You guys probably know by now that I’m a little bit obsessed with listening to podcasts. One I especially enjoy is ‘Happier’ by Gretchen Rubin. She and her sister share life stories and little tricks to make life easier and well – happier!
One trick they recently shared really struck with me: Learn from your envy. I know, being envious is one of the worst character traits so I’m not promoting that, BUT if we want to or not, there’s always certain people who have/do/make things we wish we had too. This is why Rubin is suggesting that instead of pushing these feelings away and ignoring them, we should actually sit down and write a list of people we are envious of. Then, in the next step, we should write down why exactly we are envious of them.
This can help to take steps towards those goals as well and thus overcome our jealousy. So if, for example, there is this one friend who seems to be having all those meaningful relationships with people and you want that too, start reaching out to others, be the kind of friend you are looking for and pray for deep relationships with the right people. Or if there’s this other friend who has the most amazing instagram account and you MUST have that too, then read up on instagram tips and tricks and work for it (or find out that it’s actually a ton of work and you’d rather just take snapshots and chill ;). Whatever it is, instead of passively grumbling and being envious, find out which dreams in yourself are causing that feeling and work towards them.
What do you think? Will you try this ‘life hack’? I’ll definitely sit down with pen and paper after finishing this post!
Hanna’s Places is a green lifestyle magazine written by Hanna Ulatowski. It’s all about slowing down in a fast-paced society and finding ways to live a more sustainable, simple lifestyle.