Jealousy management : How to break free from its grip
‘A total of 54% of social media users feel upset when no one ‘liked’ or ‘commented’ on a picture they posted and nearly half were jealous when they saw a friend had more likes than they did’, study done by studyfinds.com
Year 2022 taught me hard lessons, especially to become a stronger version of myself. One of the first lessons I learnt: how to deal with envy, which arises from social media or otherwise. It sounds petty – to be jealous, however being envious has serious consequences, resentment or feeling of burn in gut, discontent spares no one.
Psychology today defines Jealous as “Jealousy is a complex emotion that encompasses feelings ranging from suspicion to rage to fear to humiliation”. It is tough to deal with this green-eyed monster due to its multifaceted nature. Most problematic task, which trips many, is to acknowledge it, accepting that I am jealous. when this hurdle is crossed, can we embark dealing with the bitterness. Simplest solution I use, is to recollect: ‘Everyone is unique, hence there is no comparison. By understanding the fact that everyone has diverse journeys to take up, struggles to overcome and lives to live helps relieve the mind from the gripping pang. I found that this mantra works often. At times when this fails, I employ these three techniques, which I have never had not work:
Is it possible to get it: Figure out ways to obtain the object of envy, there by tackling the problem at its root, if there are ways, leave no stone unturned to get it. If it’s something which is not under your control, breath out the ill feeling and shrug it off. Either way you will not be left with feeling of dissatisfaction.
Appreciate what you have: Following the earlier step, if the object of jealousy is something beyond your control, to make things better, bring out your best grin and admire things you cherish be it as simple as your favorite flower in the vase or as big as a supporting relationship. In a book named ‘The burden is light’ the author takes us through an exercise he does with his wife. Amazon link to the book is here. Here you can read about the original exercise. Which I have customized to my need. In a clean sheet of paper draw a horizontal line representing a period in your life of your liking. Draw a vertical line at the beginning of the first line representing happiness. Scroll through your phone gallery or social media to get a glimpse of celebrated moments and plot them on the sheet with respect to the time line and magnitude of happiness. Your graph should look something like this:
This will allow you to realise how much of happiness is sprinkled across the time window. Thus, widening the mental picture, instead of focusing on object of jealousy. Feel free to tailor to suit your needs. For example, plotting the graph about high points of your work life.
Work on yourself: Get started on a self-improvement project, be it starting a new book, teaching yourself guitar, learning a new language, organizing your closet, joining gym, trying out a new look, you get the idea. Not only doing this takes mind of things, but also makes you feel much better about yourself. In a way this is a powerful technique compared to other to because a finished project can be added to the list of cherished things mentioned in technique two and also leads to increase in commitment and willpower to find ways or solutions needed for technique one.
PS:I would like to leave you with this-Nobody is perfect, we are all trying.