GREEN WITH ENVY
Hi PEA NATION, HOW are you all doing? I want to talk about envy today. Yes. That green-eyed monster that makes you look at another person with a sinking feeling that you’re not good enough, or worse, that you should have what they have and because you don’t, that person should fail. You’re secretly hoping they don’t make as much money, or that they will fail at their event, or that something will happen to cut them down to your size.
How do I know that? Because I’ve been there. Just like you, listening to me right now.
The dictionary definition of Envy is: a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc.
And while we’re at it, let’s also look at the difference between being envious, and being jealous.
Envy is “the painful feeling of wanting what someone else has, like attributes or possessions.” If you're jealous, you feel “threatened, protective, or fearful of losing one's position or situation to someone else.”
So today, let’s deal with Envy. Are you envious of anyone? A couple years ago, I became envious of a fellow writer friend. She was where I knew I should have been. We’d risen through the ranks together from university, but our journeys had grossly diverged. While she had gone on to deepen her skill and increase her publications as a writer, I had gone the way of business first.
Now here’s how I reacted back then, I kid you not. My heart always swelled with pride when I saw her posts, when I saw her at writer’s conferences, when she won big prizes and published yet another book. I was really happy for her, But it was torture for me to be close to it. It was painful for me because I felt inadequate. She was where I wanted to be, and wasn’t. I thought it best if I was happy for her from afar - it would not hurt so much - so you know what I did? I muted her. I did. I muted a successful friend because I didn’t know how to be happy for her without feeling small for myself.
Listen, I’m not proud of it, but knowing and acknowledging and totally accepting yourself unconditionally, warts and all, is the first step to change. this was years ago, and we’re still friends, and she is none the wiser, but I’m the one who has mellowed, repented, been forgiven by my loving Father, and dealt with that sneaky monster in my heart.
Because envy eats at you. Envy is akin to the covetousness that God asks us not to do. You shall not covet your neighbor’s anything. It’s a slap in the face of a God who has blessed you, and can enable you to get what you think you should have. But you can’t change what you don’t identify, examine, and become curious about. So a couple years ago, I began to deal with this. I began to ask myself why was this painful? What was coming up for me when I saw all her accolades?
And it was this. The business of becoming a well known, critically acclaimed writer is a lifelong process, and there was a part of me that believed I was running out of time. That if I had to go so far and so deeply into myself to pull out genius, and I had not started, when would I succeed?
There. That was the thought that caused me to feel so flustered by my friend’s success. I felt I was running out of time. Every time I saw her win, I was reminded of how much time that I had ‘wasted’.
If you feel envious about someone today, I’d like to invite you to do this work on yourself, for yourself. Get curious. Ask yourself why? What about this person’s posts, updates, emails, voice, appearances or life, causes you distress, or anger, or sadness or longing? Take your time. It’s just you and yourself. Don’t be afraid to open that dusty chest and shake out the cobwebs. Noone is here but you!
When I realized my thought and how it made me distressed, I went to work to do two things. First of all, I began to celebrate all that I had accomplished in my life and business and education - not as a means of comparing myself to her, but in total, womblike love, totally surrounded by me, my things, my world. And I loved what I had created because I knew that I had made a choice for myself and my family. I accepted my choice. I embraced my choice. I celebrated my choice to go into business instead of into literature.
And the minute I owned my stuff, I let go of the resentment and the ‘coulda’ and ‘shoulda’, and I began to joyfully celebrate my friend as well. I am planning to buy her books and follow her closely.
There was one more surprise waiting for me behind that curtain of self exploration, y’all! The other part of the envy was the irritation that my friend had done the work towards becoming an acclaimed writer. Her head was in the game. She was about all things literature - the teaching, the conferences, the reading, the workshops, the writer in residence stints…all of it. Me, I was into business plans, boardrooms, social media, websites and more.
The thing is….I wanted to be there like her. You know how humbling that is to say that? I wanted to be there too. Before, envy had kept me away from appreciating and following her hard work, her journey, her trajectory to what she had achieved.
And we lose that opportunity for growth when we envy people. Because many times, the people we envy should be the people we should be emulating, but the thing is that we cut ourselves off from them because we can’t bear to look into their light. Listen, do this work. I was only able to make a plan to get into writing, when I dealt with all the bad feelings in me. I had to let them go, and by God’s grace, the envy gave way to joy, LIKING, raving about, ENJOYING, and finally accepting my friend as my example, not my competition.
And I cannot compete with her. She’s way ahead of me anyways, with good reason.
So where are you now, with me? What has resonated? This has been painfully brutal and honest, but let’s look ahead.
You cannot become what you envy. You cannot become rich if you envy rich people. You cannot become beautiful if you envy beautiful people. You cannot become fit, if you envy fit people. Get curious about your emotions and sort them out, like you would a drawer in your boudoir. You’ve got to work to get to LIKE, to appreciation, to being a fan of. Then, you have room inside you for learning that person’s path to greatness. When you get to like, to appreciate and value another person’s success, you are no longer green with envy. You become red hot with a wholesome determination to accomplish your own success.
You guys, that is the work of coaching. I’m so grateful for this industry of life coaching, because it has given me a self help tool to manage my mind and emotions, figure out my problems, and pursue my big dreams with a managed, peaceful, prosperous mind.
If you are looking for a life coach who can help you to navigate life more confidently, book a call with me to find out how we can work together. The link is in the show notes.