How to Overcome Jealousy

Is the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head? When was the last time you were jealous of someone’s job or business, their dress sense, their relationship or the way they carry themselves? 

We’ve all felt it – that little niggling inside of us that says: I wish I had that. 

Sometimes, it isn’t so obvious. Sometimes, we feel irritation towards someone or don’t act like ourselves around them, and we might think we’re just in a bad mood, but it could be envy. Our subconscious is a powerful thing, and sometimes we want things that we haven’t even admitted to ourselves. 

The problem with jealousy is that it can eat us alive. We become so focused on what everybody else has that we end up focusing on what we, ourselves, lack, rather than what we do have. We create a lack of mentality and this destroys any sense of gratitude we have towards ourselves and our life. Without gratitude, we can have everything but feel as though we have nothing.

Perhaps you think you’re not a jealous person, or you’re not ready to admit to it yet, but think about someone you know and time they were jealous of you. How did it make you feel? Did their negative energy soak up your high spirits, making you feel guilty for your success? 

Being envious isn’t just detrimental to yourself, but to those, you feel it towards. It gets in the way of being supportive, celebratory, kind and genuine. It stops you from being who you are as a person because you so desperately want to be someone else. 

Like any negative emotion, it’s important to sit and reflect. 

Ask yourself:

• What is this feeling telling me?
• What can I learn from this?
• What could I do differently?

And 99% of the time we can all do something differently. A lot of the time we are jealous of things that we want, but we haven’t done enough ourselves to make it a possibility. We can’t blame someone else that we didn’t make it happen for ourselves – only we have that sense of control. 

To start extinguishing jealousy, we have to let our feelings lead us to work that we need to do on ourselves. It is often when we have neglected our needs and don’t feel insecure in our own skin that we become envious. 

Learning to trust and believe in ourselves is all part of the process that will help you let go of jealous feelings, you can read more in my blog about achieving what is important to you here. https://ruthkudzi.com/how-to-achieve-what-is-important-to-you/

So, next time you feel like jealousy is eating you up, think about why. What can you do yourself to receive the thing you’re jealous of someone else has? What changes can you make to drive yourself forward, rather than wallow in a lacking mentality?

Because emotions are signs that we have work to do – let’s not ignore them.

For more tips and to share your thoughts join my free Facebook community for coaches and those who are coaching curious. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThecoachingcommunityRK/