Like most of you, I now have more leisure time. As a result, I could finally sit down with myself and recognize some of my most hidden but detrimental patterns. One of the truths I had to come to terms with is how deep my core belief of worthiness impacted my relationship with others. It colored every interaction and though I thought I shrugged those thoughts off, deep down the seed of unworthiness showed up and its form was jealousy.
In the next few minutes, I am going to break down the process for which I solved this dilemma. We are going to break this process down into four parts: The first part is perfectionism, the next core-belief, and critical thoughts, all of which inform your jealousy and envy. Finally, I will teach you how to draw inspiration
Perfectionism
So, everyone has this ideal version of themselves. This person does everything right. This person has a certain weight, a certain look, and a certain type of personality. This person in your head is better than who you are and as a result, you think that if you become this person you’d be happier. The truth is you aren’t necessarily idealizing this person. You are idealizing their happiness. You think because they have these traits that they are happier than you. So you tell yourself
Now ask yourself, why do you associate (physical attributes, a certain personality, and a certain lifestyle) with happiness? You do so because of capitalism, fatphobia, sexism, racism, and ableism all of the above. Capitalism tells you happiness is not within your grasp right now. It uses marketing to brainwash you into believing the only way to have happiness is to accumulate items or project a certain lifestyle. Fatphobia tells you you aren’t inherently worthy in the body that you are in. It convinces you that body modification brings happiness. Sexism states if you haven’t found the right partner you won’t be happy and something is wrong with you. In every direction, there is something that tells you that you aren’t good enough now and that you will never be happy. If you don’t have caretakers or a community to thwart that message- you will believe it.
Now if you look at most children who have not been scarred by their caretakers or environment, none of them have requirements for happiness. They are happy because they are, which means it IS possible to generate happiness without fulfilling those requirements. You’ve done it most of your childhood when you weren’t brainwashed by our society. You knew it was yours, and you took it. So, that means the standard that you created is a standard that keeps you away from what is rightfully yours. You are not only creating your prison, you are becoming your guard, and keeping yourself away from what is yours. Destroy those ideas and realize you don’t need to punish yourself to be happier. It doesn’t work like that.
Furthermore, if your rule is you have to be perfect to have happiness. How are people who aren’t achieving your definition of perfection, happy? If that is the universal rule that you are using for yourself and for how you measure others, then why are other people who don’t live under that definition of happiness?
Now you aren’t viciously withholding happiness from yourself. You are doing so because of your core belief. Your core belief is the thought/belief that influences your behavior. According to Dr. Romanelli, it is, “essentially the glasses you wear which give meaning to what your senses experience in the world.[1]” Sometimes you have no idea your core belief is dragging you down, but when you look over your patterns you will get a sense of your core belief.
For example, Every time you walk into a new space you think everyone is judging you. So, you get nervous and anxious. You start to pick apart everyone’s actions and believe they are being dismissive of you. So, you pout in the corner emitting a negative energy that everyone picks upon. no one approaches you. Now, you use this moment to provide more evidence to support the story that you won’t have happiness where you are now because look at how random people treat you.
Do you see how that works? In short, the belief was already there. You just used the circumstance to confirm your belief or you created a circumstance to support your belief and this is the result. If you, however, believed you were worthy or likable, you’d interpret the environment completely differently. You’d see the environment as something other than hostile.
Your core belief is the primary influence on your thoughts. When you are self-critical you know it has to do with your core belief. So, if your core belief I feel unworthy. Then your critical thoughts may look like this.
Once, I do (blank) I will have (the object that I think would make me happy).
For example:
Once I become more extroverted, I will have the friends I want.
Once I become slender, I will get the type of man I want.
Or
You compare yourself…you see something great in someone else and all of sudden you are wrong or you have nothing to offer or you wish you could be like them. Have you ever noticed that once you engage in this type of thinking you always yourself wrong? No matter who the person is, you are always lacking. Now, do you truly believe you always lacking or do you see the framework you have instilled in your mind and how that continues to show up whenever you meet a new person you admire? Your brain is magnificent in the way whatever way you use it, it’ll stay there until you decide to use it another way. So start introducing a new framework, and find inspiration and beauty in yourself and others.
Finally, Drawing Inspiration.
When you have a negative core belief you may find it hard to stop your jealousy and envy and draw inspiration. The reason is that for so long you’ve used your environment and other people to make yourself wrong, bad, or inadequate. So, it may be difficult at first to draw inspiration, but the tip is to remember a couple of things:
1. What you see in others is what you have in yourself, the only difference is that they’ve accepted what they’ve seen, and you have not. Meaning, you don’t necessarily know what they are thinking or what they are doing, or why they are doing it. So, your assumptions about them are based on your interpretation of cues. To name that behavior using those cues, you had to first see it in yourself. You noted your cues and then decided that anyone in the world who has these cues means they are an exemplar of (fill in the blank). So that means the shine that you see in others, at one point you saw it in yourself because you are your frame of reference. How I know this is true is that when someone tells a story, you always go back to how you would react to it because once again you are your reference point. You will always always always start at you. So, the only reason why you recognize those attributes is that you have them. If you see something beautiful in someone else, your job is to go within and uncover that. If you see something in someone that annoys you, your job is to bring it back to yourself and confront your thinking/judgment/habits.
Next, you have to remember you can do it too. Tf. Envy & jealousy come from a place of helplessness. You envy because you think if you have these things you will be happier but deep down inside you truly believe you can’t get them.
So you do two things:
i. You either hate the person or circumstance because envy can easily switch to rage.
ii. Or you cower into yourself and say you’ll never be happy or you’ll never be where you want to be.
Both options result in you feeling like shit and it is only another blow to your self-esteem and keeps you feeling like you can’t do it. So, my suggestion is to practice believing in yourself. When you act and prove to your mind you can, it tends to believe it. So, start off with small tasks to build your confidence. Like write one sentence a day and ask yourself to do it for 7 days. Once you see the paragraph at the end of the week, Boom, a boost in confidence. Start very small, read a book on how to do it, go on YouTube, and ask the experts. The time you put in will always add up because that’s how skills work. Eventually, you will be skilled in the way you imagined it. Use that picture, person, or book as inspiration. You don’t get jealous of Beyonce when she achieves something. You feel inspired to do something magnificent with your life. She or whatever celebrity with incredible talent always gives you the spirit to want more. Why can’t you do that with a regular person? Why can’t you use their vivaciousness to feel revved up to live your life more outwardly open!? The comparison will always leave you in pain as we discussed. If you have a negative brain. The comparison will always leave you without, bad, inadequate, or unprepared because that’s how the negative brain functions. So leave that strategy alone and stop the unnecessary pain in your life.