How to Overcome Jealousy? What really causes jealousy?

How to Overcome Jealousy? What really causes jealousy?

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Jealousy is actually a very positive emotion. Like all emotions, it is there to give you a message. The message is: Do not neglect your mate or you might lose them to that person or anyone like them.

Jealousy is not uniquely humans. Animals also feel jealousy - it’s called mate guarding.

When you feel the emotion of jealousy, you should respect and acknowledge its underlying message by asking yourself: How important is this person to me? Sometimes you don’t even know.

You have been dating someone for some time and you don’t think it is long-term. Suddenly someone else shows interest, and you are jealous. You become aware that this person is more dear to you than you realized and you don’t want to lose them.

How to Overcome Jealousy in Relationship? 

Jealousy, like all emotions, is NEUTRAL. But, the actions it can inspire can be GOOD or BAD. If the person responds to their jealousy by acknowledging the reality of how they feel and reach out to their mate and see if they feel the same way, it might be a positive thing. At its best, Jealousy can cause you to open you up and maybe open a window to a deeper and more fulfilling relationship.

It can trigger a conversation like this: “When I saw you speaking flirtatiously with x, I felt jealous. I realized that I like you more than I was ready to admit. How do you feel about our relationship?”

But we know that there are negative consequences to jealousy. At its worse, it can cause violence, verbal attacks, and emotional abuse. It can cause the person feeling jealous to act violently towards their romantic interest or the person they feel is a threat to his/her romantic interest.

This violence can take the form of actual physical abuse, verbal attacks or controlling behavior. If your response to feeling jealous is to tell your romantic partner: “I need your password for everything so that I can make sure that you are not cheating on me.” or “Do you just flirt with every warm body?!” will, those are attacks designed to not allow you to open up about your vulnerability (that what they do matters to you) and designed to manipulate your romantic partner into feeling so bad about themselves that they don’t engage in that behavior.

Article: How To Become Mentally Strong

Jealousy, for the most part, is not an emotion that is long-term. Once acknowledged and dealt with effectively, it is gone and replaced by other feelings like anger or rejection or fulfillment and love. If it lingers, then it is problematic and it is probably because you are refusing to acknowledge it by suppressing it.

That does not help you. If you are jealous of someone’s wealth, it is a message that you want to be wealthy too - that you covet this person’s wealth. You can ask yourself and say…do I really want this? Is this momentary or something that I truly desire? You can take action in trying to create your own wealth or saying that you don’t really want to pay the sacrifices required (including maybe family) to go get the wealth.

 Either way, try not to suppress your feelings of jealousy. Openly acknowledged it and you dealt with it. Message received and dealt with.

How to Overcome Jealousy? What really causes jealousy?

Here are some ideas about jealousy:

1. Jealousy is unpleasant:

What, you are jealous of someone? We are all jealous. All of us. And that is one of the emotions we are not so proud of. We’ll all brag about how happy and fulfilling our lives are. We’ll bitch when we’re angry. When we’re sad or disappointed, we will confess to our best friend. But when we’re jealous…we’ll keep it for ourselves. We’ll try to hide it. The truth is, we are not. Jealousy will not disappear only if we pretend it does not exist. We need to talk about it.

2. Jealousy is a compass:

Like a needle of a compass pointing to the north, jealousy will infallibly point to the things you desire the most. We usually feel indifferent about the things we don’t desire and goals we don’t identify with. But when I see someone pursuing his art and having a great, responsive audience, my face turns green! Am I a bad person? Probably not. This just means you are craving a creative expression rather than material possessions. Use your jealousy to define what you truly want.

3. Feel it, but don’t judge it:

When you recognize your jealousy, dig deeper and find out what is it trying to teach you. What desire is hidden underneath? And then accept it. Say: “Oh, wow. This is interesting. Good to know.” A big mistake that we make is that we are judging our jealousy and our dreams. We think we should not want what we want. And that is a big mistake.

4. Social media makes it worse:

Everybody is trying to put the highlights of their lives there. No one talks about dirty dishes, dirty diapers, working extra hours and having mac and cheese for dinner 5 days in a row. And that is life, too. Someone digs the photo from 5-year old archives (vacation in Mexico), posts it today and when you see it, you may feel as if your life is so boring. Social media gives us an unrealistic picture of life. If you find yourself being jealous so often, maybe it’s time to cut on social media.

5. Look at the whole picture.

Just like social media presents only the best of the best, we often perceive the people we don’t know much about based on their highest achievements. However, we usually miss the point because the impressive achievements always go hand in hand with hard work, focus and saying ‘no’ to instant gratification. Everyone is obsessed with Elon Musk, but I’m not sure how many people would like to have his work schedule. We would all like to have the benefits of going to the gym, without stepping away from our couch, which is impossible. When you realize your jealousy, look at the whole picture and make sure that you do not only want the shiny part of the package.

6. Jealousy can come in different forms:

Overly confident people, without any special reason to feel that way, PISS ME OFF. I can’t stand them. I thought the reason for it is my high moral standards. (Cough, cough.) But after watching the documentary about Tony Robbin’s, I started thinking about it in a different way. We are either attracted or completely repulsed (pissed off, as I would say) by the traits we don’t have. The first situation makes us gravitate towards partners that are very different from us. The second situation is a fit of jealousy in an unusual form. Look what traits drive you nuts. That is where you need to strengthen.

7. The comparison doesn’t make sense:

You and I are two completely different people with different experiences, desires, talents, preferences and the comparison between the two of us simply does not make any sense. IQ doesn’t make sense because there are different types of intelligence. Standardized tests try to compare diverse people on one uniform scale and miss the point. There are endless ways in which we can compare and none of them make any sense. Plus it makes us focused on our differences, rather than similarities and makes us feel separated.

8. Bless those who have what you want:

If someone is great, it doesn’t mean that he’s stealing the greatness from you and that you cannot be great as well. In this abundant universe, there is a place for all of us to be happy, fulfilled and outstanding in our own way. If someone else found an awesome job, it doesn’t mean there are fewer jobs available for you. It means that it is possible to get a good job, that if the other person did it, so can you. Cheer other people’s success. Even when you feel jealous. (Especially when you feel jealous.) If you judge what you desire, you block yourself from having it.


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