some of my personal views on motivation:
- don't stop the child in you:
*Be curious, interested, amazed at new things, other tech, whatever.
*keep dreaming as long as you don't demand it becomes reality it can be very nice, and who knows
some day it might become reality
*Have and keep having fun, as long as it cause no harm to others ofcourse.
- perspective: keep the focus to yourself. Comparing to others, envy, jealousy are bad they lead to negative energy. Jealousy can be positive though, if you find someone you lookup to, like a mentor for instance and use this to develop your skills accordingly that is positive.
For the last point, you don't have to be the best in the world, or the best in anything at all. Chance is now 1:7000000000. Looking at the olympics, only three people from a certain sport get a medal, but the others they are still great athletes, the best from their country, does that mean their 15 year training and lifeadjustments were wasted? No they did what they like and felt good about, to an extreme I would not suggest but to make the point.
Nowadays for the new generations it becomes harder to be themselves. Short deviation, if a 18yr old male wanted a partner in the farmer village in the medieval times there were perhaps 5 potentially suitable candidates available. Nowadays the whole world is on the map. I read that underage children getting cosmetically surgery because they think they are ugly. Ugly? They were beautiful but they only saw 10s of other girls on facebook each day that they thought were prettier. What are those parents thinking?
That is why unless you like "competition" you should not compare to others, it will only frustrate you.
So in short: pursue your interests balanced with work/life , have fun, share with people your interests (club, fora etc.)