Decide what winning means to you before the world decides for you. Otherwise you’ll chase their version.

If you do not define success, a definition gets handed to you by whoever is loudest: a class rank, a salary, a follower count. Those are not evil, they are just borrowed, and borrowed targets are exhausting because hitting them never quite feels like yours. The quiet risk is spending a decade succeeding at somebody else’s idea of a good life.

Write one sentence that begins: a good life for me includes. Keep it under twenty words and specific enough to check yourself against. Read it the next time you feel behind, and see whose version you are behind on.