July 14, 2023 • 45 mins
Have you ever experienced envy or jealousy, those emotions that arise when we compare ourselves to others?
What is the difference between these two emotions, and how can we navigate them in our lives?
Welcome to the On Purpose podcast, and today we will look deep into the intricacies of envy and jealousy, and discover the three transformative steps to make any change in our lives.
Let’s talk about why do we feel jealous or envious when we find ourselves going through struggles while others seem to have an easier path, why do we desire what others possess, how these feelings make us feel satisfaction from others' unhappiness or feel left out.
Through reflection and introspection, we uncover the path towards personal growth and develop a mindset of compassion, gratitude, and inclusivity.
In this episode, you'll learn:
The different types of jealousy and envy
How can we identify the signs
How do we shift our mindset
How to turn jealousy and envy into admiration
Prepare to embark on a journey of self-discovery, understanding, and transformation as we learn to embrace our own path and celebrate the journeys of others.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
03:17 Who doesn’t feel envy or jealousy in some way to someone?
10:43 There is a difference between jealousy and envy. What differentiates them?
12:27 Here are the three steps to make any change in your life
14:09 Type #1: You are going through something but others aren’t. You get jealous because their life is easy
17:36 How do you zoom out to bring your focus away from what’s stressing you out?
19:04 Type #2: We want what other people have
25:56 Find out more about people you know less about and turn it into admiration
26:07 Type #3: Becoming happy that others are down or unhappy
31:59 Type #4: Feeling upset of being left out
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be
adding a really special offering onto the back of my
solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily Jay is a daily
series on Calm and it's meant to inspire you while
outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress
free life. We dive into a range of topics and
the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long,
(00:22):
so you can incorporate it into your schedule no matter
how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the
on Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for
you this year, so I'll be playing a handpicked Daily
Jay during each of my Friday podcasts. This week, I'm
sharing an inspiring story that motivates me and hopefully can
motivate you too. Of course, if you want to listen
(00:45):
to The Daily Jay every day, you can go subscribe
to Calm. So go to calm dot com forward slash
j for forty percent off your membership today. Hey everyone,
welcome back to on Purpose, the number one health and
wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
(01:06):
one of you that choose to come back every week
to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Now. It's been
an incredible year so far on on purpose. The love
from this community has been unbelievable. There are tens of
thousands of reviews across Spotify and Apple and so many
(01:27):
more wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's on iHeart
or anywhere else, and I just want to take a
moment to say thank you for those They make such
a difference to the way I feel and the team
feels creating this content every single week, and they make
such a difference to new members. If you're a new listener,
thank you so much for being here. If you've been
here one hundred times, two hundred times, four hundred and
(01:48):
sixty one times, I am grateful. If you listen to
us every day, thank you. Whether you're on your first
listen or your one hundred listen, I appreciate you. And
I want to dive into a really interesting topic this week.
And this topic was actually brought to me by my team.
One of my team members said to me, Hey, Jay, like,
(02:09):
I'm really struggling with this. Could you help me? Could
you do a part on it? Actually that was the request,
And I love it when something comes so organically on
these episodes, I'm always trying to start an organic conversation
or share a conversation that I've been having with a client,
a friend, a team member, whoever it may be. And
(02:29):
it was really interesting because this started as one team
member's request and turned into a team therapy session where
we were all openly sharing with each other how we
struggle with this. And so what you're about to hear
is actually crowdsourced stories experiences challenges with this subject. And
(02:52):
I hope that as you're listening, not only do you
feel less alone, I hope that listening to this helps
you judge yourself less and stops you from making yourself
feel guilty. And of course, as always, I'm dedicated to
giving you the steps, the solutions, the strategies, the methods
(03:13):
so that you can actually break through and move forward.
Today we're talking about the formidable blocks in our life
of envy and jealousy. Now, I don't think there's anyone
in the world who doesn't feel envy or jealousy in
some way or some capacity, And I know it's hard
(03:34):
to think that, it's hard to believe that there are
people out there who don't feel that way. You look
at someone and you go, well, they must have it all.
Made you look at someone else and we go, well,
she has everything, or they have everything. They're good looking,
they're rich, they're famous, they're successful. Everything must be perfect.
And what I've learned by being closer and closer to
(03:57):
that world, by people I meet and that I've come across,
is that no one feels that way. Everyone is either jealous, envious, insecure,
or in some way unstable about whatever position or platform
that they have. One of my friends told me this
incredible story, and I'm sharing it with you because it
(04:18):
really puts things into perspective at that sort of a level.
So he just bought the house of his dreams and
it was incredible and it was everything he could have
ever wanted. He was then invited to someone else's birthday
party and he went to their home. And when he
went to this person's home, they were showing him around
(04:41):
the home, and they showed him one piece of art
in their home and his house costs the same as
the art on this other person's wall. And he said
that that made him reflect just on how at every
stage we can always feel envy, jealousy. So sometimes we think, oh,
(05:02):
when I get that I won't be jealous anymore when
I achieved that I won't be envious of anyone. But actually,
overcoming envy and jealousy has to be its own pursuit
as we pursue our desires. And this was something I
learned during my time as a monk, where overcoming jealousy,
(05:24):
overcoming ego, overcoming envy, these were pursuits in themselves. There
was no external achievement that was going to take away
that internal feeling. There was no amount of money, no
amount of awards, no amount of comfort, no amount of
first class flights, no amount of even just having the
(05:46):
happy family and the perfect setup. Even if you didn't
have these grand ambitions, there was no external point of
life that would remove and jealousy unless they were removed
strategically and specifically. And so I want to dive into
just how normal this is because I think one of
(06:07):
the things that keeps us blocked is the guilt we
feel for feeling it. One of the things that keeps
us stuck is the amount we judge ourselves. Right, we
all feel achy like we feel upset at ourselves for
even feeling that way, especially when if it's about a
family member or a friend or someone in our life.
I know that we don't like carrying that feeling, and
(06:29):
I know you know what that feels like. So I
want us to move past that block by recognizing that
all of us struggle with this. So studies show that
seventy nine percent of women and seventy four percent of
men reported envying someone within the previous year. Now, the
research goes on to show that we envy less as
(06:52):
we age, and that makes sense because as we age,
certain things in our life become more clear, and certain
things in our life be come more set up to
a certain degree where we get a more realistic view.
So younger people were more likely to be envious about
academic success, social status, romantic relationships, and of course appearance.
(07:16):
And one of the studies showed that forty percent of
the people who were researched reported envying the romantic success
of someone else they knew, compared to less than fifteen
percent of people that were over fifty. And that makes
sense because the people over fifty were already in relationships.
But it's interesting how we do envy less as we age,
(07:39):
either by getting somewhere or getting something, or either by
maturing and I want to talk about that active maturing
rather than just naturally envying less. I think the natural
process of aging and envy and jealousy decreasing is great.
It's something we can all look forward to. But I
(07:59):
think and while we're in this space of managing it
and figuring it out, it's so important that we learn
to purify and neutralize these feelings because what envy and
jealousy do is that they end up blocking our growth,
and they end up blocking us from celebrating other people's growth. Right,
They're not useful emotions in that when they are negative
(08:22):
in our lives, it actually stops us from focusing on
our growth and our success and the past we want
to take, and it stops us from celebrating, appreciating, and
admiring others. One of the studies I looked at from
American psychologists Daniel J. Dell Priory and Sarah Hill and
David M. Buss, and this was from a great article
(08:45):
by Reine Zittelmann. And in that article, it breaks down
the common things that women and men envy, and that's
what the psychologists wanted to focus on. So women admitted
that they found these things they envied more so, they
envied physical attractiveness, they envied popularity, they envied social ease,
(09:10):
they envied family relationships, and they envied better clothing. Those
were generally the things that women envied, and the study
was focused on looking at the difference in what genders envied,
and men more frequently admitted that they envied other people's
romantic success, greater access to financial resources, ownership of status
(09:33):
item a particular thing, greater academic success, and superior athletic talent.
So it's really interesting to see how even as men
and women, we envy and are jealous of different things.
And that's why sometimes if you're talking to your friend,
your partner about it, you may find that you find
different things triggering. But the point is we all find
(09:54):
something triggering. I think that's what I always like to
recognize is that we may all have different challenges, but
we all have the challenge in and of itself. You're
not alone. You don't need to feel bad or guilty
or beat yourself up about having this trait. It is
a human trait, a human experience to have this trait,
(10:17):
and the majority of us are experiencing it someway or
the other. And the fact that you're here today because
you want to break through it and you want to
overcome it, I think is what we need to take
confidence in. And I'm always trying to shift your mindset
away from self judgment to break through because blocks growth.
(10:40):
Judgment stops you from taking action. Now, it's really interesting
because a lot of researchers have looked at the difference
between jealousy and envy, and there's lots of different versions
of this, and I'll only share what I learned during
my monk time, which I found to be very useful.
There's this idea that there is a difference between jealousy
(11:03):
and envy, and in among teachings, it was shared with
us that jealousy is passive and envy is active. And
what I mean by that is jealousy is where you're like,
I wish I had that. Envy is like they don't
deserve that, right. There's that slight difference, and it's important
(11:26):
for us to know which when we're struggling with because
one is a more extreme version of the other. Envy
is a more extreme version of jealousy. The idea that
not only do you want it for yourself, you don't
think the other person deserves it. That can be a
really harmful thought and harmful experience to yourself and others,
because it can push you away from the people you
(11:48):
deeply love. It can push you away from the people
that you deeply value, the people that mean so much
to you, the people that you believe in. Right, it's
so frustrating having this feeling when you're like, I love
this person, I want them to win, but I just
feel a little bit jealous about them. Right, So, what
I thought I'd do in order to direct and guide
(12:09):
and give structure to our conversation today is I wanted
to talk about the different types of how jealousy shows
up in our lives, because I think it's really important
to understand the different symptoms of how it shows up
so we can truly be vigilant. There are three steps
to making any change in your life. First is awareness,
(12:32):
the second is addressing it, and the third is amending it.
We first become aware, then we address, and then we amend.
And so first we have to become aware of where
are all the ways and all the places in how
my jealousy shows up. Now, the fact that you're here
shows to me that you're already self aware. It's already
(12:52):
something that you know is blocking you from achieving your
greatest potential. And that's what I've found about jealousy and
envy is that they suck out the energy from your
life and your focus so much because your energy is
all pointing outward instead of pointing inward and forward. Right,
that's a choice we get to make in our life.
(13:13):
Is our energy pointing outward because we're looking outward at
what everyone else is doing, or are we focused on
inward and moving forward ourselves. So let's start with awareness.
There are different types of jealousy, and all I want
you to do is make a mental note of whether
there's a tick next to this or a cross next
(13:33):
to it. Some of you may have a lot of ticks,
some of you may have a lot of crosses. But
I want you to refine your awareness, your radar of
how well you are being aware of this. And again,
we're going to do this in a safe space, a
non judgmental environment, because remember we're all struggling with this.
We all have a difficulty with this, we all have
a challenge with this. And as I tell you these stories,
(13:54):
an example some of which my team shared with me
in confidence, and they knew that I was going to
share on the podcast without naming names and giving away people.
I think it's really really important that you get a
sense of which ones you struggle with. So one of
the first types of jealousy is when you're going through
a challenge and other people are not going through that challenge.
(14:17):
So you're going through something but no one in your
life is going through that, and you're jealous because their
life is easier. You're jealous because their life is more
seamless or appears more seamless. You're jealous because you feel like,
I wish my life was that easier. I wish my
life was free of this stress that I'm having to
(14:38):
go through. How many of you have ever felt that?
Put your hand up right now, take a screenshot of
this moment as I walk through this list. This is
a great conversation started between your friends as well. I
know I've definitely felt this before. I'm going through something
I wish I didn't have to go through it, and
I can see other people are not going through it,
and I feel jealous of them. So if you're experiencing
(14:59):
this type of jealousy where you're going through a challenge
that others are not, and you're wishing you had their life.
There's a really key technique to improve this mindset, and
this technique is zoom out. The technique is called zoom out.
You want to zoom out to look at the bigger picture,
(15:23):
not the specific thing. For example, if you're looking at
someone else's life and you're going, I'm going through this
stress that person is not. I wish it was like
that for me. You want to zoom out. Let me
paint a picture for you. Let's say you and your
friend are both moving home or you're moving country. So
(15:48):
let's say in that scenario that your stuff gets lost
and their stuff doesn't. So their stuff arrives on time.
Your stuff gets lost. You're now stressed out because you're
dealing with talking to the moving company, you're talking to
the airline, you're talking to insurance, and you're looking at
their life and going, well, they've moved in, they're comfortable,
they're like watching Netflix with their partner, and like they're
(16:10):
thinking about furniture and all this kind of stuff, and
your stuff's all lost, and you're jealous of them because
you're like, I wish that happened to me, why didn't
it happen to me? In those situations, we have to
zoom out and look at the bigger picture. There are
so many moments in our life where our life will
be easier than others, and there are so many moments
(16:31):
in other people's lives where their lives will be easier
than others. And when you judge your life in one
moment as being better or worse than someone else's, you
could lose all the time if you focus just on
that specific thing, because just on that specific thing, your
stuff is lost. Now. I'm not saying you're not allowed
to feel stressed. I'm not saying you're not allowed to
(16:52):
feel upset. I'm just saying that when it comes to
that other person who has nothing to do with it,
absolutely nothing to do your situation, it's important to recognize
that maybe this part went seamless for them, but hey,
maybe them getting that apartment was really tough. Maybe they
waited months and months and months to find that apartment,
(17:13):
or maybe right now they just lost their job, or
maybe right now they're going through a personal thing, someone
in their family's going through something. I think it's so
interesting and easy when we focus on one area where
like I'm behind, my life's messed up. They're ahead, they're
doing great. But when you zoom out, it changes the
complete perspective of what's going on. And this is one
(17:38):
of the analogies I like to draw is between a movie.
If you walk in halfway to a movie, you may
think a character is having the most incredible time. Imagine
you walked in halfway to Wolf of Walk Street and
you see him driving the fast car. You see Leonardo DiCaprio.
Jonah Hill comes up to and goes, how much money
(18:00):
did you make this year? He's like, I made forty
nine million, just shy of a million a week. They
have that interaction. Jonah Hill's like, I'll quit everything, I'll
work for you. You see him on his yacht. When
you walk into that moment, everything seems great and you think, wow,
I'm jealous of him. But then if you really look
(18:21):
at what happened before, and then you look at what
happened afterwards, when you zoom out, you get a full
perspective of someone's actual story and journey. And so I
want you to zoom out when you're jealous or envious
if something specific about someone, Know that when you zoom out.
We all share in our trials and challenges. We all
(18:42):
have different things going wrong in our life. And Robin
Roberts once said that if we were all to throw
our problems into a pile, we'd grab ours right back,
because when we look at the perspective of the challenges
others are going through, even if ours is really tough,
there's a side where we're like, Okay, I can deal
with this, So I want you to zoom out now.
(19:04):
The next type of jealousy is when we want something
that doesn't have. I want that kind of a guy,
I want that kind of a job, I want that
kind of a house, I want that kind of an apartment,
I want that kind of vacation. Right, it's constant. We
want what other people have. We see what other people have,
and we go, that's exactly what I wanted. Why don't
(19:26):
I have it? And maybe if it tips into envy,
we go they don't deserve it either, they're a bad person. Right.
Sometimes we feel that way, and it's really interesting because again,
that's normal. It's normal. It's human nature to look at
what someone has and think I want it, especially if
it looks attractive, and especially if We've been conditioned for
(19:48):
certain things to look attractive, and that's the first thing
I want you to look at. Is it something that
you genuinely find attractive because you care? Or do you
find it attractive because so someone else cares? Have your
parents always told you people who buy a house are
set up for life? So now whenever you see someone
(20:08):
who's bought a house, you think, oh my god, people
who buy a house is set up for life. And
that voice is in your head, but you don't actually
believe that you're really happy in your rented apartment. Right
Where is that conditioning coming from? Have you had the
conditioning from your friends that you grew up with that says, oh,
if you're with this type of a guy or this
type of a girl, and that's the person who's got
it all together. Now you're carrying that voice in your head.
(20:33):
So when you see that you want something that someone
else has, I want you to ask yourself, is it
truly something you want? It's that self awareness piece. Is
this something that I really want to pursue and chase
or is it something that I'm just attracted to because
someone's told me to be attracted to it? Somewhere it's
(20:53):
not really that important to me, but it's become important
to me because of how I've been a bit and
conditioned to believe. So in that moment, ask yourself, is
this something I want? Is this something I want to pursue?
If the answer is yes, this is something that's important
to you, and it's not important to you because it
was important to your mom or dad. It's not important
(21:16):
to you because it was important to your friend at school.
It's not important to you because someone took a dig
at you or you saw something. If it's truly important
to you, ask yourself how your jealousy can become admiration
and attraction, and you go, let me study that person.
How can I do what they did to get there?
(21:36):
How can I study and learn from them? We turn
our judgment and our criticism into curiosity, and then we
ask ourself do I want to do that after we
study it? So the first question is is that what
I want? Or is that what society has made me want?
If it's what I want, let me study what they've
done and learn about what they've done, understand what they've done,
(22:00):
and then ask myself if I'm ready to do that.
This is how you transform through those three questions, you
transform your jealousy into admiration, appreciation, and attraction. Right, it's
easy for someone to see Christiano Ronaldo world fare a
soccer player and think I want that body. I want
(22:21):
to look like that, and then you study how hard
he works to look like that, and then you go, no,
I'm good, I don't want to look like that. Right,
you can appreciate and admire and respect it without having
to then think I want it because I don't want
to do the work. When you've done the added work
of studying, of learning, of being curious, it's so important
to transform our jealousy into admiration and attraction. Another technique
(22:46):
for when you want something that others have is you've
got to see jealousy as a sign. Right, You've got
to see jealousy as a sign if you study that person,
if you figure out it's something that you really want,
you can focus on building that. If you're fixated on
what everyone else is doing, you'll never have time to
(23:06):
invest on yourself. When you sit down right now and
write down a list of items, if you've clarified that, yes,
this isn't something influenced by my parents, Yes, it's something
I want. Yes, I've studied their lives. Okay, what are
my action items? How am I going to do that?
What do I need to do in order to get there?
Who do I need to call? Who do I need
to know? What do I need to learn? And those
(23:26):
action items stop you from having your emotional jealousy of
that person and shift you into giving your focus to
actually building that for yourself. You can either sit here
and watch how everyone else is decorating their homes online,
or you can start decorating yours right now. Right. You
can either sit on social media and look at how
(23:48):
everyone else is planning their holiday party, or you can
plan your holiday party right, whatever it may be for you.
We can either sit here and fixate on everyone else,
or we can invest in ourselves. And when we shift
that energy to invest in ourselves, incredible things can happen.
So I want you to sit down right now and
write down those action items that you've been putting off.
(24:09):
Studies showed that fifty nine percent of people felt sad
after seeing photos from a party they didn't attend posted
on social media. At forty five percent, we're unhappy after
seeing photos from a friend's happy holiday outing, plan your
own party, plan your own game night this week. Create
what you feel left out of, Create what you haven't built.
(24:30):
Another strategy that really helps with this particular type of
jealousy is something that one of my team members said beautifully.
Her name's Helena, she's our podcast lead here on Purpose,
and she said to me she heard something where someone said,
we're only jealous of people we know less about, and
(24:51):
we're not jealous of people we know more about. And
that's really interesting, isn't it. We want what others have
because we don't really know too much of how they
got there, how they got that, what work it took,
what sacrifices, what costic came at. And that's one of
the bigger challenges with social media. We know very little
about people on social media, and therefore it's an easy
(25:14):
way to feel jealous. Josh Noble, who wrote an article
quoting Kapersky Labs, he found that fifty seven percent of
people said that after going on social media, they've felt
that someone they follow has a better life than they do.
That is a big statement to believe that someone has
a better life than you do. But when you know
(25:34):
very little about someone, it's very easy to think that, right,
if you're only seeing five percent of someone's life, it's
easy to think that that five percent is their entire
one hundred percent of life. But when you know ninety
percent of someone's life, when you're closer to someone, you
actually have a healthier sense of the balance of the
different emotions they experience. So the key technique for this
(25:57):
type of jealousy is to find out more about people
you know less about and to transform jealousy into admiration
and attraction. Now, another type of jealousy, or another way
that it shows up, is being happy that others are
down right. When someone shares some bad news with you,
(26:17):
you kind of get a sense of satisfaction from it,
or you get a sense of appreciation like oh, thank god,
it's not just me, and it's like this awkward feeling
of yes, I don't feel alone, but I'm kind of
happy that they're sad too. Or you make someone else's
positives a negative. So someone tells you, hey, I just
(26:38):
got this new job and you're like, yeah, but you
don't really love the new boss, right, Or they're like, oh,
I got promoted at my work and they're like yeah,
but you don't really like the people you work with, right,
so we play down other people's success, or we turn
their positives into negatives, or at the very least, we're
happy when that person's struggling, or we get a sense
of just a sense of positive boost when someone else
(27:02):
is struggling. And that's a really, really tough feeling to experience,
even as ourselves. One thing that I want you to
learn to do in this is learn to empathize with
other people's pain and learn to celebrate other people's success.
If you learn to celebrate others people's success, here's what happens.
(27:22):
People will celebrate your success when it happens, even if
they don't. When you celebrate someone's success, you are partaking
in that success. It becomes part of your success story.
You get to engage with that energy, and the energy
you need to get out of the state you're in
right now is the celebration energy. When you feel positive
(27:45):
for other people's wins, you are now creating a positive
energy in your life for your win. You feeling positive
for their win doesn't take away any energy from yours.
It actually fuels you more. But you feeling negative towards someone,
whether they win or lose creates more negativity within yourself
(28:07):
towards your pursuit. See, you are harnessing an energy. Wayne
Dyer would say, if I squash an orange, the only
thing that will come out is orange juice. Well, if
you're squeezed and all you have is negativity, that's what's
going to come out. So if you're trying to create
something beautiful but you're holding onto this negative energy, we
have to understand. We have to talk ourselves out of
(28:30):
it because that negative energy perpetuates. And ultimately, what all
of this is is a transformation of thoughts. You're not
a jealous person. You're not an envious person. You're a
person with a jealous thought. You have been trained to
have a jealous thought. Human nature exists in jealous thoughts.
(28:51):
And whenever we have that jealous thought, we want to
say to ourselves, this thought is not me. This thought
is not useful, This thought is not helpful. Let me
celebrate other people's wins. Let me partake in their success
and let it be mine. Let me create positivity for
(29:16):
my pursuit by being positive for other people's pursuits. I
want you to save this moment of the podcast, and
I want you to listen to that again and again
and again. I want you to write it out in
your own words and repeat it again and again and again.
And I promise you what will happen is every time
you have a jealous thought, it will be replaced by
(29:36):
the thought that we just created together. And this is
something I did during my monk time. I wrote scripts
and scripts and scripts of the dialogue I wanted to
have instead of letting jealousy run rampant in my mind. See,
we have scripts in our mind that have been developed
over our whole childhood and adulthood. And we've never edited
those scripts. We've never rewritten them. We've never looked at
(29:59):
them and reviewvied them and thrown them in the trash
because they're not useful, they're not helpful, they didn't get
us anywhere. This is that moment where we burn those scripts,
where we rewrite them, where we review them, we edit them,
we completely, you know, start from a blank slate and
build again because those scripts, so your script becomes. Celebrating
others makes me more positive to pursue my goals. Appreciating
(30:26):
and admiring others helps me study their success and replicate it.
For myself. Appreciating someone else's win doesn't take away my energy.
It gives me energy, and putting down or feeling jealous
to towards someone's success actually takes energy away from mine.
(30:48):
In my first book, Thing Like a Monk, I came
up with this idea of the theater of happiness and
how there are an unlimited number of seats in the
theater of happiness, and we think that if someone else
is in the theater of happiness that we lose our seat.
(31:11):
We think there's a finite number of seats in the
theater of happiness, but actually it's an infinite theater. The
theater of happiness is an infinite theater, the type of
theater that we don't know about because we think if
we don't have VIP tickets, then we haven't got our seats.
Everything in the world is finite. There is a finite
number of VIP tickets, there's a finite number of coach tickets,
(31:34):
there's a finite number of economy tickets, there's a finite
number of tickets sold. But the theater of happiness is
the infinite theater, and the infinite theater is a seat
where every single person's name in the world is on
a seat. There's not two people's names on it. There's
not two numbers. Where you're stuck at the theater where
you're both like, wait a minute, that's my seat, where's
(31:56):
your seat? Oh, you try to steal your my seat.
It doesn't work like that. The next type of jealousy
is jealous of being left out. Jealous of being left out,
and I talked about that earlier, where we're sad when
people don't invite us to their party. Fifty four percent
of people felt upset when no one liked or commented
(32:18):
on a photo they posted. We feel rejected and left out,
and forty two percent were jealous when they saw a
friend had more likes or comments than they did on
a status update. Imagine you just announced you got engaged,
and your engagement post has less than someone else's, right,
it's and the jealousies. You feel left out, You feel
like your friends don't love you as much, You feel
(32:38):
like your friends don't care about you as much. One
of my team members gave this amazing example. She said
she went through in her teens. In her teens, two
of her friends were jealous of each other, and they
would tell her and she was jealous that they weren't
jealous of her. Right, Like, it's incredible the tricks our
mind plays on us. Like your two friends are saying,
(32:59):
I'm jealous of that friend, and then she's like, I'm
jealous of that friend, and you're there going I'm jealous
that neither of you are jealous of me. Right. This
feeling of being left out, this feeling of being rejected,
the feeling of being the last to be picked for sports,
whatever it may have been, that feeling that we're jealous
(33:20):
that we're not the care one, we're not the one
who's first picked, we're not the one who's most loved,
and it shows up in so many ways. And really,
this jealousy shows us and in a fear. We have
a fear of being replaced, a fear of being rejected,
a fear of being left behind, a fear of being judged.
(33:42):
The question we have to ask ourselves is we have
to look inward and say, where is that fear coming from?
Let me address that fear. Am I fearful because I
was left out when I was younger? Okay? Well? Am
I also trying to be part of groups that I
don't want to be a part of Like. I love
that movie Mean Girls, right, and it shows the perfect
(34:02):
example of Lindsay Lohan's character who's trying to be a
part of a group that she doesn't even agree with.
How many of us are trying to be welcomed or
fit into a crew of people that we don't really
want to be a part of. We just want to
be seen as cool, We want to be seen as respected.
How many of our inner fears are actually making us
(34:25):
focus on the wrong thing to be jealous about. What
if we did find a group in a community that
is actually aligned with our values, maybe it would naturally work.
Maybe we wouldn't feel replaced and rejected because we're not
trying to be part of a group where we don't
actually belong. Are we trying to force ourselves into a
group or community or squad that isn't our home? And
(34:48):
it's so important that we also build a unique relationship
with people. So often we try to be like someone
who's close to someone we like. We try to be
like their closest friend, we try to be like all
their friends. We change who we are into who we
think they want us to be. What does that make us?
(35:10):
It makes us a replaceable friend because we're now like
every one of their friends. But if you have a
unique relationship with someone, if you add something unique to
someone's life. I find that in my world, I see
myself as everyone's spiritual friend. I want to be their
friend to help them connect with their deepest voice, their
(35:31):
deepest essence. That's who I am to you. I want
to be a friend that reminds you of your greatest self,
your deepest potential, And that's who I am in my
life to my friends. I don't need to be the
friend who's the fun drunk. I don't need to be
the friend who's the coolest kid. I don't need to
be the friend who always is doing the best stuff
(35:51):
or as the best social life. If I tried to
do all those things, I'd fail at being me and
I could be replaced because other people can do that.
What is it that only you can do? I promise
you there's something. What is it that makes your relationship
with someone special? What if there was no hierarchy but
just diversity. What if there was no league table but
(36:14):
just love? Why is it always about number one, number
two and like my best friend, my bff, my second
you know my worst whatever. Why is it always like that?
Why can't it just be that we're being who we
are for someone. I really hope that this episode today
guides you in your journey with jealousy. What I want
(36:35):
you to take away is that it's a normal feeling.
It's a hard one to overcome, but it is possible,
and if you apply some of these techniques that I
mentioned today, I promise you that you'll start to see
a benefit in your life. I want to thank you
so much for listening, and I want to leave you
with the wise words from one of my team members
(36:57):
called Annie. She said, we're jealous of the people we
want to be, and not people who we don't want
to be. As we zoom out wide in our perspective
get to know more about the people we know less about,
it becomes an incredible method to overcome and break through
jealousy and start using it as a sign and using
(37:20):
it to be curious and study and rewire the thoughts
in our minds. Thank you so much for listening. I
hope you share this episode with someone who needs it,
Listen to it with your friends, and maybe even jump
into a conversation about it. I appreciate you so much.
Leave a review, tag me on Instagram with your biggest takeaways.
If you haven't heard the Tom Holland episode yet, go
(37:41):
and listen to it. It is absolutely epic. I'm so
grateful for all the love that we received for that one,
and thank you so much for being a listener on purpose.
I appreciate you deeply, lots of love. Albert Einstein once
(38:03):
said there are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other
is as though everything is a miracle. You might be
able to guess where I stand. The next seven minutes
are about leaning into a state of wonder. I'm Jay Shaddy.
(38:23):
Welcome to the Daily Jay. Let's start off as usual
with a few centering breaths inhaling and exhaling, expanding the
chest and relaxing, focusing on this moment and arriving in
(38:53):
the present. So in the mindfulness world, there's this well
known Buddhist instructor named Wesniska, or Scoop as he's sometimes
called now. Scoop isn't your stereotypical meditation teacher. He's also
a comedian, performer, author and radio commentator and He's constantly
(39:17):
exploring these massive existential questions like who are we, why
are we here? And if we're all made out of atoms,
which are ninety nine point nine nine nine percent empty space,
then what's holding your clothes on? He specifically has this
one exercise that I love, and really it's a whole
(39:37):
approach to life. It's called be here Wow. All you
have to do is reflect on the simple yet incredible
facts of life and allow yourself to be amazed. For example,
without you consciously doing anything, your heart flexes billions of
times over the course of your life, something blood through
(40:00):
your body, keeping you alive. And if you laid out
all your arteries and veins and search connecting them end
to end, they would stretch all the way around the earth.
Isn't that absolutely crazy to think about? Scoop calls be
here Wow a workout for your ore muscle. Basically, you
(40:23):
make your own jaw drop. In his words, one of
our finest capacities as human beings is to wonder at
ourselves and the world, no matter what is going on.
He's so right, or is one of our great powers.
When we mindfully direct our attention and curiosity, we can
(40:43):
positively influence our mood, cultivate gratitude, and maybe push pores
on some of our striving and searching, or allows us
to recognize that we are part of something bigger, something
frankly unbelievable, and when we do so, we become more
generous toward ourselves and others. As part of his be
(41:06):
here while practice, Scoop also likes to telescope out literally
and marvel at the vastness of the cosmos. I mean,
consider all the insanely improbable, mind boggling events that had
to happen for you to exist. The Earth forming billions
of years ago, evolution, opposable thumbs, technology, think about the
(41:30):
astronomical circumstances that occurred in order to get us here.
With that perspective, I'm extra happy to be here with
you today. And the truth is, there's so much delight
and awe to be found in our day to day existence.
If we just stop and look around, you might see
(41:51):
a hummingbird and watch as it flies backward. Or notice
the tree outside your window. How old is it? What
is it witnessed? I like to watch videos about space
exploration and blown away by all the things that had
to happen for people to land on the moon. Like
astronomer Carl Sagan said, the nitrogen in our DNA, the
(42:15):
calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the
carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors
of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff. It's
astonishing and like be here, wow, teachers. If we consciously
embrace that astonishment, we can transform each day, each minute,
(42:39):
each nanosecond of our wondrous lives. With that in mind,
let's work on building our all muscles as we turn
to our meditation. First, get comfortable wherever you are, settling
your body and settling your mind, letting go of any
(43:03):
urge to analyze or judge, to worry or plan, and
instead opening yourself up to the beauty of the world.
Now call to mind any simple yet spectacular fact of life,
(43:28):
and seriously, it can be anything you choose. Maybe that
a snail can sleep for up to three years don't
be jealous, Or that on average, kids ask forty thousand
questions between the ages of two and five, or that
(43:50):
you're the only you that ever was and ever will be.
It could even be the fact that right now your
breath is sustaining and nourishing you without you even thinking
about it. Whatever you choose to reflect on, see if
(44:16):
you can lean into a feeling of wonderment and truly
be inspired by awe. And now let's open this up
as you go about your day to day life. How
(44:39):
often do you experience a sense of wonder How often
do you look for it? What could you do to
incorporate the practice of be here wow into your daily routine.
(45:04):
If this message inspired you, remember that you can always
bookmark this session so you can return here when you
need a boost, and make sure to share it with
someone else who might need it. I can't wait to
see you again tomorrow. Have a wondrous day.
Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be
adding a really special offering onto the back of my
solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily Jay is a daily
series on Calm and it's meant to inspire you while
outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress
free life. We dive into a range of topics and
the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long,
(00:22):
so you can incorporate it into your schedule no matter
how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the
on Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for
you this year, so I'll be playing a handpicked Daily
Jay during each of my Friday podcasts. This week, I'm
sharing an inspiring story that motivates me and hopefully can
motivate you too. Of course, if you want to listen
(00:45):
to The Daily Jay every day, you can go subscribe
to Calm. So go to calm dot com forward slash
j for forty percent off your membership today. Hey everyone,
welcome back to on Purpose, the number one health and
wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
(01:06):
one of you that choose to come back every week
to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Now. It's been
an incredible year so far on on purpose. The love
from this community has been unbelievable. There are tens of
thousands of reviews across Spotify and Apple and so many
(01:27):
more wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's on iHeart
or anywhere else, and I just want to take a
moment to say thank you for those They make such
a difference to the way I feel and the team
feels creating this content every single week, and they make
such a difference to new members. If you're a new listener,
thank you so much for being here. If you've been
here one hundred times, two hundred times, four hundred and
(01:48):
sixty one times, I am grateful. If you listen to
us every day, thank you. Whether you're on your first
listen or your one hundred listen, I appreciate you. And
I want to dive into a really interesting topic this week.
And this topic was actually brought to me by my team.
One of my team members said to me, Hey, Jay, like,
(02:09):
I'm really struggling with this. Could you help me? Could
you do a part on it? Actually that was the request,
And I love it when something comes so organically on
these episodes, I'm always trying to start an organic conversation
or share a conversation that I've been having with a client,
a friend, a team member, whoever it may be. And
(02:29):
it was really interesting because this started as one team
member's request and turned into a team therapy session where
we were all openly sharing with each other how we
struggle with this. And so what you're about to hear
is actually crowdsourced stories experiences challenges with this subject. And
(02:52):
I hope that as you're listening, not only do you
feel less alone, I hope that listening to this helps
you judge yourself less and stops you from making yourself
feel guilty. And of course, as always, I'm dedicated to
giving you the steps, the solutions, the strategies, the methods
(03:13):
so that you can actually break through and move forward.
Today we're talking about the formidable blocks in our life
of envy and jealousy. Now, I don't think there's anyone
in the world who doesn't feel envy or jealousy in
some way or some capacity, And I know it's hard
(03:34):
to think that, it's hard to believe that there are
people out there who don't feel that way. You look
at someone and you go, well, they must have it all.
Made you look at someone else and we go, well,
she has everything, or they have everything. They're good looking,
they're rich, they're famous, they're successful. Everything must be perfect.
And what I've learned by being closer and closer to
(03:57):
that world, by people I meet and that I've come across,
is that no one feels that way. Everyone is either jealous, envious, insecure,
or in some way unstable about whatever position or platform
that they have. One of my friends told me this
incredible story, and I'm sharing it with you because it
(04:18):
really puts things into perspective at that sort of a level.
So he just bought the house of his dreams and
it was incredible and it was everything he could have
ever wanted. He was then invited to someone else's birthday
party and he went to their home. And when he
went to this person's home, they were showing him around
(04:41):
the home, and they showed him one piece of art
in their home and his house costs the same as
the art on this other person's wall. And he said
that that made him reflect just on how at every
stage we can always feel envy, jealousy. So sometimes we think, oh,
(05:02):
when I get that I won't be jealous anymore when
I achieved that I won't be envious of anyone. But actually,
overcoming envy and jealousy has to be its own pursuit
as we pursue our desires. And this was something I
learned during my time as a monk, where overcoming jealousy,
(05:24):
overcoming ego, overcoming envy, these were pursuits in themselves. There
was no external achievement that was going to take away
that internal feeling. There was no amount of money, no
amount of awards, no amount of comfort, no amount of
first class flights, no amount of even just having the
(05:46):
happy family and the perfect setup. Even if you didn't
have these grand ambitions, there was no external point of
life that would remove and jealousy unless they were removed
strategically and specifically. And so I want to dive into
just how normal this is because I think one of
(06:07):
the things that keeps us blocked is the guilt we
feel for feeling it. One of the things that keeps
us stuck is the amount we judge ourselves. Right, we
all feel achy like we feel upset at ourselves for
even feeling that way, especially when if it's about a
family member or a friend or someone in our life.
I know that we don't like carrying that feeling, and
(06:29):
I know you know what that feels like. So I
want us to move past that block by recognizing that
all of us struggle with this. So studies show that
seventy nine percent of women and seventy four percent of
men reported envying someone within the previous year. Now, the
research goes on to show that we envy less as
(06:52):
we age, and that makes sense because as we age,
certain things in our life become more clear, and certain
things in our life be come more set up to
a certain degree where we get a more realistic view.
So younger people were more likely to be envious about
academic success, social status, romantic relationships, and of course appearance.
(07:16):
And one of the studies showed that forty percent of
the people who were researched reported envying the romantic success
of someone else they knew, compared to less than fifteen
percent of people that were over fifty. And that makes
sense because the people over fifty were already in relationships.
But it's interesting how we do envy less as we age,
(07:39):
either by getting somewhere or getting something, or either by
maturing and I want to talk about that active maturing
rather than just naturally envying less. I think the natural
process of aging and envy and jealousy decreasing is great.
It's something we can all look forward to. But I
(07:59):
think and while we're in this space of managing it
and figuring it out, it's so important that we learn
to purify and neutralize these feelings because what envy and
jealousy do is that they end up blocking our growth,
and they end up blocking us from celebrating other people's growth. Right,
They're not useful emotions in that when they are negative
(08:22):
in our lives, it actually stops us from focusing on
our growth and our success and the past we want
to take, and it stops us from celebrating, appreciating, and
admiring others. One of the studies I looked at from
American psychologists Daniel J. Dell Priory and Sarah Hill and
David M. Buss, and this was from a great article
(08:45):
by Reine Zittelmann. And in that article, it breaks down
the common things that women and men envy, and that's
what the psychologists wanted to focus on. So women admitted
that they found these things they envied more so, they
envied physical attractiveness, they envied popularity, they envied social ease,
(09:10):
they envied family relationships, and they envied better clothing. Those
were generally the things that women envied, and the study
was focused on looking at the difference in what genders envied,
and men more frequently admitted that they envied other people's
romantic success, greater access to financial resources, ownership of status
(09:33):
item a particular thing, greater academic success, and superior athletic talent.
So it's really interesting to see how even as men
and women, we envy and are jealous of different things.
And that's why sometimes if you're talking to your friend,
your partner about it, you may find that you find
different things triggering. But the point is we all find
(09:54):
something triggering. I think that's what I always like to
recognize is that we may all have different challenges, but
we all have the challenge in and of itself. You're
not alone. You don't need to feel bad or guilty
or beat yourself up about having this trait. It is
a human trait, a human experience to have this trait,
(10:17):
and the majority of us are experiencing it someway or
the other. And the fact that you're here today because
you want to break through it and you want to
overcome it, I think is what we need to take
confidence in. And I'm always trying to shift your mindset
away from self judgment to break through because blocks growth.
(10:40):
Judgment stops you from taking action. Now, it's really interesting
because a lot of researchers have looked at the difference
between jealousy and envy, and there's lots of different versions
of this, and I'll only share what I learned during
my monk time, which I found to be very useful.
There's this idea that there is a difference between jealousy
(11:03):
and envy, and in among teachings, it was shared with
us that jealousy is passive and envy is active. And
what I mean by that is jealousy is where you're like,
I wish I had that. Envy is like they don't
deserve that, right. There's that slight difference, and it's important
(11:26):
for us to know which when we're struggling with because
one is a more extreme version of the other. Envy
is a more extreme version of jealousy. The idea that
not only do you want it for yourself, you don't
think the other person deserves it. That can be a
really harmful thought and harmful experience to yourself and others,
because it can push you away from the people you
(11:48):
deeply love. It can push you away from the people
that you deeply value, the people that mean so much
to you, the people that you believe in. Right, it's
so frustrating having this feeling when you're like, I love
this person, I want them to win, but I just
feel a little bit jealous about them. Right, So, what
I thought I'd do in order to direct and guide
(12:09):
and give structure to our conversation today is I wanted
to talk about the different types of how jealousy shows
up in our lives, because I think it's really important
to understand the different symptoms of how it shows up
so we can truly be vigilant. There are three steps
to making any change in your life. First is awareness,
(12:32):
the second is addressing it, and the third is amending it.
We first become aware, then we address, and then we amend.
And so first we have to become aware of where
are all the ways and all the places in how
my jealousy shows up. Now, the fact that you're here
shows to me that you're already self aware. It's already
(12:52):
something that you know is blocking you from achieving your
greatest potential. And that's what I've found about jealousy and
envy is that they suck out the energy from your
life and your focus so much because your energy is
all pointing outward instead of pointing inward and forward. Right,
that's a choice we get to make in our life.
(13:13):
Is our energy pointing outward because we're looking outward at
what everyone else is doing, or are we focused on
inward and moving forward ourselves. So let's start with awareness.
There are different types of jealousy, and all I want
you to do is make a mental note of whether
there's a tick next to this or a cross next
(13:33):
to it. Some of you may have a lot of ticks,
some of you may have a lot of crosses. But
I want you to refine your awareness, your radar of
how well you are being aware of this. And again,
we're going to do this in a safe space, a
non judgmental environment, because remember we're all struggling with this.
We all have a difficulty with this, we all have
a challenge with this. And as I tell you these stories,
(13:54):
an example some of which my team shared with me
in confidence, and they knew that I was going to
share on the podcast without naming names and giving away people.
I think it's really really important that you get a
sense of which ones you struggle with. So one of
the first types of jealousy is when you're going through
a challenge and other people are not going through that challenge.
(14:17):
So you're going through something but no one in your
life is going through that, and you're jealous because their
life is easier. You're jealous because their life is more
seamless or appears more seamless. You're jealous because you feel like,
I wish my life was that easier. I wish my
life was free of this stress that I'm having to
(14:38):
go through. How many of you have ever felt that?
Put your hand up right now, take a screenshot of
this moment as I walk through this list. This is
a great conversation started between your friends as well. I
know I've definitely felt this before. I'm going through something
I wish I didn't have to go through it, and
I can see other people are not going through it,
and I feel jealous of them. So if you're experiencing
(14:59):
this type of jealousy where you're going through a challenge
that others are not, and you're wishing you had their life.
There's a really key technique to improve this mindset, and
this technique is zoom out. The technique is called zoom out.
You want to zoom out to look at the bigger picture,
(15:23):
not the specific thing. For example, if you're looking at
someone else's life and you're going, I'm going through this
stress that person is not. I wish it was like
that for me. You want to zoom out. Let me
paint a picture for you. Let's say you and your
friend are both moving home or you're moving country. So
(15:48):
let's say in that scenario that your stuff gets lost
and their stuff doesn't. So their stuff arrives on time.
Your stuff gets lost. You're now stressed out because you're
dealing with talking to the moving company, you're talking to
the airline, you're talking to insurance, and you're looking at
their life and going, well, they've moved in, they're comfortable,
they're like watching Netflix with their partner, and like they're
(16:10):
thinking about furniture and all this kind of stuff, and
your stuff's all lost, and you're jealous of them because
you're like, I wish that happened to me, why didn't
it happen to me? In those situations, we have to
zoom out and look at the bigger picture. There are
so many moments in our life where our life will
be easier than others, and there are so many moments
(16:31):
in other people's lives where their lives will be easier
than others. And when you judge your life in one
moment as being better or worse than someone else's, you
could lose all the time if you focus just on
that specific thing, because just on that specific thing, your
stuff is lost. Now. I'm not saying you're not allowed
to feel stressed. I'm not saying you're not allowed to
(16:52):
feel upset. I'm just saying that when it comes to
that other person who has nothing to do with it,
absolutely nothing to do your situation, it's important to recognize
that maybe this part went seamless for them, but hey,
maybe them getting that apartment was really tough. Maybe they
waited months and months and months to find that apartment,
(17:13):
or maybe right now they just lost their job, or
maybe right now they're going through a personal thing, someone
in their family's going through something. I think it's so
interesting and easy when we focus on one area where
like I'm behind, my life's messed up. They're ahead, they're
doing great. But when you zoom out, it changes the
complete perspective of what's going on. And this is one
(17:38):
of the analogies I like to draw is between a movie.
If you walk in halfway to a movie, you may
think a character is having the most incredible time. Imagine
you walked in halfway to Wolf of Walk Street and
you see him driving the fast car. You see Leonardo DiCaprio.
Jonah Hill comes up to and goes, how much money
(18:00):
did you make this year? He's like, I made forty
nine million, just shy of a million a week. They
have that interaction. Jonah Hill's like, I'll quit everything, I'll
work for you. You see him on his yacht. When
you walk into that moment, everything seems great and you think, wow,
I'm jealous of him. But then if you really look
(18:21):
at what happened before, and then you look at what
happened afterwards, when you zoom out, you get a full
perspective of someone's actual story and journey. And so I
want you to zoom out when you're jealous or envious
if something specific about someone, Know that when you zoom out.
We all share in our trials and challenges. We all
(18:42):
have different things going wrong in our life. And Robin
Roberts once said that if we were all to throw
our problems into a pile, we'd grab ours right back,
because when we look at the perspective of the challenges
others are going through, even if ours is really tough,
there's a side where we're like, Okay, I can deal
with this, So I want you to zoom out now.
(19:04):
The next type of jealousy is when we want something
that doesn't have. I want that kind of a guy,
I want that kind of a job, I want that
kind of a house, I want that kind of an apartment,
I want that kind of vacation. Right, it's constant. We
want what other people have. We see what other people have,
and we go, that's exactly what I wanted. Why don't
(19:26):
I have it? And maybe if it tips into envy,
we go they don't deserve it either, they're a bad person. Right.
Sometimes we feel that way, and it's really interesting because again,
that's normal. It's normal. It's human nature to look at
what someone has and think I want it, especially if
it looks attractive, and especially if We've been conditioned for
(19:48):
certain things to look attractive, and that's the first thing
I want you to look at. Is it something that
you genuinely find attractive because you care? Or do you
find it attractive because so someone else cares? Have your
parents always told you people who buy a house are
set up for life? So now whenever you see someone
(20:08):
who's bought a house, you think, oh my god, people
who buy a house is set up for life. And
that voice is in your head, but you don't actually
believe that you're really happy in your rented apartment. Right
Where is that conditioning coming from? Have you had the
conditioning from your friends that you grew up with that says, oh,
if you're with this type of a guy or this
type of a girl, and that's the person who's got
it all together. Now you're carrying that voice in your head.
(20:33):
So when you see that you want something that someone
else has, I want you to ask yourself, is it
truly something you want? It's that self awareness piece. Is
this something that I really want to pursue and chase
or is it something that I'm just attracted to because
someone's told me to be attracted to it? Somewhere it's
(20:53):
not really that important to me, but it's become important
to me because of how I've been a bit and
conditioned to believe. So in that moment, ask yourself, is
this something I want? Is this something I want to pursue?
If the answer is yes, this is something that's important
to you, and it's not important to you because it
was important to your mom or dad. It's not important
(21:16):
to you because it was important to your friend at school.
It's not important to you because someone took a dig
at you or you saw something. If it's truly important
to you, ask yourself how your jealousy can become admiration
and attraction, and you go, let me study that person.
How can I do what they did to get there?
(21:36):
How can I study and learn from them? We turn
our judgment and our criticism into curiosity, and then we
ask ourself do I want to do that after we
study it? So the first question is is that what
I want? Or is that what society has made me want?
If it's what I want, let me study what they've
done and learn about what they've done, understand what they've done,
(22:00):
and then ask myself if I'm ready to do that.
This is how you transform through those three questions, you
transform your jealousy into admiration, appreciation, and attraction. Right, it's
easy for someone to see Christiano Ronaldo world fare a
soccer player and think I want that body. I want
(22:21):
to look like that, and then you study how hard
he works to look like that, and then you go, no,
I'm good, I don't want to look like that. Right,
you can appreciate and admire and respect it without having
to then think I want it because I don't want
to do the work. When you've done the added work
of studying, of learning, of being curious, it's so important
to transform our jealousy into admiration and attraction. Another technique
(22:46):
for when you want something that others have is you've
got to see jealousy as a sign. Right, You've got
to see jealousy as a sign if you study that person,
if you figure out it's something that you really want,
you can focus on building that. If you're fixated on
what everyone else is doing, you'll never have time to
(23:06):
invest on yourself. When you sit down right now and
write down a list of items, if you've clarified that, yes,
this isn't something influenced by my parents, Yes, it's something
I want. Yes, I've studied their lives. Okay, what are
my action items? How am I going to do that?
What do I need to do in order to get there?
Who do I need to call? Who do I need
to know? What do I need to learn? And those
(23:26):
action items stop you from having your emotional jealousy of
that person and shift you into giving your focus to
actually building that for yourself. You can either sit here
and watch how everyone else is decorating their homes online,
or you can start decorating yours right now. Right. You
can either sit on social media and look at how
(23:48):
everyone else is planning their holiday party, or you can
plan your holiday party right, whatever it may be for you.
We can either sit here and fixate on everyone else,
or we can invest in ourselves. And when we shift
that energy to invest in ourselves, incredible things can happen.
So I want you to sit down right now and
write down those action items that you've been putting off.
(24:09):
Studies showed that fifty nine percent of people felt sad
after seeing photos from a party they didn't attend posted
on social media. At forty five percent, we're unhappy after
seeing photos from a friend's happy holiday outing, plan your
own party, plan your own game night this week. Create
what you feel left out of, Create what you haven't built.
(24:30):
Another strategy that really helps with this particular type of
jealousy is something that one of my team members said beautifully.
Her name's Helena, she's our podcast lead here on Purpose,
and she said to me she heard something where someone said,
we're only jealous of people we know less about, and
(24:51):
we're not jealous of people we know more about. And
that's really interesting, isn't it. We want what others have
because we don't really know too much of how they
got there, how they got that, what work it took,
what sacrifices, what costic came at. And that's one of
the bigger challenges with social media. We know very little
about people on social media, and therefore it's an easy
(25:14):
way to feel jealous. Josh Noble, who wrote an article
quoting Kapersky Labs, he found that fifty seven percent of
people said that after going on social media, they've felt
that someone they follow has a better life than they do.
That is a big statement to believe that someone has
a better life than you do. But when you know
(25:34):
very little about someone, it's very easy to think that, right,
if you're only seeing five percent of someone's life, it's
easy to think that that five percent is their entire
one hundred percent of life. But when you know ninety
percent of someone's life, when you're closer to someone, you
actually have a healthier sense of the balance of the
different emotions they experience. So the key technique for this
(25:57):
type of jealousy is to find out more about people
you know less about and to transform jealousy into admiration
and attraction. Now, another type of jealousy, or another way
that it shows up, is being happy that others are
down right. When someone shares some bad news with you,
(26:17):
you kind of get a sense of satisfaction from it,
or you get a sense of appreciation like oh, thank god,
it's not just me, and it's like this awkward feeling
of yes, I don't feel alone, but I'm kind of
happy that they're sad too. Or you make someone else's
positives a negative. So someone tells you, hey, I just
(26:38):
got this new job and you're like, yeah, but you
don't really love the new boss, right, Or they're like, oh,
I got promoted at my work and they're like yeah,
but you don't really like the people you work with, right,
so we play down other people's success, or we turn
their positives into negatives, or at the very least, we're
happy when that person's struggling, or we get a sense
of just a sense of positive boost when someone else
(27:02):
is struggling. And that's a really, really tough feeling to experience,
even as ourselves. One thing that I want you to
learn to do in this is learn to empathize with
other people's pain and learn to celebrate other people's success.
If you learn to celebrate others people's success, here's what happens.
(27:22):
People will celebrate your success when it happens, even if
they don't. When you celebrate someone's success, you are partaking
in that success. It becomes part of your success story.
You get to engage with that energy, and the energy
you need to get out of the state you're in
right now is the celebration energy. When you feel positive
(27:45):
for other people's wins, you are now creating a positive
energy in your life for your win. You feeling positive
for their win doesn't take away any energy from yours.
It actually fuels you more. But you feeling negative towards someone,
whether they win or lose creates more negativity within yourself
(28:07):
towards your pursuit. See, you are harnessing an energy. Wayne
Dyer would say, if I squash an orange, the only
thing that will come out is orange juice. Well, if
you're squeezed and all you have is negativity, that's what's
going to come out. So if you're trying to create
something beautiful but you're holding onto this negative energy, we
have to understand. We have to talk ourselves out of
(28:30):
it because that negative energy perpetuates. And ultimately, what all
of this is is a transformation of thoughts. You're not
a jealous person. You're not an envious person. You're a
person with a jealous thought. You have been trained to
have a jealous thought. Human nature exists in jealous thoughts.
(28:51):
And whenever we have that jealous thought, we want to
say to ourselves, this thought is not me. This thought
is not useful, This thought is not helpful. Let me
celebrate other people's wins. Let me partake in their success
and let it be mine. Let me create positivity for
(29:16):
my pursuit by being positive for other people's pursuits. I
want you to save this moment of the podcast, and
I want you to listen to that again and again
and again. I want you to write it out in
your own words and repeat it again and again and again.
And I promise you what will happen is every time
you have a jealous thought, it will be replaced by
(29:36):
the thought that we just created together. And this is
something I did during my monk time. I wrote scripts
and scripts and scripts of the dialogue I wanted to
have instead of letting jealousy run rampant in my mind. See,
we have scripts in our mind that have been developed
over our whole childhood and adulthood. And we've never edited
those scripts. We've never rewritten them. We've never looked at
(29:59):
them and reviewvied them and thrown them in the trash
because they're not useful, they're not helpful, they didn't get
us anywhere. This is that moment where we burn those scripts,
where we rewrite them, where we review them, we edit them,
we completely, you know, start from a blank slate and
build again because those scripts, so your script becomes. Celebrating
others makes me more positive to pursue my goals. Appreciating
(30:26):
and admiring others helps me study their success and replicate it.
For myself. Appreciating someone else's win doesn't take away my energy.
It gives me energy, and putting down or feeling jealous
to towards someone's success actually takes energy away from mine.
(30:48):
In my first book, Thing Like a Monk, I came
up with this idea of the theater of happiness and
how there are an unlimited number of seats in the
theater of happiness, and we think that if someone else
is in the theater of happiness that we lose our seat.
(31:11):
We think there's a finite number of seats in the
theater of happiness, but actually it's an infinite theater. The
theater of happiness is an infinite theater, the type of
theater that we don't know about because we think if
we don't have VIP tickets, then we haven't got our seats.
Everything in the world is finite. There is a finite
number of VIP tickets, there's a finite number of coach tickets,
(31:34):
there's a finite number of economy tickets, there's a finite
number of tickets sold. But the theater of happiness is
the infinite theater, and the infinite theater is a seat
where every single person's name in the world is on
a seat. There's not two people's names on it. There's
not two numbers. Where you're stuck at the theater where
you're both like, wait a minute, that's my seat, where's
(31:56):
your seat? Oh, you try to steal your my seat.
It doesn't work like that. The next type of jealousy
is jealous of being left out. Jealous of being left out,
and I talked about that earlier, where we're sad when
people don't invite us to their party. Fifty four percent
of people felt upset when no one liked or commented
(32:18):
on a photo they posted. We feel rejected and left out,
and forty two percent were jealous when they saw a
friend had more likes or comments than they did on
a status update. Imagine you just announced you got engaged,
and your engagement post has less than someone else's, right,
it's and the jealousies. You feel left out, You feel
like your friends don't love you as much, You feel
(32:38):
like your friends don't care about you as much. One
of my team members gave this amazing example. She said
she went through in her teens. In her teens, two
of her friends were jealous of each other, and they
would tell her and she was jealous that they weren't
jealous of her. Right, Like, it's incredible the tricks our
mind plays on us. Like your two friends are saying,
(32:59):
I'm jealous of that friend, and then she's like, I'm
jealous of that friend, and you're there going I'm jealous
that neither of you are jealous of me. Right. This
feeling of being left out, this feeling of being rejected,
the feeling of being the last to be picked for sports,
whatever it may have been, that feeling that we're jealous
(33:20):
that we're not the care one, we're not the one
who's first picked, we're not the one who's most loved,
and it shows up in so many ways. And really,
this jealousy shows us and in a fear. We have
a fear of being replaced, a fear of being rejected,
a fear of being left behind, a fear of being judged.
(33:42):
The question we have to ask ourselves is we have
to look inward and say, where is that fear coming from?
Let me address that fear. Am I fearful because I
was left out when I was younger? Okay? Well? Am
I also trying to be part of groups that I
don't want to be a part of Like. I love
that movie Mean Girls, right, and it shows the perfect
(34:02):
example of Lindsay Lohan's character who's trying to be a
part of a group that she doesn't even agree with.
How many of us are trying to be welcomed or
fit into a crew of people that we don't really
want to be a part of. We just want to
be seen as cool, We want to be seen as respected.
How many of our inner fears are actually making us
(34:25):
focus on the wrong thing to be jealous about. What
if we did find a group in a community that
is actually aligned with our values, maybe it would naturally work.
Maybe we wouldn't feel replaced and rejected because we're not
trying to be part of a group where we don't
actually belong. Are we trying to force ourselves into a
group or community or squad that isn't our home? And
(34:48):
it's so important that we also build a unique relationship
with people. So often we try to be like someone
who's close to someone we like. We try to be
like their closest friend, we try to be like all
their friends. We change who we are into who we
think they want us to be. What does that make us?
(35:10):
It makes us a replaceable friend because we're now like
every one of their friends. But if you have a
unique relationship with someone, if you add something unique to
someone's life. I find that in my world, I see
myself as everyone's spiritual friend. I want to be their
friend to help them connect with their deepest voice, their
(35:31):
deepest essence. That's who I am to you. I want
to be a friend that reminds you of your greatest self,
your deepest potential, And that's who I am in my
life to my friends. I don't need to be the
friend who's the fun drunk. I don't need to be
the friend who's the coolest kid. I don't need to
be the friend who always is doing the best stuff
(35:51):
or as the best social life. If I tried to
do all those things, I'd fail at being me and
I could be replaced because other people can do that.
What is it that only you can do? I promise
you there's something. What is it that makes your relationship
with someone special? What if there was no hierarchy but
just diversity. What if there was no league table but
(36:14):
just love? Why is it always about number one, number
two and like my best friend, my bff, my second
you know my worst whatever. Why is it always like that?
Why can't it just be that we're being who we
are for someone. I really hope that this episode today
guides you in your journey with jealousy. What I want
(36:35):
you to take away is that it's a normal feeling.
It's a hard one to overcome, but it is possible,
and if you apply some of these techniques that I
mentioned today, I promise you that you'll start to see
a benefit in your life. I want to thank you
so much for listening, and I want to leave you
with the wise words from one of my team members
(36:57):
called Annie. She said, we're jealous of the people we
want to be, and not people who we don't want
to be. As we zoom out wide in our perspective
get to know more about the people we know less about,
it becomes an incredible method to overcome and break through
jealousy and start using it as a sign and using
(37:20):
it to be curious and study and rewire the thoughts
in our minds. Thank you so much for listening. I
hope you share this episode with someone who needs it,
Listen to it with your friends, and maybe even jump
into a conversation about it. I appreciate you so much.
Leave a review, tag me on Instagram with your biggest takeaways.
If you haven't heard the Tom Holland episode yet, go
(37:41):
and listen to it. It is absolutely epic. I'm so
grateful for all the love that we received for that one,
and thank you so much for being a listener on purpose.
I appreciate you deeply, lots of love. Albert Einstein once
(38:03):
said there are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other
is as though everything is a miracle. You might be
able to guess where I stand. The next seven minutes
are about leaning into a state of wonder. I'm Jay Shaddy.
(38:23):
Welcome to the Daily Jay. Let's start off as usual
with a few centering breaths inhaling and exhaling, expanding the
chest and relaxing, focusing on this moment and arriving in
(38:53):
the present. So in the mindfulness world, there's this well
known Buddhist instructor named Wesniska, or Scoop as he's sometimes
called now. Scoop isn't your stereotypical meditation teacher. He's also
a comedian, performer, author and radio commentator and He's constantly
(39:17):
exploring these massive existential questions like who are we, why
are we here? And if we're all made out of atoms,
which are ninety nine point nine nine nine percent empty space,
then what's holding your clothes on? He specifically has this
one exercise that I love, and really it's a whole
(39:37):
approach to life. It's called be here Wow. All you
have to do is reflect on the simple yet incredible
facts of life and allow yourself to be amazed. For example,
without you consciously doing anything, your heart flexes billions of
times over the course of your life, something blood through
(40:00):
your body, keeping you alive. And if you laid out
all your arteries and veins and search connecting them end
to end, they would stretch all the way around the earth.
Isn't that absolutely crazy to think about? Scoop calls be
here Wow a workout for your ore muscle. Basically, you
(40:23):
make your own jaw drop. In his words, one of
our finest capacities as human beings is to wonder at
ourselves and the world, no matter what is going on.
He's so right, or is one of our great powers.
When we mindfully direct our attention and curiosity, we can
(40:43):
positively influence our mood, cultivate gratitude, and maybe push pores
on some of our striving and searching, or allows us
to recognize that we are part of something bigger, something
frankly unbelievable, and when we do so, we become more
generous toward ourselves and others. As part of his be
(41:06):
here while practice, Scoop also likes to telescope out literally
and marvel at the vastness of the cosmos. I mean,
consider all the insanely improbable, mind boggling events that had
to happen for you to exist. The Earth forming billions
of years ago, evolution, opposable thumbs, technology, think about the
(41:30):
astronomical circumstances that occurred in order to get us here.
With that perspective, I'm extra happy to be here with
you today. And the truth is, there's so much delight
and awe to be found in our day to day existence.
If we just stop and look around, you might see
(41:51):
a hummingbird and watch as it flies backward. Or notice
the tree outside your window. How old is it? What
is it witnessed? I like to watch videos about space
exploration and blown away by all the things that had
to happen for people to land on the moon. Like
astronomer Carl Sagan said, the nitrogen in our DNA, the
(42:15):
calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the
carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors
of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff. It's
astonishing and like be here, wow, teachers. If we consciously
embrace that astonishment, we can transform each day, each minute,
(42:39):
each nanosecond of our wondrous lives. With that in mind,
let's work on building our all muscles as we turn
to our meditation. First, get comfortable wherever you are, settling
your body and settling your mind, letting go of any
(43:03):
urge to analyze or judge, to worry or plan, and
instead opening yourself up to the beauty of the world.
Now call to mind any simple yet spectacular fact of life,
(43:28):
and seriously, it can be anything you choose. Maybe that
a snail can sleep for up to three years don't
be jealous, Or that on average, kids ask forty thousand
questions between the ages of two and five, or that
(43:50):
you're the only you that ever was and ever will be.
It could even be the fact that right now your
breath is sustaining and nourishing you without you even thinking
about it. Whatever you choose to reflect on, see if
(44:16):
you can lean into a feeling of wonderment and truly
be inspired by awe. And now let's open this up
as you go about your day to day life. How
(44:39):
often do you experience a sense of wonder How often
do you look for it? What could you do to
incorporate the practice of be here wow into your daily routine.
(45:04):
If this message inspired you, remember that you can always
bookmark this session so you can return here when you
need a boost, and make sure to share it with
someone else who might need it. I can't wait to
see you again tomorrow. Have a wondrous day.
Host
Jay Shetty
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