I have been told that envy is my least becoming quality. But what do you expect from a girl who grew up with three gorgeous sisters within three years of me? Cute junior-high boys used me to get to my popular twin sister, and the lady who cleaned my childhood house referred to my older sister as "the pretty one." That’s fodder for an insecurity problem.
Now I know that the fastest way to despair is by comparing one’s insides with another’s outsides, and that Max Ehrmann, the author of the classic poem "Desiderata," was absolutely correct when he said that if you compare yourself with others you become either vain or bitter, or, as Helen Keller put it: "Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged."
But Helen and Max don’t keep me from going to the land of comparisons and envy. Before long, I’m salivating over someone else’s book contract, or blog traffic numbers, or "Today Show" appearance. Then I have to pull out my set of directions–these 12 techniques–that will lead me out of the continent of jealousy and home, to self-acceptance:
1. Get more information.
Most of the time we envy one quality about a person, and we presume the rest of her qualities are as perfect as the one we want. That’s usually not the case. Think Rain Man. Boy did he know how to count those straws and play poker. But his social skills needed some fine-tuning, yes? Do some research on the person you want to temporarily destroy and you will find that she has her own set of problems and weaknesses. Moreover, if you consider her success in context, you’ll see that she hasn’t always been a superstar–that maybe, just maybe, back when you got a blue ribbon for the fastest freestyle swimmer in the 7 to 8 age group, she was afraid to dive in the pool or couldn’t figure out how to swim without getting water up her nose. My point: you don’t have the full story. Once you do, you’ll feel better. I think.
2. Give her a nickname.
This sounds petty and immature. I guess it is, but it works! The purpose of this technique is to find a little humor in your jealousy, because if you can laugh at it you will spend less time beating yourself up, and more time doing productive things that make you feel better, not worse, about yourself. One night I was reading a book by a woman who gave me a great inferiority complex. I wanted to be her. I envied her in the worst way. She was smarter than me, younger than me, blah blah blah (you know the drill). Until I read aloud a sentence to Eric and he made fun of it and gave her a nickname. Granted, this activity isn’t found in the Bible. We are not supposed to mock. But attaching a simple nickname to a person as a reminder to not take this thing too seriously … well, it works wonders.
3. Compliment her.
"WHAT?!? You can’t be serious," you’re thinking to yourself. Actually I am. And it works. I don’t really understand why, but it does. I have tried it numerous times. Last year I came across a blogger I envied. She had two degrees from Yale. (I scored 1,000 on my SATs). Her books were bestsellers. (I had just received a royalty statement that said more copies of my book were returned than sold, so I got to see what a negative royalty figure looked like.) Her Technorati score (blog traffic) was, well, much better than mine.
So…. I could have stewed over this. Actually I did, and tried to think of a nickname, but I couldn’t come up with one. But then I did something very counterintuitive. I e-mailed her to tell her how impressed I was with her, and I would very much like to interview her on Beyond Blue. When I started reading through her blogs, I found this great story about her feelings of insecurity regarding a fellow writer whom she felt somewhat threatened by because he was writing on the same topics as she was. What did she do about it? She contacted him and took him out to lunch.
I couldn’t believe that she had moments of insecurity too! I mean, she’s got two Yale degrees! Nowhere in her bio did it mention insecurity. But by complimenting her, and connecting with her, and dare I say befriending her, I learned that she is just like me–with some outstanding strengths but some fears and reservations and insecurities, as well.
Read the rest on Beyond Blue on Beliefnet.com.
Comments are closed.