Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to make jealousy your teacher.
Speaker 2: Instead of letting it eat you up, let it nudge
Speaker 2: you to do what you know you should be doing.
Speaker 2: Today's tip was inspired by Mel Robin's recent book, The
Speaker 2: Let Them Theory. In this book, she talks about letting
Speaker 2: other people be who they are with no expectations that
Speaker 2: they will be different. Then you can control how you
Speaker 2: react to who and how they are handled right. This
Speaker 2: mindset can be liberating by helping us focus on what
Speaker 2: is within our power to change and not what isn't anyway,
Speaker 2: Robin spends a section talking about how and why people
Speaker 2: compare themselves with others. Life is most definitely not fair.
Speaker 2: Some people grow up in troubled circumstances. Some people have
Speaker 2: fewer resources than others. Some people have health problems or
Speaker 2: are caring for family members.
Speaker 1: With health issues. It can be easy to compare and limit,
Speaker 1: but Mel notes that there are two different types of
Speaker 1: comparison that people engage in torture or teacher. You can
Speaker 1: use comparison to your advantage if you figure out how
Speaker 1: to make it more of your teacher. The first type
Speaker 1: of jealousy torture is when you are obsessed with something
Speaker 1: that you cannot change. Someone else being taller than you
Speaker 1: is an example here. There's really not that much you
Speaker 1: can do about it, nor can you change that your
Speaker 1: extended family all hated each other growing up, or that
Speaker 1: you needed to work to pay your way through college
Speaker 1: and other people could spend their summer's traveling. Since there
Speaker 1: is nothing you can do, then there is nothing you
Speaker 1: can do. Though, Mel points out that one practical mindset
Speaker 1: shift is to question why it is that you engage
Speaker 1: in upward comparison only. After all, we are almost all
Speaker 1: taller than someone Probably someone else's family was worse, and
Speaker 1: if you got to go to college, you are miles
Speaker 1: ahead of the billions of people on this planet with
Speaker 1: less access to education. Though that might help, but making
Speaker 1: jealousy your teacher can be a gold mine for you.
Speaker 1: Mel says in her book Here's why. She writes, if
Speaker 1: you are jealous right now about someone else's success, good,
Speaker 1: I'm happy for you. Jealousy is an invitation from your
Speaker 1: future self. It is inviting you to look more closely
Speaker 1: at someone else, not to make you feel inferior, but
Speaker 1: to show you what is possible. In many cases, the
Speaker 1: people we are most jealous of are not that different
Speaker 1: from us, and that's what makes us really crazy. If
Speaker 1: your neighbor was able to quit her job and start
Speaker 1: her dream business, well she's not some billionaire with a
Speaker 1: million connections. She literally lives pretty much the same life
Speaker 1: you do. If she can do it, then her success
Speaker 1: makes you look in the mirror and wonder why you
Speaker 1: are not doing it, because if she can, most likely
Speaker 1: you can. I love this idea. When I find myself
Speaker 1: jealous of someone, it's often because there's something I could
Speaker 1: be doing, but I'm not doing it, and that is
Speaker 1: on me. So let jealousy be your teacher, showing you
Speaker 1: what you really want and showing you exactly how someone
Speaker 1: else is doing it. Ideally, you can learn from them.
Speaker 1: In the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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