To be completely honest with you: I’ve been jealous of others a lot for a long period of my life. Thoughts that went through my head were for example „why is she so pretty“, „why does she have this hot boyfriend“, „her life looks so perfect“, „everyone likes her, why can’t I be more like her“ etc.
And let’s face it: I guess most people can relate. And it’s human to have feelings and thoughts like this. In fact, jealousy itself isn’t a bad thing. It shows us what we desire and how we’d like our lives to look like.
The problem is that these thoughts help nothing if we don’t use them as inspiration and motivation to take steps that are needed to get what we’d like to have.
Being jealous of someone’s looks, friends, money, lifestyle,.. without taking any action will not bring the things we want into our lives, it only makes us feel miserable. And anyway: Who likes to be around people who are complaining and talking about others all the time – basically just blaming others for everything they don’t have? Which doesn’t even make any sense, right? If someone travels the world for example, does this mean it’s taken away from you – that you can’t travel the world? Of course not! If that other person travels the world or not has nothing to do with you, so being jealous is just wasting time – time you could use to take little steps towards making your dream of travelling the world come true.
So, what can you do about jealousy?
Well, the first step is to realize that you’re wasting your time with jealousy. When you feel jealousy creeping into your mind, it’s important to be aware of your feelings so that you can do something about them. I think a lot of people don’t even realize anymore what they’re thinking about all the time and how they’re poisoning their own mind and well-being with all of these negative and hateful thoughts.
When you’re aware of these thoughts, try to bring them into another direction. Instead of being like „her job is so perfect, she makes so much money and it’s so much fun, I hate her, she doesn’t even deserve this etc“ try to think „okay, let’s look if I can find out how she got that job, which steps she took to get where she is now and what I can maybe do to get there“. Just use other people’s success as motivation!
If possible, try to stay away from people that send out bad vibes, that constantly talk about others in a bad way and spread hate and jealousy around them. These people might also trigger thoughts of jealousy coming up inside of you.
A big mistake that we often make is that we compare someone else’s end to our beginning. It’s not the milestones that matter but the steps someone took to get to that milestone. Everyone started somewhere. You can’t be jealous of someone who has published a book if you haven’t even started writing down your first word. That successful author started with this first word some time ago as well. It makes more sense to look back at your past self to see how far you’ve already come. Imagine you start writing that book today and look back to this day in a year when your book is already finished – how impressed you’ll be by yourself!
A thought that I love is that when you see others doing what you want to do, it means that it’s actually possible. To get back to the travel example: Imagine that you would love to travel the world but you haven’t heard of anyone doing it, wouldn’t this be demotivating? Wouldn’t you start to wonder if it’s possible at all? However, when you see people who are doing what you want to do means that it’s actually possible. Especially when you can relate to these people. It’s of course a little unrealistic that you can do it the same way as people that were born with millions of dollars on their bank account but what about that girl next door that saved up money for 2 years with working hard and then quit her job to travel?
Another important point is to practice gratitude. I know it gets mentioned everywhere but it’s just so important. Think of all the things you already have in your life instead of everything you have not. If you’re not appreciating what you already have, I believe that you’ll never be able to be truly happy and satisfied. Even if you reach all the goals you have now, you won’t be happy with them either in the future as you’ll be already looking for other things that you still don’t have.
It’s also essential to remind yourself that noone has it all, noone has a perfect life, no matter how perfect it looks to you from the outside. Sometimes I even wonder if there perhaps are people that have thoughts like „I wish my life was more like hers?“ when it comes to myself and my imperfect life.
My way of thinking completely changed within the last year. Today I look at the people that have what I want as a source of inspiration. I don’t begrudge them for having what they have anymore but I’m actually happy for them. I love to see how there are so many people working on changing their life for the better nowadays, so many people who believe that anything is possible if you truly want something and work hard for it. It’s so inspiring and shows me all the time that it is possible indeed. And especially when these successful people seem to have the right values and are kind and caring. That’s why when they’re successful with what they’re doing I’m like „Good for you girl, that’s fuckin‘ awesome!“
“Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.” – Harold Coffin
