you ever embellished your financial standing?
4 Have you ever purchased something you couldn’t afford to impress others?
5 Do you feel good about the things that you have acquired?
Jealousy, Insecurity’s Close Cousin
Being jealous of someone is to have resentment that they have something you don’t. You somehow believe them to be a rival and your competitor. Jealousy can also include the fear of being replaced by another person. This type of jealousy can creep into relationships. It’s a destructive emotion that combines negative thoughts with feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something or someone you value.
Jealousy can present itself through a combination of emotions, such as anger, resentment, inadequacy, helplessness, and disgust. It can lead to fear of abandonment and feelings of rage. Everyone at some time or another has either felt jealous or experienced someone being jealous of them. While it is a familiar human emotion, it can be crippling and can destroy relationships.
There are different types of jealousy that are part of the human experience:
Family. Sibling rivalry is the most common type of family jealousy. This can happen when there are constant comparisons made of one sibling to another and/or there is more attention or favoritism given to one over the other. This behavior promotes the thought of a family member being your competitor or adversary.
Workplace jealousy. This happens when someone feels threatened by another person’s abilities, appearance, status, and/or business relationships. When one person feels that they are deserving of what their colleague may have gotten—promotion, raise, project, or attention—an adversarial, and sometimes hostile, work environment may exist and can be the cause of conflict and power struggles among team members.
Romantic jealousy. This emotion can be experienced in long-term or short-term relationships. It’s one of the most common types of jealousy because of the strong emotional bonds that can leave one open to potential heartbreak. If there’s a perception or belief that one person is giving more attention or time to someone outside of the relationship, jealousy will bloom. Even the sight of a random attractive person may cause a normally secure partner to be concerned that they could be replaced.
Friendship jealousy. This is the form of jealousy that is felt in friendships. It stems from the same type of insecurities that are felt in other relationships: feelings of comparison, a fear of being replaced, and feelings of competition. For women, they may feel replaced (or that they will be replaced) by another female friend or by a new boyfriend if their friend starts to date. The same applies to men.
If you understand that jealousy stems from insecurity, then you can work toward building your confidence, which will help you rid your mind and spirit of jealousy.
Kick Up the Confidence
Now let’s examine how to overcome and manage insecurity. We do this by looking at its opposite trait: confidence. Confidence is believing in yourself, your powers, and/or abilities. Self-confident people are assertive, optimistic, eager, independent, trustworthy, and have the ability to handle criticism and accurately assess their capabilities. Self-confidence is like money—we all think that everyone else has more of it than we do. In reality, it’s rarely something that comes naturally or without any effort.
The effort that you put in to building your self-confidence will be worth it to help you get where you want to in life. In fact, self-confidence is one of the key ingredients to your success. Without it, it’s virtually impossible to accomplish your goals. We established in the previous chapter that you cannot be successful without establishing goals. In turn, you have to believe in your ability and power to achieve your goals. However, having self-confidence does not mean that you will always succeed in what you do. If you examine the record of accomplishment of every successful person, you will find that they failed more often than they succeeded. However, they never dwelled on their failures. They concentrated on their goals, believed in themselves, and pushed ahead. Trusting in your abilities gives you a general sense of control in your life, and you believe, within reason, that you will be able to do what you wish, plan, and expect.
Your definition of success has to include a high level of confidence because it requires you to be willing to risk the disapproval of others because you trust and believe in your abilities. Since you can accept your own definition of success, you don’t feel the need to conform to what others think in order to be accepted.
Self-confidence is a state of mind developed and perfected by the most successful people in the world. It’s something you can create and perfect just like anyone else. Self-confidence is an attitude, which allows individuals to have positive yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. If you seriously want to create self-confidence, then you need to change the way your mind focuses on things. You need to teach yourself to create a new way of thinking and develop what I call “success energy.” How many times have you seen or met someone for the first time and just gotten the sense that they are successful? You might not have exchanged a word with them but you just sense that they are a success. You’re picking up what I call “success energy.” You can have the same! Yes, you can. Self-confidence is not given to you; it’s created. This means that you can create self-confidence to any degree you want.
It‘s list time. This exercise will help you to examine many of the “greats” in your life and acknowledge the successes you’ve had. Making lists, rereading them, and rewriting them from time to time will help build your self-confidence.
Make a list of …
1 At least five things you admire about yourself. Examples include the way you’ve raised your children; the good relationship you have with your brother; or your strong spirituality.
2 The five greatest achievements in your life so far. This could include recovering from a serious illness; graduating from high school; or learning to use a computer.
3 At least twenty accomplishments (small or large). These accomplishments can range from simple, like learning to cook or going to the gym faithfully, to advanced, like getting a post-graduate degree.
4 Ten ways you can “treat” or reward yourself. This list should not include food or items with a price tag. Think of walking through a park, napping, watching your children playing on a playground, or catching up with a friend.
5 Ten things you can do to make yourself laugh. This can be anything from watching your favorite comedy to trying on silly hats.
6 Ten things you could do to help someone else. These things can range from something small like baking cookies for a sick friend or mowing an elderly neighbor’s yard to something more involved like dropping dinner off at your busy sister’s house or cleaning out your parent’s basement.
7 Ten things that you do that make you feel good about being yourself. Examples could include being a good mom, running in a 5K, or having a green thumb.
How did you do? Did you struggle to complete any of the lists? If you did, that helps you identify the area(s) that you need to work on. For instance, if you had difficulty identifying twenty accomplishments over your lifetime, this could indicate that you don’t feel good about things that you’ve done, or that you don’t view them as praiseworthy. When you are able to complete that (troublesome) list, look over it and feel proud about the things that you’ve done. You may feel or have been taught to feel that you shouldn’t focus on or talk about your accomplishments, because that’s being conceited or being a show-off. However, when you can focus your energy on your positive behaviors, your perspective of yourself is enhanced. I have dealt with many people who shun themselves, diminish their accomplishments, and/or don’t reward themselves, and end up feeling inadequate and unhappy. To overcome this, continue to add to these lists. Look over them, think about them, and study them. Work on believing the great things about yourself that you have listed. It will really help to kick your confidence into gear.