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How many times have you wished you had “their” house, or “his” car, or “her” well behaved kids? How many of you have seen a pretty person walk by and wished you looked like them or felt confident like them? How many of you have seen others take trips or vacations with their family and felt sorry for yourself because you just couldn’t make it work for one reason or another? How many of you have went to desperate measures to change things in your life just so you could “fit in” or feel good enough? That, my friends, is the Green Monster I am talking about. This Green Monster that keeps rearing its ugly head at us…day in and day out, it has a name. Its’ name is “Jealousy”.
Feeling resentment towards someone else’s success is one of the scariest feelings we can have in our society today. Let me say that again…when we are jealous…we should be scared. When the green monster comes out of nowhere to frighten us, we should literally run as fast and as far away as possible in the other direction.
Why do I say we should be scared of this monster? Why do I describe the feeling of jealousy as “scary”? It’s scary because when it jumps out to scream at us, it tells us that Our.Life.Isn’t.Good.Enough!!! It tells us that we don’t measure up. It brings other feelings of defeat, self-loathing, and depression to the forefront of our life. It sometimes tells us to be competitive, to hurry up and make changes, so that we can do better and be better than other people in our life.
It doesn’t matter if you are the richest person in America or the poorest. It doesn’t matter if you are the most beautiful person in the world or one who feels the worst about their looks. It doesn’t matter if you have a good family or one that feels like it is falling apart. Everybody experiences jealousy. Everybody. And everybody, at some point in time, wishes they had something that someone else has. Everybody wants to be something or someone they are not.
So, why do we have these feelings? Why does it always seem that our life does not measure up to others? It all comes down to the society we live in. If you look around, it seems that everyone is trying to compete for the “best life” compared to everyone else. Look at all of the social media posts out there. Most of them are happy and cheerful showing that “your friends” have the best life, not you. We all want to win at this game called “life” and when we don’t win, we become jealous & even sometimes competitive.
I have to admit, and if I am being honest with myself and you, I fall into this trap…pretty easily, in fact. While I may never have cared about sports competition over the years (as I am generally an uncoordinated person), I have always been competitive and have always wanted to win.
Let me paint this picture for you as my children know it best. It didn’t matter if my children were 2 years old, 12 years old or 22 years old…when it came to playing games, I ALWAYS tried to win! Candyland, Sorry, Guess Who, Battleship, Memory…whatever the game, I not only always tried to win, but most of the time, I would. (I guess it is easy to beat a 2yr old at Memory). My husband would have to remind me, at times, that they are just children, and I should maybe back off a little & let them win. But I still had a hard time with it. I love to win. We all love to win!
So, if I am competitive with board games, you better believe I can easily fall into the trap of being competitive in life, and I always wanted to make changes to do better and to be better. The green monster had no problem scaring me on a regular basis until I finally figured out a way to scare it back.
This moment happened for me when I realized one very important thing…the Green Monster was never pushing me to do better or be better. That is a feeling I have to seek on my own by trying to better myself, NOT to compete with others. All the monster was doing was scaring me away from my own happiness that was right in front of me. The happiness that existed all around me that I never really appreciated and that I consistently took for granted.
Jealousy & competition with one another is blinding, and I mean truly blinding. It blinds us from being thankful for the roof over our heads, too much food to eat, a family who loves us, and more in life than we could ever want or need. It scares us away from enjoying the peaceful moments in our life like sitting down with a good book in our favorite chair, or working a little less one day to spend some extra time with our family, or enjoying a peaceful walk through the quiet park. The moment we realize this is the moment that the Green Monster stops scaring us and controlling us.
Does that mean the green monster will be locked away forever? Of course not! He is always there trying hard to make us feel insignificant, less than, and not worthy. He is always there forcing us to be competitive and pushing us to be better than everyone and everything. It’s something that we will have to work at every single day.
So, let’s try this together…every time we feel that monster around the corner (you know that feeling I am talking about), let’s pause, take a breath, and name one amazing thing that we are so lucky to have in our life. We truly do get to make our own happiness, and we don’t have to spend our life with the green monster anymore.
Every single day you get to make the choice to be happy. It isn’t always an easy one to make, but I suspect that if you do, you will experience some of the same things that I did. You will find happiness in ways you never expected. You will find yourself being more thankful than you ever imagined. And maybe, once in a while, you might just even give in and let your children win at that Candyland game because you will have finally realized, that in the big picture of life, winning & being the best, well, it really isn’t everything.
Xoxo
Marsha
*For those of you struggling with something in life or have a topic of interest that you want me to talk about in this blog, email me at BeYourBestSelfBlog@gmail.com. Let’s work together to Be Our Best Selves!
Photo Credit: Photo by Luis Dalvan from Pexels
Contentment comes with age, I think. It’s hard not to get caught up with what everyone else has or what they think you should have. Being happy is the best! Counting your blessings is the way! Great reach Marsha!
Anne – thank you for your insight! So so true! I sure hope contentment keeps coming with age because there is nothing better than being happy right where you are at in life. xoxo Marsha