Have you ever seen images or heard of someone’s success and instantly felt a wave of jealously overwhelm you? Has this made you feel inadequate and made you doubt your own accomplishments? Well you’re not alone. We all have our own demons and i’ve tussled with this one.
I’ve battled with jealous thoughts for years. I didn’t know how to reach out and talk about it to anyone because I found it quite embarrassing. No one want’s to be perceived as a “hater” so I suffered in silence. Over the years my jealous thoughts became self-destructive and severely affected my self-esteem. It evaded and destroyed all aspects of my life. I didn’t want to pursue my career goals because I felt like others were smarter, more experienced and had better connections than me. Seeing other people pursue the career goals I was struggling to achieve made me insecure about my own capabilities. Being on social media sites, especially Instagram, made me more self-conscious about my body. I never really suffered from body insecurities growing up- I fell into societies perception of desirable ‘slim bodies’. Then slim-thick hourglass shapes became the new trend and now every image of this body made made me despise my own.
It affected my friendships. My jealousy inhibited me from being a supportive friend to others. If someone came to me with good news, i’d express how happy I was for them. However deep down inside my intentions did not match my words- I felt jealous and their success reminded me of the things I wanted in my life. I think this was the most painful part of experiencing jealously. I couldn’t truly celebrate my friends as I was so blinded by my own insecurities.
I had a realisation one night after torturing myself with negative self-talk that if I continue to feel low about myself because of what others are doing, I would eventually destroy myself. Apart of me knew I couldn’t let it get that far. I wanted to unconditionally love myself and genuinely be happy for other people’s achievements.
I began my journey of understanding my jealously and getting to the root causes of it. I realised that the things that I envied in others had a direct correlation to my own personal insecurities. To defeat jealously I had to get to the root causes of the things that inhibited me from accepting and loving myself. This year I must say i’ve made significant strides with addressing this issue and it was only possible by doing a few things to help along the way.
If you’re currently battling with jealously here’s 4 practical techniques that might help you:
1.Writing- When you start to feel jealous, write down your feelings. You need to write unfiltered and get it all off your chest. Don’t judge yourself whilst you write. Once you’ve written your thoughts down, go through what you’ve written and begin to fact check everything. Ask yourself, how much of this is true? Am I being too harsh on myself or the other person? Begin to deconstruct what you’ve written and you’ll begin to unravel the reasons you feel jealous and might begin to realise that you have nothing to feel jealous about. I’ve written an example of how to do this below in ‘debunking your jealous thoughts’.
2. Affirmations- Affirmations are a great way to reprogram your mind to focus on positive and affirming thoughts about yourself. Part of the reason why we feel jealous is due to our own insecurities, so by reciting words that make us feel good about ourselves we begin to undermine our negative self-talk. I’ve listed a few affirmations below for you to use but I recommend finding ones that uplight and empower you.
3. Mindfulness- Go into a quite space and take 10-15minutes doing mindful meditation or breathing exercises. I find that when i’m overwhelmed by jealous thoughts, meditating allows me to think rationally and find peace with the present moment. There’s apps you can use such as Headspace if you aren’t used to meditating and need some guidance.
4. Stay in action- If you are envious that someone has achieved something that you want, work towards attaining that goal. For example, if you have a fitness goal or want to pursue a creative venture, work on getting better at your craft on a daily basis. If you focus your energy on being your own best version then you start to feel more satisfied with your own life.
Debunking your jealous thoughts:
1. You’re making the assumption that someone’s life is better than yours because of the ‘perfect’ images they display of themselves. You don’t know the struggle’s they’re going through or are currently experiencing. People aren’t going to post the ‘bad’ parts of their life. Begin accepting the fact that social media sites like Instagram are just filtered, distorted versions of reality. It only does disservice to yourself and that person when you compare your life to a filtered snippet of their life.
2. Their success does not undermine yours. You are jealous of someone making huge milestones (successful creative venture, popularity, career, physical glow up) and it’s making you feel like you’ve barely accomplished anything. Does that mean you’ve barely accomplished anything or that you’ve got plenty of things that you are yet to achieve? Don’t let other people’s timelines of ‘when’ you should reach a certain level of success deter you from achieving your goals. You might not be there yet but you certainly will be soon. The position you are in now is part of your journey and you should embrace it. All in good timing! Remember you belong in the realm of success just by virtue of being who you are. There’s room for all of us to win.
3. “They’re more desirable than me”- by who’s standard? You’re being harsh on yourself based on a standard that was not created to benefit you. You have to begin to create your own standard of what your best version looks like and live everyday being that person. No one can be better than you because you’re uniquely made.
Affirmations to use when feeling jealous:
1. Other people’s success does not diminish my own
2. I have all the capabilities within me to achieve greatness
3. I trust my own journey
4. I am uniquely made
5. I will focus my energy on abundance and being the best that I can be.
6. By virtue of being myself I am enough
7. I am beautiful, I am strong, I am powerful, I am talented
8. I congratulate other people’s success and use their journey as inspiration to develop my own.
Thank you for reading!
Have you ever experienced jealousy before? OR been the victim of a jealous person?
Let me know your thoughts 🙂
Love Ash x
