Skydiving - stop comparing yourself to others

Hi guys and girls - It's me again.

Let me tell you a story real quick.
I was sitting eating my lunch one day between loads. I had had some great AFF, tandem and video jumps - just doing my thing. But one thing had bothered me since load one. I had to let a student repeat a level, altough the student really needed a bit of confidence, and the last thing she needed was to be told that what she had just done wasn't good enough.
We had a bit of a talk, because she was being real hard on herself. She would look around on all the others at the DZ that day, and feel like a complete failure. She was the only AFF student there that day. She was so concerned that all the others would think she was not good enough.

FYI: This is not the guy I am writing about in this post

So I think: "Is that really fair"?

Let me tell you this: Although I have around 6000 jumps, I am no big freefly talent. In fact I was not even a very talented skydiving student. I had spent my whole childhood looking at skydivers, but only made it through to my license by being persistant.
But what I do have is a lot of skydives because I bought a camera and started doing video for 4-way teams, then got my tandem rating, then moved abroad and started skydiving for a living.

It would be unfair for an AFF student to compare his or her skills to mine, because I have a 14 year 6000 jump head-start.

But she was sitting there. Pretty sad and feeling like a failure. So we had a little talk.
I won't go in to too much detail with this.

YOU are the best at being YOU!

But the jist of it is: If you compare yourself to others all the time, that being an AFF student comparing yourself to your instructor, being an AFF instructor comparing yourself to a freefly world champion, or a hobby photographer comparing yourself to a Hollywood film-maker, in my opinion you are doing yourself a disfavour. 
You need to take a long hard look at yourself. Everything you do, you should do because it makes you feel good, and because you want to. Not to make others look upon you with favour, and you should not track your progress and skills by comparing yourself to others, because you are not them, and they are not you. In fact no one is better at being you than you. And if you start to try and keep up with someone who are not at all like you in what ever way that might be, you will loose yourself in the progress. LIFE is not a competition. competitions are - and that's a whole different thing.

Skydiving should be about having fun, pushing the limits of what YOU think YOU can do - not your friends, family or Instagram-followers. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't brag about it - because just the fact that you hurled yourself out of a plane is cool!

I know an AFF student once who kept comparing himself to me, and let's be honest - he wasn't great. Like looking at myself in the beginning. But no matter how poor skills in freefall, he was awesome in so many other ways that totally deserved respect, and so are YOU!

What I bring to the table

I've written it earlier, and I will write it again: I am no freefly talent. BUT: I get by being an AFF instructor, tandem instructor and videographer + I do make one hell of a tomato-sauce. We all bring something to the table :)

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