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I recently caught myself feeling a bit jealous of other people’s success.
I saw friends being invited to work on cool new projects.
A few of my colleagues had their work recognised and validated by ‘people who matter.’
My unconsidered reaction was that their success was somehow at my expense, which of course wasn’t true in these cases… and hardly ever is.
After recognising that feeling this way wasn’t doing me any favours, I took a deep breath and I asked some myself some questions that might be worth sharing.
Is someone else’s success really a threat to the work I’m doing in any way?
Is there a chance that another person’s success actually opens a door that others can follow them through?
If our roles in this situation were reversed, how would I want others to feel about my success? Would I want them to begrudge me or celebrate with me?
Can this be an affirmation for me that when we show up like professionals and do our work, success is possible?
We don’t always have a choice about how we react, but we can choose how we respond.
I acknowledged my initial feelings, asked and answered the questions above and then chose to congratulate my friends and colleagues on their hard-earned achievements.
Then I went back to doing the best possible version of my own work.
Staring Down the Green-Eyed Monster
Thank you for sharing this, Matthew. Those are some great questions for reflection. This is a practical way of using the feelings of jealousy to learn more about myself. So grateful to read this today. It's important to note that jealousy is a normal feeling. Instead of controlling how we feel, we can control our actions. I loved how you handled it with grace.
Yes! The big green monster! When I feel it, it always has to do with something I think I ought to be better at. More structured, mostly. Better performing. More robot-like.
The grace you show is the best way to deal with it. Learn why it feels like that and go on living and making good work.