You're Only Jealous Of The Things You Want

We’ve been taught for years that it’s not good to be jealous. The idea is that when we’re jealous it’s a reflection of our insecurities, feelings of not being good enough, or not being grateful for what we have.

For that reason, we try not to be jealous people and reject that feeling. We try to coach ourselves out of feelings of jealousy because that’s not the type of person we want to be. But this is short-sighted and it comes at an unexpected cost.

And that’s because you’re only jealous of the things you want.

What if jealousy actually gives us an insight into something about ourselves we weren’t aware of? What if jealousy served us in showing us what we really care about and we didn't even realize it?

The thing about jealousy is it isn't a dominating emotion. You can be proud for someone, and jealous of them at the same time. You can be ecstatic that someone else accomplished something you’ve always wanted to do, and still feel the sting of having not done it yourself yet. 

We feel jealous for a reason. Kind of like pain is a signal that redirects us away from something we don’t like, jealousy is a subtle suggestion that we would enjoy moving toward something.

The problem with jealousy is how it can make us become insensitive, caddy, or rude. It might cause us to do things outside of our values that we later regret…

But that’s the same for any feeling we’ve ever had. Our mind is constantly being influenced by our emotional environment. Just like happiness causes us to be kinder and sadness causes us to be shorter with people, feelings of jealousy bias our thoughts and actions.

So the key is to be aware of moments where you’re feeling jealousy and reroute that energy into better understanding what you want rather than behaving out of turn.