We’ve been taught that jealousy is unhealthy. Focus on yourself, stop caring about what others are doing—they tell us. We try this. We focus on nothing except ourselves. We enclose ourselves to others who accelerate in life but don’t know why and can’t seem to find out. Seldom do we speak up. Instead, we let it fester into nothing productive consuming our energy and headspace. When we see friends, colleagues, classmates receive promotions, raise money in a start-up, achieve accolades—we couldn’t be happier for them. Yet, we still feel some sort of jealousy. We can tell ourselves to stop caring or figure out why this success is being achieved. The latter gives us answers, and encourages us to take action to improve ourselves in profound ways.
Jealousy without action is unhealthy. This is when we rant about how unfair the world is, why someone is so lucky, or how much better we are. As much as luck plays a role at times, we always want to minimize this factor and never let it dictate our path. Our minds are trained to detect aspects we enjoy from others—their work, their portfolio, their achievements, and much more. We can learn to recreate similar success by including elements of their work for our own. This is not stealing nor copying from others. Rather, we are making improvements in ourselves to recreate the new you.
Next time you feel a slight sense of jealousy, ask why and how you can replicate similar success. Regardless of how little we want to admit this, jealousy will drive us to catch-up.