Managing unwanted feelings

I have a confession to make: I’m jealous. A lot of the time. And I hate it. I have jealousy over people doing their jobs better than I do mine, jealousy over mad skills, jealousy of engineers who make it look so easy to jam code into stuff and make it work. Jealousy about people who have clean houses and no kids. All kinds of things.

And you know what? It never goes away. It’s just a feeling that intrudes every once in a while and I’ll tell you what — sometimes I’m good at crushing it, and sometimes I’m not. I always get there eventually, though.

So here’s what I do when I have that unwanted jealous feeling come up: I think about what’s behind it, trace it back to the source. Jealousy, like anger, is one of those surface level emotions that always belies something underneath.

For me, it’s always about insecurity in some way, so what helps is to lean into what makes me awesome. I write. I call people and ask about their day. I go check on my plants, and my pets, and I sing. Sometimes I paint, or run, or try to capture photo moments. Then I blaze through 100 pages of a book in an hour. These are things that *I* think make me awesome, so the more I do them, the better I feel.

At work, I have a folder on my desktop called “Awesome” and every time someone gives me kudos or makes me feel good, I take a screenshot and put it into that folder. I’ve realized that I need a life equivalent – a list or folder or art piece somewhere that reminds me of all the uniquely ‘me’ things that I genuinely like about myself.

This doesn’t just apply to jealous feelings, either. It applies to any feeling you don’t want to feel. Maybe you’re bored. Or angry, or unhappy.

The more we turn inward, the more peace we discover.