At some point in our lives we have all felt that burning and ridiculous feeling of the green eyed monster.  Whether its relationship jealously, career jealousy or jealously of another person in general – jealousy is a devil of a feeling that can pull you drive you to the point of insanity. 

The thing about jealousy is that it ultimately isn’t about another person, jealously all stems from one place and one place alone.  You.  Its all dependent upon how secure and happy you are within yourself.

Let me explain.  Jealousy is all about the wanting of something that we don’t already have, whether its a job, a handbag, a man, attention, a holiday – the root cause of jealously is predominantly the lack of something.  In short, its a state of mind.  If you’re happy with who you are and are confident within yourself and about where you’re going in life, surely there’s no room for negativity or feelings of  jealousy.

Recently there have been a couple of instances recently where I should have been seething with jealousy.  Tongue biting, plate throwingly jealous.  But instead of feeling sorry for myself and allowing the green eyed monster to take hold of me like some kind of Incredible Hulk, I’ve felt something else.  Smugness?  Maybe smug is the wrong word, perhaps “more confident” is the correct word.  As Beyonce would say “some call it arrogance, I call it confidence” – in my case its definitely a confidence that I was previously lacking.

Over the last few months I’ve become a lot more comfortable within myself and where I’m going.  I’ve gained confidence through my blog, through opportunities that have come my way and I’ve begun to make the most of being me.  I’ve stopped comparing myself to other people and focused more on what I have rather than what I don’t.

I find that jealously within blogging is rife.  Whether its based on how many followers one person has, or who are working with which brands or how many hits they’re receiving – there’s this underlying battle beneath the surface.  It’s easy to get sucked into that mentality of thinking and ultimately it can just make you unhappy with your own lot.  Many a time I’ve found myself reading other peoples blogs and compared mine to theirs, looked at their follower count, looked at the number of comments they receive and all its done is a) make me jealous and b) make me feel down about my own blog and question the entire content/style/quality.  

Its easy to focus on that “something else” and wish you could me more like that.  I find this alot when it comes to relationships and men.  When you like someone, but you find out that he likes someone else, you start to focus on their attributes.  Obsess even. Why aren’t I thinner/funnier/as tall as her?  Why are my boobs smaller and why does she command his attention in a way that I can’t? How does that make you wrong and her right?  Wouldn’t you rather be liked for who you are rather than because you want to be someone else.  I don’t know about you but I would.

There are alot of people in this world and unforunately alot of people are unhappy with themselves and will therefore continue to compare themselves to another person.  The thing we need to remember about jealousy is that someone somewhere is feeling that exact same way about you….