I used to be insecure and envy others. Here's my advice.

[Music] i want a partner like yours and i want friends like that guy and i want eyebrows like that girl and i want his popularity and money i want her bravery and intelligence and happiness i don't actively think about comparing myself to these people but it's inevitable a natural instinct as we collect information about our surroundings to evaluate how we're doing in life when i compare and i measure up i tend to feel good about myself when i compare and i measure down i tend to feel bad about myself though not also comparison leads to envy envy always starts with self comparison but it goes far beyond simply wanting something see not only do i want what you have but i don't want you to have what you have in fact i can't stand that you get to have it and i don't it's unfair i'm entitled to everything that everyone else gets to have why should i be any less if you were a little bit less happy then i'll get to be happier and if your relationship wasn't going so damn well i would feel better about being single everyone seems to like you and speak so fondly of you so when someone finally criticizes you it's deeply rewarding to me in fact you're not even that smart or pretty or funny or accomplished and you have something that i want i feel inferior to you so in order to at the very least feel equal to you i need to either bring you down or bring myself up and since it's easier bringing others down than it is working on lifting myself up that's what i will try to do yeah so something like that is an example of how envy may play out in a person's mind envy is when we see someone who has something that we want and so now we experience a gap between where we are and where we want to be what we have and what we want to have and it's how we respond to such gaps both emotionally and through our actions that we should pay very close attention to so i like to think of envy as a spectrum where on one end it's very hostile so similar to what i just demonstrated and on the other end it's very non-hostile and i figured we could take a trip down memory lane to explore both ends with the help of some examples from my life so the prime of my envy was probably in my early teens and what i would envy the most was other girls looks and specifically their bodies i was teased for being too skinny i don't think a day went by where someone did not make a comment about my weight and my body or at the very least someone would grab my wrist like this and say something like oh my god you're so skinny or watch out or you will break hi future lana here editing this video so they would actually grab it like this you know the good old circle grab that you use to determine how skinny someone is so that you can then proceed to telling them that they are too skinny and i remember liking this boy when i was like 15 and him not wanting to be with me because he said that i did not look womanly enough and then he sent me a photo of another girl's body to show me what a real woman is supposed to look like and i remember saving that photo and looking at it over and over again wishing that i looked like that and i would resent the girl in that photo or really any girl whose body looked like hers [Music] high school was a bit better although i would still get commented on it did not happen as frequently but i would still feel insecure and try to hide certain parts of my body so remember i had this long crossover bag and i would put the bag part over my bum to cover it up and to avoid getting comments that i had a small bum and real women should have a big butt you know thinking about that is really sad i wish i could go back in time and just tell that girl that it doesn't matter no one actually cares and you are beautiful but since i can't do that i will tell you if you are in a similar situation college was completely different you know no one cared what anyone else looked like and so i didn't care either i would still feel insecure at times but you know i was able to fully acknowledge someone else's beautiful figure without feeling any negative emotion towards them or towards myself and then upon graduating i had left pretty much all of that in the past i was free of intrusive thoughts and free of envy in that regard and that's where i still am to this day so let's start digging into what actually happened during those years and it's important to note here first of all that according to studies envy typically declines with age meaning that teens experience it more than adults so i would say that's the first thing that happened i simply grew older and secondly the whole reason i got to the point of feeling so inadequate and envious of others was because of the image of what my body should look like that had been pushed down my throat for so long for so many years by other people and i had believed in it but once i changed my environment and hence changed my surroundings aka going from school to college and no one was there to remind me of my inadequacy i guess i simply forgot about it you know i was now the sole judge of what i felt when i looked myself in the mirror and it turned out that i liked what i saw and i no longer needed anyone else's permission to do that and by the way this is not to say that we should blame other people for our envy or our insecurities i'm simply sharing how it played out for me in this particular case now upon graduating i experienced a different kind of envy i envied people who seemed to have their jobs and careers all figured out and who seemed happy with what they were doing because i did not have that so i tried to justify my position of dissatisfaction by thinking things like well the whole reason that they can even live their dreams is because they were luckier or they were better off or they got help they had access to things that i did not have access to and whatnot and even though there might have been some truth to that it was all just an attempt really to make myself feel better for not having what they had by attempting to minimize their accomplishments and this is something that we often do when experiencing envy now did it work did i feel better no of course not you know at best a victim narrative which is what that was will have you remain stuck but typically it'll actually move you backwards because now not only do you feel dissatisfied with life or career or whatever it might be but you also feel resentful now here is where we get to the part that i think really is worth reflecting on and it's how i currently deal with any envy that i may experience so what i ended up realizing was that really envy wasn't about any specific person you know it was only about what they had which in this example was an enjoyable career and in thinking this way you know in moving the person out of the equation and separating the message from the messenger or the possession or position from the person i was able to do two things so firstly instead of viewing anyone who possessed something that i wanted in a hostile way i started viewing them as people who had enlightened me you know someone who had helped me identify a gap in my life and perhaps even someone that i could set as an example or as a teacher and secondly i was able to get more clarity on what exactly it was that i was envying and i could decide what action should follow see in many situations in life there's the option of doing something useful or doing something that isn't useful or perhaps even harmful or doing nothing at all and how do we choose so i often find myself returning to the serenity prayer god grant me the serenity to accept the things that i cannot change courage to change the things that i can and wisdom to know the difference now i already have a video about quitting my job and pursuing what i'm doing now so i won't get into that here but this would be an example of non-hostile envy where my envy actually even led me to something good and now this all begs the question envy always a sign that we lack something we ought to be pursuing and is the best thing to do when experiencing envy to seek to improve ourselves or improve our situation well i definitely think that self-improvement is the better option as opposed to self-destruction or engaging in the destruction of others but there is also the option of simply doing nothing you know there may be a lot of things in life that we envy but that doesn't mean that having all of those things would improve our lives or make us happier every single emotion that we feel is not a sign that we need to change something sometimes we can just let ourselves acknowledge a feeling and then do nothing about it i like to think of it as seeing a sailboat passing you on a lake and not attempting to throw rocks at it but also not attempting to build your own but simply letting it pass you now sometimes we may envy someone for a skill that they have the good news is that skills are something that we ourselves can learn by using skillshare for example who is our sponsor today skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes on a variety of topics everything from video editing to writing to photography and marketing and i've gotten tons of value from the classes that i've taken on there for these past two years there's still so much more for me to explore there and i'm currently taking this class called context is key social media strategy in a noisy online world and is taught by none other than gary vaynerchuk and it's very thorough and i think it's really great how he covers so many different social media platforms in this class such as twitter instagram and pinterest now if you would like to check out that class or try out any class on a topic that may interest you personally i have a special offer for you the first thousand people to click the link in my description box will get a free trial of skillshare premium membership and after that it's only around ten dollars a month all right thank you all so much for showing up to this conversation here today please share your thoughts on the topic of envy i'm very curious as to what your experiences and could you relate to my experience at all let's chat about it in the comment section and as always i will see you there

Channel: Lana Blakely

Views: 1,930,887

Keywords: stop being jealous, how to stop being jealous, how to stop envying others, why is jealousy bad, why is envy bad, i'm jealous of other girls, body ideals, insecure with my body, skinny shaming, how to deal with jealousy, resentment, stop being resentful, introvert, introvert vlog, introvert life, be less jealous, become confident, comparing yourself to others, stop comparing yourself to others, how to stop comparing myself, self comparison, be more confident, stop comparing

Id: jvDK5nzERsA

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021