The First Five Years: How to Stop Feeling Like a Failure

Author: Oliver Burkeman / Source: 99U by Behance

In the age of social media, it’s easy to enter the destructive cycle of comparing yourself to others. Here’s how to break free.

Getting started in your creative career is tough. You’ve got boatloads of ambition and energy, but you lack experience, the kind of knowledge that feels like you can see into the future because you’ve been there before.

So we’ve introduced a new column that will allow you to get the benefit of hindsight before you’ve actually gone through the experience. Welcome to “The First Five Years” where Mitch Goldstein, a professor of design at Rochester Institute of Technology, answers reader questions related to the uncharted waters of beginning a career. This month, Mitch answers a question about how to halt the negative cycle of comparing yourself to others.

Q. How do I stop feeling like a failure?

It’s long been said that failure is an important part of growth — a learning experience that is necessary for continuing to move forward with your practice. This is true, and as an educator I have to constantly make my students appreciate that without the insight of making bad work, they can never make great work. Failure can be valuable, but failure is not the goal, it is not something to strive for, it is not the point — it is merely a byproduct of trying new things, taking risks, and learning.

And that brings us to an important point: failure is useful, but feeling like a failure is not. In today’s world, feeling like a failure is incredibly easy; one of the worst parts of the internet in general and social media in particular is the accessibility…

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