Make jealousy your teacher

Envy can give you a nudge to do what you know you want to do

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to make jealousy your teacher.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Instead of letting it eat you up, let it nudge
you to do what you know you should be doing.
Today's tip was inspired by Mel Robin's recent book, The
Let Them Theory. In this book, she talks about letting
other people be who they are with no expectations that
they will be different. Then you can control how you

(00:43):
react to who and how they are handled right. This
mindset can be liberating by helping us focus on what
is within our power to change and not what isn't anyway,
Robin spends a section talking about how and why people
compare themselves with others. Life is most definitely not fair.

(01:06):
Some people grow up in troubled circumstances. Some people have
fewer resources than others. Some people have health problems or
are caring for family members.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
With health issues. It can be easy to compare and limit,
but Mel notes that there are two different types of
comparison that people engage in torture or teacher. You can
use comparison to your advantage if you figure out how
to make it more of your teacher. The first type

(01:36):
of jealousy torture is when you are obsessed with something
that you cannot change. Someone else being taller than you
is an example here. There's really not that much you
can do about it, nor can you change that your
extended family all hated each other growing up, or that
you needed to work to pay your way through college

(01:57):
and other people could spend their summer's traveling. Since there
is nothing you can do, then there is nothing you
can do. Though, Mel points out that one practical mindset
shift is to question why it is that you engage
in upward comparison only. After all, we are almost all
taller than someone Probably someone else's family was worse, and

(02:19):
if you got to go to college, you are miles
ahead of the billions of people on this planet with
less access to education. Though that might help, but making
jealousy your teacher can be a gold mine for you.
Mel says in her book Here's why. She writes, if
you are jealous right now about someone else's success, good,

(02:41):
I'm happy for you. Jealousy is an invitation from your
future self. It is inviting you to look more closely
at someone else, not to make you feel inferior, but
to show you what is possible. In many cases, the
people we are most jealous of are not that different

(03:02):
from us, and that's what makes us really crazy. If
your neighbor was able to quit her job and start
her dream business, well she's not some billionaire with a
million connections. She literally lives pretty much the same life
you do. If she can do it, then her success

(03:22):
makes you look in the mirror and wonder why you
are not doing it, because if she can, most likely
you can. I love this idea. When I find myself
jealous of someone, it's often because there's something I could
be doing, but I'm not doing it, and that is
on me. So let jealousy be your teacher, showing you

(03:47):
what you really want and showing you exactly how someone
else is doing it. Ideally, you can learn from them.
In the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for

(04:12):
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia. Please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or

(04:36):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.