In the day and age of social media where it gets more and more tempting to post highlights in order to fit in, I wonder why platforms such as facebook are cited as leading causes of dissatisfaction. I mean, gratitude is a big component of a happy life, so why gratitude-type posts lead to misery?
I’ll set the intention aside, as I can’t get into the mind of the person doing the post and I’ll focus on the receiver, the person viewing the posts. Why is somebody’s success making me feel inferior? Shouldn’t somebody else’s gratitude for their success feed my gratitude?
Comparison inevitably leads to inferiority. We’re ok as long as we are doing better than somebody else, but sooner rather than later we’ll run into someone who appears to have that something we’ve been craving for a long time. This is where choice comes into play, because if we don’t make a conscious effort, default beat up thoughts will set in.
At first I was going to run with the quote form Solon “Count no man happy until he be dead,” but that, though true in many regards, would feel a bit too judgmental for me.
I prefer to focus on myself, as I am the only person I can control. Come to think of it, what triggers my envy now is different than what used to. For example, as a single person I used to feel inadequate when seeing happy couple’s pictures. Now through the eyes of an engaged man, who learned how to love the hard way, I wish the people in the picture to use their partner as a mirror that leads to countless, mutual love discoveries … Relationship envy fully transformed.
I do the same for other areas of my life. Whenever envy comes, I take it as a reminder of how I am still on a love journey, which will inevitably end in a transformation … and so for now I am just taking a pause to recognize that even though I have come far, I still have spaces in my life, which in their due time will take me even farther.
What triggers your envy? How do you transform it?
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