Change Your Mind

If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind. - Sister Hazel

“You are jealous of what you should be inspired by. Envy only means that something that you want seems out of reach” - words that my therapist spoke that knocked the air out of me, and woke me up to an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth. The truth is that I often reside in a mental space that chooses to envy what others have, instead of using their experiences and triumphs to inspire me to reach for the things that I desire for myself. This doesn’t mean that you have to ask for a road map and follow it to the letter (believe me, I tried, and I’m still not The New Oprah). It shouldn’t mean that you have to look a specific way, or say a specific thing to deserve what is already yours. And it is yours, you just haven’t found it yet.

Haven’t found it yet.

Even as I type these words, this phrase so full of hope - I hate them. I hate what they mean. They mean that I’m not ready, despite my carefully (mostly not that carefully) laid plans. They make me think that there is a piece of me out there that I don’t deserve to know about yet. And I hate not knowing. I despise gray areas.

But I guess it kind of makes sense. It’s not that I don’t deserve the things that are coming, it’s that I’m not prepared for them yet. Looking back, all of the wonderful things that are happening for me at this moment in time didn’t come overnight, they came after years of work, dreaming, sacrifice, sadness, disappointment, and triumph. These up and downs and peaks and valleys put me through my paces (some good, some difficult) to get to a place where I can appreciate what I’ve earned, to not take things for granted. My talents and the fruit of those talents didn’t just fall out of the sky. They wouldn’t mean as much to me if they did.

But I digress, back to jealousy.

Just stop it. Stop it and redirect. change your viewpoint. Jealousy is seeing something that you want that you feel (for whatever reason) that you cannot have. By making the decision that you can’t have “it”: a boyfriend, happiness, that spot on stage, the last donut, you already cement the reality that you don’t deserve it as much as other people do. The resulting disappointment comes from that comparison, and in that mindset, you will always come out the injured party. Instead, use that as inspiration to find the right way to obtain similar for yourself. Think about how others got to that point, the obstacles and challenges and frogs that shouldn’t have been kissed; or the triumphs, the should-have-beens, the Ones that Got Away.

Just change your mind and set your own path. You may not have found what is already yours, but you definitely have control over how to get there.