Different people have different expectations from themselves in regard to their religious level.
Some people are perfectionists and some people are satisfied with less. There are people who think that they are okay as long as they aren’t sinning and feel that the hard work of keeping Hashem’s way of life is much too hard for them. They look for the easy path and feel that as long as they are not going to Gehenom it’s okay for them even if they don’t enter the highest place in gan Eden. They say that even if we don’t get a large part in the world to come and instead receive a small share it’s good enough for us. We never had big expectations and are satisfied little.
For that mindset the sefer has some questions to ask: would you be able to tolerate it if your friend in this world it more respected than you are or someone who is lower than you are suddenly gains status and becomes higher than you? We know that almost no one can tolerate such a thing and therefore the next world is not any different.
Chazal say that in the next world there is fire of jealousy that burns each and every person seeing his friend in higher places than him. A person should be even more motivated by this since honor and respect in this world are really meaningless unlike the next world in which honor send redirect are real.
Each one of us should try the most that we possibly can in order to be elevated as much as possible in the next world.