How do you feel when you see or hear about the success of others? If you’re anything like me, you probably have some mixed emotions, especially if you’re going through struggles and challenges in your life.
I often find myself excited and inspired by the success of others, especially the people closest to me. However, at the same time, I sometimes notice it can bring up feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and inferiority. Especially when someone accomplishes or experiences something I want myself. Sometimes these feelings come up when I worry I can’t or won’t find that same success.
Have you ever wondered why you get jealous of other people’s success?
Recently I’ve taken a deeper and more honest look at myself in this regard. I’ve always been a competitive person. I often found myself directly or indirectly competing in a pretty intense way with those around me.
Although I’ve outgrown certain aspects of my childhood and adolescent comparison tendencies, I still find myself jealous of other people’s success, as if we’re competing against one another or that their success takes something away from me, which it doesn’t.
Feeling jealous of other people’s success is both understandable and potentially damaging.
Why Are You Jealous of Other People’s Success?
While our cultural obsession with comparison and competition isn’t something new, it seems to have intensified in the past decade or so, with the explosion of social media and how we share photos, highlights, achievements, adventures, milestones and more with one another in such a public and prominent way.
I enjoy being able to celebrate the exciting stuff happening in other people’s lives and share some of my own on social media.
At the same time, it can be a bit of a double-edged sword, depending on how I’m feeling about myself, my work, my body and appearance, my relationships, my future, my family, or anything else. I can easily get triggered by other people’s success and end up feeling bad about myself and my life.
On the flip side, I’ve noticed that I have a tendency, especially with certain people, to brag about my success or even to feel a sense of superiority.
This is even harder to admit and confront.
Feeling both superior and inferior are detrimental to our growth, success and ultimately our sense of peace.
So how do we stop comparing ourselves to others?
How to Stop the Comparison Game
The success of others has nothing to do with us, and our success has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s as simple as that.
The only way to stop the comparison game is to stop comparing yourself to others. We are all facing our battles and challenges in life, and success looks different for everyone.
Life is short—so why waste so much of your precious time competing with the people around you and focusing on how you measure up to them?
I’ve had glimpses of this freedom from comparison in my life at various times, although, not as often as I’d like.
Ready to step into your authentic power? Here are a few things to think about and practice, to stop being jealous of other people’s success:
1) It’s okay to feel jealous
Jealousy isn’t bad, it’s just an emotion and is part of the human experience.
Like with most “negative” emotions, the biggest issue with jealousy is our denial of it. When we pretend we don’t feel jealous, it can harm us in many ways.
The more we deny our feelings of jealousy, the more they end up running us.
When you notice yourself feeling jealous, admit it, feel it, and express it in some healthy and authentic way. Try writing it in your journal, sharing it with a close friend, reflecting on it in meditation or prayer.
Your ability to honestly notice, feel and express your jealousy (or any emotion) is what gives you the power to move through it and transform its potentially negative impact into a positive experience.
2) Look for a deeper message
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you feel jealous of other people’s success? When we get threatened by the success of others, there is usually a deeper message coming through that experience.
What if we looked beyond our reaction and beneath our judgment…and asked ourselves some questions like:
- “What is it about this person’s success that has me feeling threatened?”
- “How can I learn from what I see in them or in what they’ve accomplished?”
- “What can I do to let go of my inferior (or superior) reaction to this, and more deeply trust and believe in myself and my process?”
Asking deeper questions like this and looking for the underlying messages in our reactions to the success of others can lead us down a more authentic path of growth, discovery and fulfillment.
3) Celebrate their success
It’s essential to be careful about how harshly you judge other people and their paths to success. The more judgmental you are about them and how they create their success, the more difficult you’ll make it for you to create the success you want, out of your fear of being judged.
Judging the success of others is a smokescreen. It masks our own inability to deal with feelings of jealousy, insecurity, or inferiority. What if, instead of doing that (or anything else in a similarly negative, critical, or arrogant way), we celebrated their success and rejoiced in it?
When you see someone succeed, celebrate for them (knowing how exciting it can be when something good happens).
4) Operate from a Place of Abundance
Being so close to people who are creating success in their lives (maybe even the same success we want) can be quite positive, inspiring, and motivating. I know this can be more challenging with certain things or certain people.
However, at the deepest level, when we live from a place of abundance (with the faith that there is more than enough to go around), we free ourselves from the constant stress, worry, fear and pressure associated with living from a place of scarcity.
Like most things in life, this is a choice.
What are some ways you deal with and release your jealousy of other people’s success?
Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights and more here on my blog below.
I have written five books about the importance of trust, authenticity, appreciation and more. In addition, I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders, and teams to grow, connect, and perform their best. Finally, as an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Find out more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today. You can also listen to my podcast here.
Liked this post? Here are three more!
The Importance of Self-Trust
Your Feelings Matter
We’re All in This Together – 4 Key Traits of High Performing Teams
This article was published on May 15, 2013, and updated for 2021.
Hi Mike, I always enjoy reading your articles. This one especially resonated with me. When I read the title of your blog it made me stop and realize that yeah, I guess in a way I do feel threatened by others’ successes. Being a pianist I often compare myself to other pianists. When I see another artist who’s more successful, depending on the situation I notice a feeling of my energy being drained. Maybe a sense of, they beat me to it so I might as well stop here. But when I look back and see just how far I have come, I just have to remind myself that this is just part of the journey and there’s a lot more to come. Thanks for bringing light to this topic!
Rahn
Rahn,
Thanks so much for your comments, kind words, and insights…I appreciate your honest sharing of your own experience of this as a pianist (and in general). Amazing how we often tend to have similar experiences with this phenomenon, regardless of our background, skills, personality, and more.
Be well…
Mike
Thank you for your transparency…..this is fabulous….I will share this….it is tremendous to witness another human speaking from his own ‘true to self’ perspective. Thank you for your uniqueness & true grit truthfulness.
This is rare.
Padre he’s a terrorist he uses his Gmail account to threaten people he created a Google account and is using it to commit terrorism. He created this fake God pray site he called Catholic doors ministry he uses it to prey on people so he can threaten them. People got to stay away from him he is very sick in the head has a mental illness and is a terrorist he enjoys threatening people. Lots of people got to make sure that they report him to Google and the police. His page it needs to be permanently removed off of Google and he needs to be in jail for threatening people.
Mike – you’re so amazing the way you continually nail a universal problem that we can all relate to. Ouch! This whole piece is painfully familiar – especially the line that someone else’s success somehow takes away something from me.
Thank you for sharing these wise, insightful issues and ways we can become more aware of them so hopefully we can change.
Donne – thank you for your comment and kind words! I hear you and can totally relate. We humans are funny, eh? Be well and keep up the good work!
Mike,
After hearing you speak, I’ve been following your blogs and posts and have to say that your insight and ability to express it are incredible. Once again, you have hit the nail on the head. I have and still have a problem with feelings of inferiority when hearing about others’ successes. This article helped to bring some perspective.
Derek,
Thanks so much for your comment, kind words, and honesty. The more aware we are of this phenomenon (and anything else), the more ability we have to transform it. Be well…
This definitely seem like a family terrain for me and nothing else has brought to me a better awareness of this than this article and so whether its inferiority or superiority they all fall within the Complex Coin.Thanks on the insight
…familiar* terrain
Nice one.Clearly explained.
Thanks a ton for this article,it indeed is v.helpful !
This is one of the most thoughtful approaches to coping with jealousy that I’ve heard. Too often I envy another person’s success and then get angry at myself for experiencing that emotion. I’m going to try to work more on accepting the emotion, but I’m still wrapping my mind around how to do something positive about it. I’m a writer and I recently saw a friend on Twitter posting about how she got published somewhere I’d love to get published one day but always considered it too far off. I still feel really jealous about it but I’m hoping to turn it into a positive experience by congratulating her and asking her how she got started working with the publication. Hopefully that approach will allow me to learn from her accomplishment.
These moments of jealously should be taken as time to reexamine myself- why do I feel this way? What can I do to accomplish similar success? What have I already accomplished that I can feel proud of?
Thanks again!
Dear Mike thank you,
You know what about deeper understanding and the message, I think it’s related with some sort of rejection and humiliation which again induce and reinforce inferiority, which comes and starts more from family and parenting and goes along with repeating experiences. People can remind you your past experiences and trigger your wounds, so those things like being rich and so on contribute more as a symbol to a real cause. Consciously you can’t grasp it cause you ‘see what you see’, but unconscious knows why are you so envy, when other rich and successful people are not every time triggering you. Some successful can trigger you and some other way can be neutral, which again confirms something is more deeper.
Hi
I operate in two states
1. I always count my chickens before
They hatch.when any small thing I achieve.
2. I feel low When I hear someone of
my age is Successful
Hi Mike,
Your post is extremely relate-able. Just like you i have a sports history which makes me easy insecure of others success. That competitive spirit still persists and your words have motivated me to utilize this energy in positive manner.
Thanks a lot 🙂
You’re a really beneficial web site; could not make it without ya!
Your post makes me remember all of those people who keep bringing joy in my life. I’m really thankful for them.
Sometimes other people’s success can be a great motivation
Other’s people succes is a great motivation for me
Loved you text, but you need to change your words, they are not accurately picked: “Envy is when you want what someone else has, but jealousy is when you’re worried someone’s trying to take what you have. If you want your neighbor’s new convertible, you feel envy. If she takes your husband for a ride, you feel jealousy.”
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/envy-jealousy/
cheers!
I encountered this fake person from this God pray site called live prayer and he threatens people his name is Bill Keller and he is a fake person that threatens you.