Simply… we are different.

The external environment has a lot to do with how we behave, but usually it has less to do with our behavior than our inbornness.

We are not blank slates being born to be written upon, tabular rasa.

While there are personality types that are very sensitive, responsive, and even reactive to external environments, it is the inbornness of those personalities that makes them so.

The fundamental assumption in blank slate is that we all have strengths and weaknesses.  In order to match ourselves successfully to external needs we should change, improve ourselves, minimize our weaknesses by working through them, getting them handled, or eliminating them.

Even though subtle, this adds significant impetus to the 1 trillion dollar global change industry.

@F-L-O-W makes a counter argument.  Why change?

Accept yourself.  Understand the differences between what makes you happy and what makes you successful.  Knowing that, work with your strengths, and allow weaknesses to be handled by someone else, forgotten, or designed away.

While subtle as a difference to most, it changes everything downstream of this assumption by a larger and larger amount because of leverage.  

Starting with differences may seem negative and pessimistic, as opposed to starting with similarities.  However, the danger is that we end up where we are not, with the impetus on comparing ourselves to others, based on composite standards — standards that have no exemplar, but are made up from the best of everything.

Acceptance of ourselves and others, noting the value of differences and diversity and realizing no comparisons can be made, eliminates huge potential problems for @F-L-O-Wers.

Helpful Hint: Know your self.  Understand when you are asked, or are asking yourself to be as good as someone else, and criticizing yourself for not being enough, that falling into this mold of comparison is always going to have you competing with someone else, rather than seeking to contribute and correlate with your real gifts.

Action Step: The next time you find yourself comparing yourself to others, wondering why you are not this or that, think about the gifts you do have and how they make you different, and therefore valuable in ways you have not yet imagined.

Comparing yourself to others only leads us down the trail of continually looking and seeking perfection.  The truth is we are already perfectly different.

Find ways to be the piece of the puzzle others need, to help make them successful and contribute.