Feeling Jealous?

To be honest, all of us have felt jealous of someone else’s success at some point in time. I don’t like being jealous but I didn’t know how to remedy it either until recently. This post is not meant to be preachy, this post is just me sharing my learnings and hoping someone might benefit from it.

To battle the feeling of jealousy we must first examine why we are feeling jealous. Is it because we want to see the other person’s downfall for whatever reason or is it because your own ego is taking a beating when you look at someone achieving something commendable. If it is the former then this post is not going to be helpful because I haven’t had to deal with that feeling personally. If it is the latter then this post is for you.

I used to feel this sense of sadness whenever I saw someone around me doing very well because I knew as soon as my parents will come to know about it, they will turn and ask me , ‘ Look how well he/she is doing for themselves, what have you done so far?’ just like any other typical Indian parent. And quite frankly it sends a wrong message to the child on the receiving end. Instead of learning to appreciate someone’s success, they learn to bash themselves internally and be miserable. I never gave much thought to such feelings before but after getting into spirituality I was forced to confront these emotions within me.

I never wanted to feel jealous of my friends’ or cousins’ for their success. I wanted to celebrate with them but this gnawing feeling of jealousy would make me miserable and guilty for not being the person I wanted to be. There were times when I would feel so sad that I would go to my room and cry my heart out.

On one such occasion when one of my close friends was being lauded for their achievement, I started to feel the first pangs of jealousy but I forced myself to congratulate them heartily. And then miraculously I started feeling better, happy even. I realised I had stumbled upon a remedy for my problem. Next time onwards whenever I started to feel jealous I would consider the other person my family and congratulate them very heartily and almost instantly I felt delighted and truly happy for the other person.

So, the next time you feel inferior and jealous at someone else’s success just walk up to them with a big smile and convey your heartiest congratulations. You’ll see how jealousy cowers in the face of love and grace.

I hope you found this article useful. Thank you for reading this post and giving me your time. Pranaam.