.

I deeply empathize. In the startup world, it feels like every company is better than yours since you only hear about successes. It can be demoralizing to see someone raising a bunch of money or finding traction while you have so many problems.

This is also true as a tech worker -- Meta had an internal group where people could voluntarily share their performance reviews, and of course, this group was heavily skewed toward top performers.

I have two practical thoughts:

• Selfless perspective: I read a book that describes an exercise in which you choose a random person on the street and meditate on them for 5 minutes. For 5 whole minutes, you concentrate on them and wish them success, happiness, and health in everything they do. I’ve tried this, and it actually works really well. Try it with friends/family!
• Selfish perspective: if my friends/family do amazingly well, it can only benefit me. If they become very rich or well-connected, I can benefit from their resources or knowledge in the future.

Chances are, even if you are more successful than 99% of your friends, you will still be jealous of that 1%. This is human nature, and it's difficult/impossible to get rid of this ( I had been jealous of my successful peers, and I still get jealous even now).

My question to you is, what do you want to do about it?

Your friends' success is something they achieve through skill and/or talent. You can't become them because you are you.

You should take advantage of their successes by talking to them and understanding their processes - cause, heck; you probably can pick up new skills to level yourself up and if they are close friends/families; they wouldn't mind spending time and resources to help you to become more successful.

I am doing this myself, and my jealousy and inferiority complex have been a good motivator to do better and learn from others so I can be a better person now than I was yesterday, as Ikki has also mentioned.

Successful people surround themselves with more successful people because

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

The more successful people around you, the better chance you are going to be successful, in my opinion.

This is really tough. Maybe someone joined a startup at the right time and is now a millionaire. Maybe they graduated college at the height of the growth period in tech and got promotion after promotion. Maybe...etc.

But ultimately, I try to remember that everyone is on their own journey in life. It matters how you do relative to what you want for yourself, not relative to what other people are doing. If you're not where you want to be, try to focus on what's in your control. And for other things, recognizing that it's not in my control and bringing my focus back to things that are tends to be helpful and grounding.

Even though I'm serving as TL at a top tech company now, what a lot of people don't see is:

• I retained Kindergarten.
• I got Bs and Cs until college (with some Ds sprinkled here and there). This is a lot worse growing up in a majority Asian community that excelled hard at academics.
• My main childhood hobby of choice was playing Maplestory, while most of my childhood peers were playing instruments or doing prep classes.
• I went to a mediocre college and graduated a quarter late.
• I didn't get a return offer for my internship.
• I took 5 months to find my first job as a contractor.
• I spent ~4 years of my career stuck as a junior engineer.

Tbh I don't anyone expected me to get this far in high school and I'm pretty sure my parents were hard dissapointed in me until my mid 20s.

A lot of it just comes being comfortable with the progress you're making. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be envious of other's progress: you should just accept those feelings, but not let them be the primary thought in your mind. Past progress isn't an indicator of current or future progress: you can't change the past but you can always work harder for a better future one step at a time. Doesn't matter if your steps are smaller than someone else's: just focus on taking on a step.

I like everything everyone has said so far. I mostly think this can be a good thing, if used well. For me, feeling jealous and insecure is often a helpful indicator of where I need to actually improve and work on. (For better or for worse) I tend to believe that my insecurities aren’t just founded on nothing substantial or that it’s ok to just blame all of it on ‘society’ (shoving certain ideals down our throats). After some reflecting, I usually find that my insecurity stems from me not living up to my own standards (and this requires some serious time and thought) and neglecting to do the things that I respect and admire. This can be tricky because once we start focusing on others’ achievements, in no time do we find ourselves stuck in that spiral of lack and jealousy; forgetting our own skills and ability. I think it would be great to begin brainstorming, listing what and who you want to be; ‘what do I need to do to become the me that I want to be’ types of question. And then begin doing them. It will feel good. It is one step in uncovering and seeing the path we are individually appointed to in Life, rather than standing still staring at other runners running their race in their respectful lanes.

I deeply agree on what others have mentioned about not being able to see the struggles people go through during or to arrive at their “success”. Another great reason to meet up (preferably one on one) with said friend or successful person; you get to hear their story, the challenges they’re enduring or had to. I have been on both sides. One time I was shocked and hurt my friend had been jealous and almost spiteful of me (because I was going through a really difficult time but they only saw my “wins”). Another time, I returned home feeling extremely guilty and horrible I ever felt jealous and bitter after hearing about the crap someone had to overcome to accomplish their goals. Meet up with your friends individually and get personal :)