Ask HN: How can I stop being jealous of people who succeed before me?

For this purpose, I've explored a variety of what I'd call "human algorithms" to explore the emotional response to situations in life. I would describe these as structured forms of self-questioning that a person can perform on himself.

Generally, these have rather "New Age" titles: some popular ones include Core Transformation, The Work, the Sedona Method, the Wholeness Process. Tech and computer people are often rather skeptical of such things, but I would recommend giving one or more of them a try. If you don't like mystical or spiritual explanations, it's often easier for sci-math inclined minds to think of these as algorithms that you run on your own neural hardware, for the purpose of improving your subjective experience of well-being in life.

I'm not sure you disagree with me as much as you think you do.

To clarify a bit more:

If being a successful entrepreneur is what makes you happy, do that. If raising a fantastic family makes you happy, do that. If tirelessly helping the poor makes you happy, do that. Yes, these things matter in the shortish term. And by "happy" I don't mean a minute-to-minute happiness. All of the things I do that make me happiest in the end are fraught with stress, pain and hard work.

My point wasn't that you should sit around watching reality tv all day, there are very few people I know for whom that would actually make them happy. It is just meant to put things into perspective relative to long-term thinking patterns like "how am I doing vis-à-vis the Joneses". It really doesn't matter.

    focus on being a world class entrepreneur

You are setting unrealistic standards for yourself. Whoever you consider a "world class entrepreneur" most likely didn't succeed because of his skills alone - there are so many more circumstantial effects involved in every endeavor that we undertake (especially in a modern, highly complex and very liberal economy like the US/EU). In short: working hard isn't enough, you gotta be lucky too. And being jealous of other people's luck is just stupid.

* I've dedicated my life to ... building products that can help people.*

You need to ask yourself if that's really true. If it is, then your success is easy to measure: number of people helped. If you haven't helped enough people to feel satisfied, then your course of action is also clear: help more people.

raised a bunch of money... is all over the press... in some cases has achieved real success

The root of all unhappiness is believing something that isn't true. What's more likely, that you've dedicated your life to helping people, or that your motivation is money and recognition? One litmus test is to ask whether you'd be happy making a fortune (complete with a big house, million dollar income, maybe a writeup in Forbes) writing software for, oh, I don't know, a paycheck cashing firm.

The fact is that you are selfish, greedy, egotistical. I don't say this to be mean, but to be honest - it's true for 99.9% of humans. Each of us wants to be special, to be the winner of our peer group; we all want to be envied (which is precisely how people shape their image on social media).

One possible reconciliation is to firmly assert that people spend money on things that they think will benefit them. Money is the primordial "like" button. This implies that if you have a lot of money either: 1) you've provided real value to lots of people, or 2) someone with lots of money believes you can provide lots of value to people (e.g. a raise). (This doesn't always seem to be the case; in fact, much of the wealthy people in the world don't appear to be doing much for it, although software firms are a clear exception there.)

Bon chance.

I suggest learning more about yourself and your motivations before moving any further.

Try reading The 7 habits of highly effective people.

I'd say that your attitude toward failure is what's going to prevent you from succeeding in the first place.

Also, don't be too hard on yourself!