Jealousy and The Zen of Competition

I want to have a little talk about jealousy and competition. So many people immerse themselves in the very negative emotion of jealousy like it’s just a normal part of life and it’s really a very self damaging karmic rabbit hole.

If you’re on social media or watching TV and someone you’re watching has what you want for yourself, or is doing what you’d like to do for yourself, or having a successful career, life, relationship etc. And you feel jealous. What are you actually feeling? What are you actually thinking?

Let’s break it down. Let’s start with the reasons you might be jealous. Say you’re looking at some successful person’s, some musician’s, model or actor’s social media and they’re going on about how great everything is going, and all their pictures and videos are perfect. Never mind they’re leaving out all the boring and disastrous crap that’s taking place in their lives. You feel that envy and negativity welling up in your heart. Why is that? Really. Why is that? Are you someone who wants to be where they are? If you are, how hard are you working towards it?

Back in the day if you wanted a career in acting you had to take lots of acting classes or major in it in college and pound the pavement on auditions beyond the point of feeling like giving up more than once or twice. If you wanted to model you had to test with a lot of photographers, go on go-sees and castings and try on clothes and walk for God knows how many designers, retailers, etc. and that’s whether you had an agent or not.

These days most clients and agents want to see how many social media followers you have before they will even consider taking you on. Actors reels and models portfolios are all online. In short, it takes a lot of persistent hard work and these people get casted and booked based largely on their social media presence.

If you are an aspiring actor or model you know what the deal is. Why are you jealous? Why are you expending so much negativity on what someone else is achieving? Is that negativity helping you move forward? Of course it isn’t! What it’s doing is cementing you in your feelings of loserhood.

If you want to be a successful musician you’d better know your shit and be damn good at it. You need to learn not just your instrument, singing, songwriting, or composition, you have to learn showmanship. You have to work on stage presence. Before social media and before COVID you had to play all kinds of gigs in crappy clubs for shit money or no money to build an audience. Now social media presence is everything and it takes a lot of the physical work out of that.

That super successful salesperson? Trust me, they’re actors just as much as any actor you see on TV. They’ve learned how to relate to all kinds of people and make them feel comfortable and respected. They are great listeners and their energy exudes confidence, self respect and expertise about their product whatever it may be.

No matter what field or occupation you’re in or aspire to, you know the hard work you need to do to get where that successful person is. Stop wasting your energy on jealousy and negativity and focus it on the work you need to do daily. Be happy for the people achieving what you want for yourself. And if you don’t want to do the hard work, you don’t even have the right to feel jealous.

Perhaps jealousy and negativity is how you think being in a competitive field works. I know a lot of people think that competition requires a tremendous outpouring of negativity towards those they’re in competition with. You see boxers facing off at the weigh in, or athletes talking shit about their competitors. Is that how you learned the ins and outs of being in a competitive field? That’s not competition, that’s entertainment. You are being pulled into the superficial drama of that sport. It makes you watch the game, the competition. That is not the actual competition.

I feel very sorry for those who are going through life thinking they’re in competition with everyone for everything. If you are competitive with and jealous of people you are not any in any kind of competitive professional field with, that’s a neurosis and you need to sit down with a therapist. If it’s about being the prettiest or smartest person in the room? For crying out loud get over it. That’s egotistical nonsense. Get your ego stroked by the people who genuinely care about you or learn to do it yourself.

I’m going to say this now and I want you to take it in very thoughtfully.

Competition creates itself no matter what you’re focusing or wasting your mental energy on.

I’ll say it again.

COMPETITION CREATES ITSELF.

In truth you really don’t have to think about anything other than being your absolute best.

It makes no difference what anyone else is doing.

Does that make sense to you?

Competition creates itself.

There’s going to be competition no matter what your mind is on.

So you’re not an actor, or musician, you don’t have talent in that direction. So you’re not model material, so what? So you don’t sell real estate, cars, luxury kitchens and bathrooms etc. Why are you jealous? Will jealousy bring you the skills, talent or the looks? No it won’t. It will make you feel like shit.

You’re wasting your energy and wasting your life on jealousy. You’re digging yourself into a negative karmic hole, because that negativity has your name on it and it will come back to you sooner or later. It’s your point of attraction. YOUR point of attraction. No one else’s. And you dig yourself into an even deeper karmic hole if you physically act out on that jealousy.

Why are you jealous of a 19 year old when you’re 50? Will that bring your youth back? Sure, on a physical level being 19 is great. On that level it beats being 50 by miles. On a mental and emotional level, even if you’ve handled your life as little as half decently, being 50 beats 19 by light years. Be proud of what you’ve gained from your life experience.

At the foundation of jealousy is a feeling of not being worthy, not being enough, not being as good as someone else, in short, shitty self esteem. You are entrenched in the belief of your own lacking as a human being. No matter that you may be successful in other ways or intelligent enough to hold advanced degrees in something.

That jealousy is telling you that you have a deep flaw in your sense of self. The next time you’re feeling jealous, stop focusing on the person who is making you feel jealous and turn your eyes onto yourself. What are you feeling about yourself in that moment? Why are you feeling like that about yourself in that moment? What do you need to change in your thinking to feel better about yourself?

It doesn’t matter if you’re jealous because someone is better looking, more talented, more successful, wealthier, more intelligent, has a better relationship. It all boils down to one thing. You don’t like yourself when you focus on them. As a matter of fact, you’re outright hating yourself when you focus on them.

Think about it. Who else could you ever possibly be? You are stuck with yourself, you might as well make the best of it. And the next self examination you need to do, is how much are you hating yourself in general during the course of your average day?

Jealousy is a deep self esteem issue. Jealousy is about you and what you feel you lack as a human being and no one else. And besides, it feels just plain horrible. Do you like feeling horrible? How horrible do you want to feel in your precious limited number of days in this life? It’s a tremendous waste of your life. And as I said before, a very negative karmic rabbit hole.

Focus on you. If you want to be what or where someone else is, go for it. You do the hard work and feel better about yourself for making the right moves and achieving the goals it takes to get yourself where that other person is. When you see someone who is where you want to be, feel happy for them. Because you know that’s how you’ll feel when you achieve that too. Be genuinely happy for other people’s success. It will set your point of attraction in a really good place. That’s a very good Karmic rabbit hole to go down.

Ultimately you’re only in competition with yourself. How much better today can you be than you were yesterday? All the top actors, athletes, musicians, business people, entertainers all say the same thing. They’re only in competition with themselves.

The myth that there can be only one winner is bullshit. Life is not a zero sum game. There is room for an infinite number of winners. The only thing that creates a zero sum game is our belief in it. Give yourself a break and give yourself a chance. Don’t waste your precious life on jealousy and imaginary competitions.

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