Other people are just people; you are the one who puts them on pedestals above you.
I was on both sides of this yesterday.
To start the day, I met up with a coach that I think of as being ahead of me. He makes significantly more money, he has gone further in his personal development, and I aspire to his confident presence. And during our conversation, I could feel myself tensing up, trying to impress him, to prove I was worthy of his time. Fortunately, he was caring and generous, and reminded me that he just liked hanging out with me. It was my own anxiety that was putting him above me such that I had to “earn” my time with him. I was the one who didn’t feel worthy, but I was projecting that onto him.
After that, I had a chat with a new coach starting up his business, who treated me the same way. He was profusely thankful that I would be so generous as to meet with him. And it was confusing for my time to be treated as so valuable when I had just come out of this other meeting where I had felt so inexperienced and junior. He was projecting his own feelings about the interaction onto me, when I was delighted that he even noticed my contributions.
We are all at our own place in our journeys. But the journey of personal development is not a race. And the people “ahead” of you are not intrinsically better than you – they have just put in the work to get to where they are while you were doing other things. They’re just people – you’re the one that moralistically places them above you.
When you can treat people as just people, each on their own journey, then you can approach them with a collaboration and partnership mindset, rather than a zero-sum-game power-driven supplication mindset. All of us benefit when we help each other grow.
Reach out to somebody you respect today and let them know you appreciate them and what you’ve learned from them. And when somebody appreciates you, don’t deflect and minimize, but respectfully receive that testament to the work you have put in. We’re all in this together – let’s act that way.