How to Use Jealousy as a Potent Tool for Creating the Life You Desire

ChangeHappiness

Jun 22

When I was a drinker, I was a very jealous person. I was jealous of a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But, mostly, I was jealous of people who have autonomy over their career—people who attract wealth exploring their passions, people who make their own hours, and people are able to travel whenever they want.

I looked at successful people, and I remember thinking it must be nice to be you. I remember thinking, somehow, they were different than I am.

Something radically shifted when I changed my relationship with alcohol. I recognized that the very things I was jealous about were not things that just happened to other people. They were things that needed to be created.

I realized that maybe I could actually start doing something that I really wanted with my life. If I wanted to publish a book, I could take a pen and actually start writing something down. If I wanted to launch a business, I could take the first baby step and buy a domain. It dawned on me that everything that made me jealous was something I could accomplish by taking baby steps.

Use Jealousy as a Tool

I want you to be able to use jealousy as your own potent tool to create a life you desire. Jealousy is a great tool to uncover what you really want. Maybe you’re too scared to admit you’re deepest desire. Maybe you don't feel worthy of claiming a certain dream yet, so you feel jealous.

Think about it. How many people are intentionally creating lives that they really, really want? How many people are intentionally designing the life of their dreams? How many people just fall into careers or fall into living in a random city or fall into a certain way of doing things? They stay stuck because they never ask themselves what they really want.

Jealousy shows you what you really want. For example, let’s say someone is a coach or a public speaker, and it really grinds your gears whenever they post on Facebook. You're jealous. You're confused. Maybe you’re even a little critical. You think they’re a bit of a show off. That jealousy is pointing to something inside of you. It points to this deeper yearning, a message that you have to share. You have something inspiring you could say, but you're not. You're not saying it, and this other person is.

Turn Jealousy Into Action

If you're jealous, it's time for you to take action. Whatever you’re jealous of—whatever you feel like you’re lacking—it's up to you to create that or include that in your life.

When I was still working at my old job in higher education, I was super jealous of my colleagues who traveled all the time. Back then, I never traveled. When I changed my relationship with alcohol and started using my jealousy as a tool. Using my jealous, I planned and went on trips to far-flung destinations. I went to Hawaii, Scotland, and Costa Rica. I energetically started claiming my jealousy and making goals and taking action.

I was also jealous of all the people out there writing books and starting their own businesses. I wanted to do those things. That jealousy that I experienced was this beautiful tool to show me what I really wanted. Now, my life is now built around travel. I travel with my laptop. I don't have a boss, I don't commute, and I don't have to sit in traffic in the morning. I work for myself, and I have autonomy. I have all the things that I really, really wanted so long ago. These days, I turn jealousy into a tool to express what I really want in my life, and then I go after it.

Remember, if you’re jealous of a public speaker, that means you also have a message that you want to share. If you're jealous of a writer or an author, it means that you also have a book inside of you. Once you determine what you're jealous of and what that means, you can take a baby step in that direction.

Take Baby Steps

When you hone in on your desire, there is always a baby step to take. If you're jealous of an author, it might seem far-fetched to write a book tomorrow. However, you can set aside 15 minutes to sit down and write an outline. The baby steps themselves are not monumental. They're not these huge things you have to do. They're just one right step in the next direction.

You might now know how to get from here to there or how to fully realize your dream. That’s okay. Just follow the first baby step. The universe works in miraculous ways. When you follow that first baby step, your intuition will show you what the next baby step is. For me, my first baby step was buying a domain. My next baby step was to actually share it—to come out as alcohol-free on social media and say that I wanted to help people change their relationship with alcohol. Then I started to post consistently on social media. From there, I began taking steps to create my signature program Become Euphoric, an eight-step framework to help people ditch alcohol, and to launch my own business as an alcohol-free life coach. Every baby step just kind of showed itself to me. It’s like being a bricklayer. You just put it down brick by brick by brick, and eventually you have a house.

Here’s Your First Baby Step

What I want you to do right now is to figure out what you're jealous of, who you're jealous of, what they’re doing, and why it makes you jealous. Then I want you to write it down. Like I said earlier, most people don't know what they want. If they do, they won't actually say it. They won't articulate it. They don’t have the courage to actually put it out there. By claiming it, even if it’s just in your journal, that is a huge, huge step. Once you know what you want, you can take the next baby step in that direction.

Also, from now on, I want you to stop thinking “it must be nice” when you’re jealous. Why? Thinking “it must be nice” is reinforcing the fallacy that, whatever that other person has, you can never have it. You are not worthy of it. You will never create it in your lifetime. That shuts down all creativity, all intuition, all ambition, all drive, and all momentum. All of your empowerment just goes right out the window. Banish the phrase. Just because you don’t have something right now, it doesn't mean it's not coming for you. It doesn't mean that it's not going to happen for you. You just have to be patient and actually start working on it. When you see someone living a life that you admire or doing something that makes you jealous, I want you to thank the universe for showing you what you really want.

Want to read more about the potent tool of jealousy? I talk about jealousy and using it to your advantage in my book, Euphoric: Ditch Alcohol and Gain a Happier, More Confident You. Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin also shows us how to use jealousy as a potent tool in her book, The Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin is a happiness expert with four New York Times bestsellers. But did you know that she originally was a clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court justice? She was successful, but she wasn't happy. When she noticed she wasn’t happy, she asked herself, Who am I jealous of from high school and college? Who am I jealous of in my network? The answer was all her writing friends. That led her to start writing The Happiness Project.

Jealousy is a really powerful tool. Use it. Transform that so-called negative emotion into a signal—a signal that what you really want is out there and it wants you back. You just have to start working for it. Take that very first baby step. If you want my help to take the next steps and to get confident in your alcohol-free identity and discover your greater purpose, book a discovery call here.