Ep#9: Dealing with Jealousy & Feelings of Envy

Do you struggle with feeling jealous of others? Are you ashamed of admitting this to yourself?  I'd like to propose to you that facing your envy of others is a major key to unlocking a happier and progressive life  on your journey to building your dreams?

In this week's episode, I open up about what my journey with dealing with jealousy and envy has looked like and some ways I have learnt to navigate it.

This episode is very important as it will open the door to some exciting conversations coming up in future episodes ;-)

I'd love to read and hear your feedback and thoughts on this episode over on my Instagram!

With All My Heart,
Amaru Küng

I'd LOVE to Connect with you:
www.amarukueng.com

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

Hey, welcome back to the Amaru podcast. You guys welcome back my dreamers lovers, Vision builders, if you're on a journey to living out your calling during the right place. So, my name is Amaru Küng, and I'm the host of this podcast, the Amaru Podcast. Today, I have a bit of a sore throat. So I'm going to try not to stretch myself too much with my voice. But if you've been following along, which I really hope you have been, because I've been having some really interesting conversations. In the last episode, starting with about two episodes ago, I started this conversation on the value of honesty with ourselves. That opened up a beautiful can of worms, which got me talking in the episode that followed about just some quirks and why some quirks about me and why it's important for us to why it's important for us to own our quirks, and how that can be a really great vehicle to finding our tribe and just finding a community that, that that fits, you know, where we really feel at home that is completely right for us, and how important that has been for me in my own on my own journey. Now, in today's episode, excuse me. Okay, so my throat is my throat is is not in its greatest state. But I really, really want to record this episode. So we're going to try. So in today's episode, something I really want to focus on is I want to open up about one more insecurity. And this insecurity is really important for me to share, because this is a really beautiful vehicle to what's going to be happening in the next couple of episodes. Now, something I struggled with for a really long time. And that was really difficult for me to admit to myself. But once I did admit to myself, became something that I'm so thankful I could start to work on. Because of the benefits of what life without this looks like, is jealousy. Yep. Jealousy. It took me a really long time to admit to myself that I was envious of certain people and that I was envious of people that were just kicking bombs and like killing it and completely thriving and things that I so deeply desired to be thriving at. Because I mean, so envy, what envy envy looks like is when when you're jealous, it means you're like not really happy for somebody else. You just wish you were in their shoes. You're like, oh, man, I wish that was happening for me. And I didn't want to admit that because those people are losers right to like a jealous people envious people. They have a bad heart. They Yeah, it's just like, it seems so lame to, well, it just felt so lame to be that. And so I wasn't willing to admit that to myself. But some ways in which that envy and jealousy was was manifesting in my life. Were for one especially and I saw this really a lot more in my music, career, my music pursuits. For one, for instance, like, I remember, I just wouldn't listen to other artists, especially if they were good. And especially if they were within a genre that was similar to mine, or a genre that I wanted to be creating. I just didn't listen to them. And that's messed up. I mean, I think about it now. And I think oh, man, like, why, but yeah, I mean, to be honest, I just like watching them thrive, made me think and feel like a failure. It made me just like it felt like it just highlighted to me how much I was sucking at my own dream and how much I fell short of all of the ambitions that I had in my heart for myself. And that was just such a joy killer on one level, but another level that now I realized looking back in retrospect, is that another thing It stole from me, was a really, really valuable thing. But I've come to learn in more recent times. And that is the value of learning from other people, learning from those who have gone before us, learning from people who are ahead of us in their journey, learning from our peers who are thriving, the things that we're not thriving at yet, or who may be it might seem like we're similarly thriving, but I just realized there's so much wisdom that comes from learning from each other from sharing information from sitting at the feet of other people and just learning learning from their journey listening to their wins listening to, because on the outside, on the outside looking and a lot of the people that we admire, actually battle, a lot of things like a lot of people have had to battle, their own insecurities, their own obstacles, their own set of fears. And I think that when we let envy get in the way, and we let jealousy get in the way, typically what that looks like, and I know what it looked like, for me is that I just avoided I just did not want to consume any of the work by any of these people or read their articles or like, see them win. Because I felt like, you know, it was hard to rejoice with them, because I felt like, Ah, I shouldn't be in those places. I shouldn't be winning like that I should be getting that acknowledgement I should be. I should have been like the person who wrote that song, I should be the person who won that award, I should have been the person getting that feature, I should have been insert all of the things. And that was that was like a really miserable place to be. And a big turning point for me on that journey. And on that, yeah, that that journey of kind of, of navigating jealousy and envy was I listened to a podcast episode by this really great preacher that I really enjoyed listen to from Bethel Church, and the vallotton. I was talking about just the vallotton was talking about how Jealousy has to do with what is it called? Like? Like a mindset that there isn't enough? Like, I can't find the right word for it. I'm forgetting what word it is. But basically, it has has to do with with with this, like, what's the opposite of abundance? But you know what I mean? Like? Like, lack, like, like, there isn't enough. So it comes from this place of like, oh, no, there's only so much success to go around. There's only so much, so much good that can go out. There's almost there's only so much of this out there in the world. And the fact that you got it means that you took away from me. And the fact that you got that the fact that you got that a claim or you got that you got that acknowledgement, the fact that you got that success, the fact that you thrive did that thing means that there's less Thrive out in the world for me, and to challenge that thoughts. And he was like, hey, so he's a preacher. And he was talking about abundance of God being a God of abundance. And it's like, hey, there's enough, there's enough wealth to go around. There's enough success to go around. There's enough happiness and joy and love. And, and there's enough good to go around, you know, the fact that somebody is happy, the fact that someone is thriving, does not take away from your ability to be able to thrive, your ability to be able to succeed, your ability to be able to insert whatever thing it is that you crave and desire in your life. The fact that somebody else has it does not take away from the fact that you could have it too, you know, there's enough to go around this enough cake for everybody to have way more than they need. And to pack abundance back home, you know, there's enough cake, there's enough cake to go around the pie is is bigger than there are our mouths to eat it. And that was so important. For me. It's it seems, it seems like a really simple lesson. But I have to tell you, when I heard that podcast episode, it hit me really hard. You know, it got me feeling like, wait a minute, do I have a mentality of lack? Am I being driven and ruled by this feeling that there isn't enough to go around? Where does that come? Where does that come from? And it got me to start to reflect and challenge those, those beliefs that those limiting beliefs I had, you know, the belief that, hey, if this person had it going great, it meant that I couldn't have it going great. Or it meant that somehow they took away like, some greatness that I would have gotten or you know what I mean? It's, I mean, now it sounds ridiculous. Ridiculous to me. I don't know if it sounds ridiculous to you or not. But I know for a fact as I've experienced with everything else is that if I felt it before, somebody else has felt this before. And I even dare say that somebody might be feeling that right now. And so, the purpose of this episode is to challenge you, I would like to invite you into a mindset of abundance. I would like to invite you into a mindset of believing that there is enough to go around. Because if you start to if you really embrace that I'd like to propose to you something. If you, if you embrace and start to really believe in your heart of hearts, that there is enough to go around, I would like to, I would like to promise you that you will start to find more happiness. Because jealousy is such a thief of joy. When you're not able to celebrate with other people and and really like celebrate their wins, or you're not able to be happy for strangers, I'm not talking about the people, you know, although this can even come down to people really close to you whom you love. But I'm talking about if you're not able to celebrate with with with some stranger somewhere because you think, you know, they got that thing that I wanted, there's a chance that you're not able to celebrate with people who are even closer to you. And that's really sad. Because what beautiful communities are made of is they're made of support systems, people who are rooting for each other people supporting each other people celebrating each other. And I have to be honest with you. As you know, this is all about being 100 on this podcast. It's a journey, you know, it's a journey. There's definitely seasons where I catch myself start, you know, I catch envy trying to like, creep back into my life like, wait a minute, Ah, wait, nope, we've we've we've been here before, I literally have to catch myself and be like, Nope. Why are we feeling jealous? Why are we feeling envious? Do we not believe that there isn't enough to go around? Like, where is this coming from? And I have to kind of catch myself in my tracks and unpack that and reject that thought, and remind myself of the fact that there is abundance. And so I guess now I'm going into how I how I dealt with and how I deal with how I dealt in the past with with this just overwhelming. Yeah, just feeling of envy and jealousy that got in the way of me being able to, in my case, really consume other art, and enjoy it. And even you know it, yeah, that's something that really got in the way. Then the other thing I realized is that I learned to I learned to, to when I felt envious, and when I felt jealous, I learned to to get closer. To get closer to the people I felt jealous of people I felt envious of, I learned to get closer to them and to get to know them. Because I found that it's so interesting, I found that when I got closer to the people I was envying, and the people that I was jealous of when I got closer to them. And that doesn't mean so let's say a random person on the internet, like how does that get closer to them. It's like reading, reading their story watching interviews about them, like really getting to know them. I realized I just I kind of got closer to the humanity of who they were. And within the humanities, the struggles, you know, I started to realize, and learn from them, you know, and for me, a really big turning point here was I started to watch documentaries on successful artists and like their accomplishments, because this documentary is typically tell you the struggles as well, you know what they had to overcome. And I found when I was watching these, so that that was my way of getting closer to this people. And watching they're watching watching the stories of their lives. I fell in love with them, you know, I found points of connection points of like, Whoa, oh my gosh, they went through that. And oh, they felt that too. And then somehow this this, this, you know that somehow it's like I was rooting for them. I wanted them to succeed. And then I was able to rejoice more genuinely with them at their success. I have to admit this, this feels really awkward talking about this, I feel a bit self conscious, you know, admitting that I was jealous or admitting that I experience envy and jealousy. But then again, I'm like, wait, I'm not alone. I know that people experienced this as well. It's a really awkward feeling. Because I know a lot of a lot of the shame I felt around admitting to myself that I was jealous for one or that I was envious. A lot of the shame I've had around that is you know, jealousy is often depicted as this like green eyed monster this, it's basically you're you're the bad guy, you're You're the villain when you're jealous, you know, I mean, watch all these superhero movies, where typically the villain is jealous of the superhero. And so he just tries to destroy him. And so the villain is always like the loser that just couldn't get anything. So they just dedicate their life to making sure the hero doesn't win or just it just sounds like a bitter, miserable person. And that's why I felt a lot of shame with admitting this to myself. But I have to tell you once once in a once once I once I looked myself in the mirror and was okay. I think why I'm struggling to listen to these people's music. Why I'm struggling to to even reshare it or repost it or Shout this people out as I'm jealous. I feel I feel threatened by them I feel, you know. And once once I once I realized that that was a hard pill to swallow, it forced me to explore where was that coming from? What was this this? Like? What were the limiting beliefs attached to to this envy. And and then I started to challenge myself because I don't think change happens overnight. But I thought hey, like, like get to know this people get get to know this people understand their stories because I think when you get intimate I learned this from my actors training is that this humanity and all of us. And I think when you get intimate with people, and you, you know, the actor, the actor, the actor, doesn't judge, the actor is supposed to be able to completely, completely empathize with characters and get to know them and root for them and understand where they're coming from, even when they play some of the most evil characters. So you're playing a serial killer, you can't play a serial killer with the mindset that he's the bad guy, you have to get into his head and understand why does he think killing is okay? And this doesn't mean you're changing your morals, but your understanding, you need to understand where they're coming from. Because believe it or not, every single person when they make a choice, in the moment that they make that decision, they believe that it is the only way to get the thing that they want. And often they want you know, when it's the wrong things, often they know they're like, Yeah, I know, this is not okay. But I think the only way to get ABCDEFG is to do that. Is that true or not probably probably there were other options. But for whatever reason, they saw the option they've chosen to take as the only way or the best way for them. And that might be influenced by limiting beliefs or insert whatever it is, but the actor's job is to understand why did they arrive at this decision? What What drove them to this place, and really from a place of empathy and kindness and understanding. And so I think, when I started to apply those tools into my life, it's been so helpful is that whenever I catch myself getting envious, I kind of want to hone in deeper and be like, you know, draw closer and be like, Hey, let me get to know this person, you know, because once I get to know them, get closer to them. I'll humanize them. And once I humanize them, I'll connect with them. And once I connect with them, inevitably, I'm going to be I'm going to trick myself into rooting for them, you know, inevitably I'm gonna find myself wanting to see them win, and wanting to and that's so important for me, because my calling is entirely that my calling is just, I really, really feel strongly that my calling is to draw out of people, their most magical selves. And so if if so I can't, I can't be, I need to be rooting for people. You know, it goes against everything I believe in if I'm not rooting for people, but but but it doesn't come easily for me sometimes, because I'm human. And I have my own my own challenges, my own battles. And so I just really wanted to share this because I've had a few people that are close to me reach out to me as well, around this journey of, you know, me creating this podcast and this season of my life and being like, hey, when I see you do this, I I feel like crap, like what am I doing with my life? I almost feel I've received a few comments where people I know were feeling the kind of felt felt less than just, you know, felt like oh, man, look, Omar is doing that. And she has a baby and she hasn't started blah, blah, and kind of a voice in their head trying to shame them. Excuse me. And, and I know that feeling. And I feel like sometimes that that's how that's how jealousy springs up. And it happens to the best of us. And I appreciate these people in my life, because then reaching out was like them taking charge and being like, No, I catch myself feeling this way. But hey, tomorrow, I want to celebrate you. And it got me thinking about how beautiful it is that I have this quality of relationships around me. And it got me thinking about how for a long time I didn't have the strength and the courage and the confidence with myself or the security to be able to voice thoughts like that to people around me. Anyways, so that's kind of the backdrop for where I'm going next with these podcast episodes. In the next episodes, I'm going to start to have interviews. And I just want to I want to encourage you so this podcast I really created for my fellow dream builders, who are battling insecurities and fears people who are being held back by their fears, insecurities, and obstacles that are like just being held back by these obstacles that are stopping them from pursuing their dreams. I know because I have been one I have I have been I have been one of these people before. I know that typically if you're struggling with insecurities and fears than jealousy, something you definitely have felt or do feel or will feel and so I want to invite you to to a more abundant or abundance mindset, especially as we go into the next episodes. And I hope that as you listen to the people I'm going to be interviewing that you will be inspired by their stories that you will find messages of encouragement, you will be challenged, and that you will be able to draw the lessons that you need from their journeys to be able to advance your own journeys. Hey, I'm rooting for you. I'm here, I'm in your corner. And I can't wait to continue this beautiful journey with you. Hey, as always, if you've listened this far, I would so deeply appreciate it if you liked, subscribed, followed, rated, reviewed this podcast. It really helps me reach other listeners and helps. It helps us get up in the ranks, which is super helpful for just making this accessible to more people who I deeply, deeply believe, need to listen to the conversations here in order to be challenged, inspired and encouraged to live out their own callings. And so hey, I appreciate you in advance. And, as always, these conversations continue over on my instagram at American. You can check the podcast description for all of the details. But until next time, with all of my heart, Amaru Küng.