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Everyone suffers from jealousy. Even that friend of yours who is big on meditation, lectures you on never comparing yourself to others, and seems so sure of herself—yeah, even her. She’s just better at hiding it. It would be nice if we could just put on blinders, put our heads down, and simply focus on what we are doing—on our own progress, and our own achievements, and not on what anybody else has. But, that’s not how life works. We are often in competition with others—society imposes it on us. And it’s human nature to compare and contrast. Not just one person to another, but yourself to the world. And because it’s nearly impossible to ever have all of the pertinent information that would answer those questions of, “Well, why does that person get that and not me?” it’s only normal that sometimes, we’d feel jealous. That person may have what you want because she is well-connected, she worked ten times harder, she fills some slot required for diplomatic reasons, or who knows what else. If only we knew this information—it would be much more calming. The world would make more sense. But often, we just see that someone else has what we want, we don’t know why, and we feel jealous. Jealousy can make us do some silly, petty, and even reckless things. The good news is that you aren’t alone. Everybody can be weak and give into some immature instincts when envy takes over. You may just not know it, because they’re embarrassed, and don’t tell you. Much of what we do when we feel jealous, we can hide from the world—unless it has consequences. Even still, everyone’s done something they’re less than proud of when feeling envious. Here are things we all do when we feel jealous.
Investigate foul play
You begin to think there is some conspiracy at play. If someone got a career opportunity you wanted did she…pay someone off? Was there blackmail involved? Maybe they made a deal—she’d scratch their back if they scratched hers. Perhaps there is some secret society of gatekeepers, controlling things. You start investigating, certain this didn’t come about in a fair manner.
