Letting Jealousy Help

Growing up, I always understood jealousy as something to be avoided like the plague. It was a sin, and we weren’t supposed to feel it. The message I remember hearing from church/parents/adults was: If you’re jealous, something’s wrong.

As an adult what I’ve found is that I cannot prevent feeling jealous. Jealousy is not a feeling that is insignificant enough for our human minds to be able to outsmart or control. If there was nothing else to it, jealousy is not a helpful feeling in life, but I stop at the idea that jealousy makes you a bad person. It really can limit (sometimes destroy) a relationship because jealousy is always about lacking something in comparison to others.

The intensity of our jealousy is equal to the intensity of our own desires to have what others have. Instead of shaming the jealous feelings — by trying to ignore, numb, or shut them out — pay attention to what the jealous feelings are actually about.

For instance, let’s say I’m jealous that a friend is starting a hat-making business. It may be that I want to start a business (not necessarily a hat-making one), or that I just want out of the corporate world where I’m working for/on someone else’s schedule or money. If I shut down the jealousy because it’s a bad thing to feel, I’m going to miss out on facing up to the truth of my own desire to start a business. I see this in my own story, but also in so many other people’s lives as well: We get too caught up in the shame of what we feel that we miss out on truth.

The best way that we can eliminate our jealousy is to act on the desires that are hidden behind feeling jealous. Create something. Start small. Don’t overthink it. Pursue the relationship, or get your idea/product out into the world in a first edition/version, then revise and edit. Don’t let jealousy stop you, let it help you.