perceived lack of application skills

Today sitting on my luxurious chair in my office I ruminated over what I had discussed with a colleague at work place couple of days back regarding his lack of thinking poweress or more specifically his lackof application as I put it. Sometimes u look at others and u feel hey this person is so intelligent, so smart so much everything that I wud like to be and how come God forgot me so blatantly when he was pushing me down on mother earth and into india along with 50 other morons at the same minute as me. ( At that time we had 51 kids facing the brave new world every minute:-) ). The more I think about it the more I feel its a maliase affecting quite a few ppl including me.
India, where childhood consists of consistantly doing well in exams (that would give u sufficient lee way to do things u want to do) is not forgiving to seemingly ordinary ppl. Clearing board exams with 90 + percentage, then going to IIT for ur engineering degree, working in a top notch IT company( under extreme duress at times not only because of work but also coz of some un - understanding manager) why shud such a person feel that he has lack of application skills and that he is no good.. maybe its because no matter how much u achieve there is always some one doing better than u and when one is given a disposition of trying to do better than everybody, one easily falls prey to the despondency of being so inadequate to such a task.
A mom or a dad would be pleased with such a son ( worth his weight in gold.. with both IIT and IIM in the kitty. he is worth much in the marriage market :-)).. a Gal frnd might be adoring u for all that u are..( though that doesnt usually stop the fights for all the stupid reasons in world right from not having the right expression in the face at the right time to why our budget is not doing more to save money for females). It doesnt really help to see ur once thin flat tummy finally showing signs being well fed and protruding from all sides while the rest of the body remains constant..( reminds one of the skinny african guys who have a protruding tummy). This seems to be the bane for most guys working in the software industry.
So now here I am with a protruding tummy( I think the culprits are those butter laden naans I had with alarming regularityin the past few months ) and a weird sort of feeling that even though I am now among the best in the country, I havent ever done "exceedingly" well. Maybe its just a feeling that you get when u see someone doing better than you in some specific domains which reminds us of our failures in them though maybe overall u might be a better person.
In my colleague's case, the problem was pretty specific, "perceived lack of application skills".. there are things u are understood to know, understood to be applied by any tom, dick or harry, no one needs to tell u that but still sometimes u end up dismayed to find that u cannot apply it ur self unless somebody tells u how it can be done. If the problem assigned to u at work is something that has not been implemented before u feel all giddy at the thought of prospective timelines and feel like putting off every good thing in life until u finish that job. No, its not that u are not able to achieve ur target, its the feeling that it would have been done by others so easily then why did u have to make such an effort to do a similar thing. Is it just plain vanilla inferiority complex or is it the fact that nobody acknowledges the excellence that u obviously possess that helped u to perform a task that u perceived was easy but was actually pretty tough.
If that is the case then something is wrong in the system which doesnt adequately acknowledge all the ppl who are part of the team and who have in their own small or big way contributed to the success ( and hence leading to ppl feeling worthless or less confident about their skills) or maybe perception management is faulty by the person concerned. In this era of competition, one needs to let ppl know how good he is or how much work he is doing. However if he perceives that his original issue of application skills are pertinent and that now he is no longer the guy who can keep up to the scorching pace that others have set him up for then what can he do..should he look for a respite from job, take a break and try to analyse himself and come back strongly after recuperating or if he finds he is not interested in the job he is in, he shud try to take proper measures to get the job he likes and where his application skills, which seem so persistantly absent in his current job, are utilised in full measure.
Seems a simple solution but difficult to execute