How Admiration turns to Envy and Jealousy part 2

This is the second part of the series “how admiration turns to envy and jealousy” and i want to reason with everyone reading this article to take a deeper look into some aspects of your personality and understand what drives some of your actions. This is a daily activity for me as i talk to people from all works of life and various ethnicity. Envy and jealousy do not not respect status, religion or nationality. They are deceitful emotions that allow us spot them in other people but never in ourselves.

Suppressing Envy & It’s Consequence

In the concluding part of the first article, i mentioned that envy is an emotion that we can turn the tables on and use it rather than allowing it use us. When we accept  it and express this emotion, it can change everything about and around us. To make it more powerful all you need to do is give envy one goal to be achieved. This action will create opportunities you never knew existed, push you out of your comfort zone and make you healthily competitive while appreciating this same hustle in others because we now respect, admire them and understand what they’ve been through to get to where they are.

However 95% of individuals you know suppress their envy allowing their sub-conscious mind hijack the emotion thereby letting it turn into something otherworldly. A force that if not contained leaves a trail of destruction.

When you are consciously aware of the presence of envy and channel it properly, you are in control and this shows in the proper construction of your thoughts. After interacting with individuals both as an everyday guy living life and a trained psychotherapist, i discovered that there was one word that stood at the mid-point separating the world of Admiration from that of Jealousy. That word is “Like” and because envy and jealousy are emotions that show us our true flawed state, we never own up to them so these examples i will cite are purely mental exercises that show us if we have transitioned.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BRAIN AND IT’s ROLE IN FUELING JEALOUSY

Your conscious mind can strike healthy comparison and desire for or between objects but the human sub-conscious mind cannot. Paul Maclean came up with a model he called “The Triune Model”. This simply explained the 3 types of brain we possess as human beings.

• Reptilian brain – This was the part that enabled us survive 250 million years ago. It’s responsible for fight, flight, breathing,hear-trate, sex and it’s very primitive.

• Mammalian brain – This brain evolved  50 million years ago. It’s responsible for feelings and emotions and has no connection with your conscious mind.

• Neocortex brain – According to Carl Jung,this brain evolved 40,000 years ago and starts developing from age 3 until you are 20 years old. This is your rational brain developed to balance out your reptilian brain. The reptilian brain exists to keep you alive and do whatever is necessary to achieve this but the neo-cortex helps you analyse, rationalize, plan, invent, compose, use hindsight, foresight etc. Unfortunately, this aspect of our mind is the conscious one and always the last to know.

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Now that you understand the three brain components struggling for expression within the average human being, my emphasis is on the Mammalian brain because that is where jealousy, envy, rage and other strong emotions emanate from. The moment envy becomes subconscious, the object of envy automatically becomes an enemy in your way initiating your “Reptilian Brain”.  So rather than being healthily competitive you want a fight instead that ends in robbing, stealing and hurting that helps you fulfill your deep, dark, shameful desires. Hence the hatred and aggression you feel towards people when jealous about them. This feelings hampers the ability to rationalize the situation and if the individual tries to suppress it, it only becomes stronger.

“Jealousy as an emotion is self-reinforcing that feeds itself and makes the subject insecure, angry, frustrated. When you do not actively seek help for this, it will slowly erode your self-esteem, make you avoid the causative object of the emotion thereby making the individual angrier”.

– Temple Obike

The Deceptive Nature of Jealousy & How You Arrest It

Jealousy will change everything about your ethos, your spending, your habits and so much more. This emotion clouds your sense of rationale and keeps you locked up in a cycle of envy, aggression, rage and jealousy. It’s a stealthy emotion that it’s victims can quickly label as something else with word such as “He/She make me angry”, “They are arrogant”, “He/She feels like they are better than everyone else” and many other voices.This makes it sublime and difficult to grasp.

After speaking with countless individuals suffering from this negative emotion, i recognized that there was only one way to kill this emotion. Recognize it and call it by it’s name. “I AM JEALOUS”. This is one of the hardest phrases that exist and it is always followed by a stream of tears and weight being lifted off the victims. At this moment, i want you to think about that friend who thinks they are special, that colleague at work who makes you all look bad even though they are only doing their job, that spouse or partner who you resent because they have always seemed to have it better than yourself. Then say these powerful words.

“IT WAS JEALOUSY, I WAS JEALOUS BUT I FORGIVE MYSELF AND FROM THIS MOMENT I WILL ALWAYS GET BETTER NOT JEALOUS OR BITTER”

That’s it. You have just brought the negative emotion into your conscious mind. Your “Neocortex Brain“. Envy by itself is an emotion that every human being has. When you deny it, it becomes dangerous to you but when you refuse to fight it, then channel it to becaome a driving force that motivates, inspires, guides and moves you out of your comfort zone.

When feeling the desire to have something that someone else has. Whether it’s their possessions, their confidence, or their emotional state, remember that this feeling it not wrong. Envy is an emotion that we all have, and feeling envious is an inseparable part of being human. So, when feeling it, don’t fight it, but instead, use it.

NOW LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO USE ENVY

Step 1: I’d like you to think of something that someone around you had that made you envious a few days ago. Yes go ahead it’s not wrong,

Step 2: Write down all the things you think they did to achieve this (both good and bad) and how long it may have taken them.

Step 3: Remove all the bad things you wrote down and leave only the good

Step 4 Write a plan on how to do these things.

LASTLY, A PIECE OF ADVICE FOR CELEBRITIES & PUBLIC FIGURES

I’ve been blessed to speak to people who fall into both categories and one thing that almost 70% of them suffer from is “Loneliness”. An emotion i will treat as a full topic in due time. Loneliness that comes from not knowing the reason the people around you are there. Loneliness that makes them put people through a prism of scrutiny but unfortunately a loneliness that makes them err in certain judgments like;

1. Alienating people (familiar’s) who were there for them in times past

2. Mistaking admiration from fans as love and recoiling when those same fans turn around like cobras and strike

3. Feeling pressured to date or marry other popular individuals erroneously believing they understand their secret struggles. Unfortunately, they don’t because they are battling with their own set of challenges so you just compounded issues.

All the things we discussed here may not be perfectly executed but i urge you to keep trying and watch any traces of jealousy in your life fizzle away. I’d love to know if this article helped you in any way. Write me on templescounsel@gmail.com.

As always, i hope this piece on “How admiration turns to envy and jealousy part 2” helped someone somewhere. Never allow the negative emotion of envy turn you to something or someone else. Instead use it and become better. Knowledge they say is power but i say in it’s right application lies real mastery.

Written by Obike Temple

A Counselor, psychotherapist, brand-Sage and entrepreneur who has counseled over three-hundred couples, individuals, substance abuse and grief-stricken clients.

For more information on related issues and to schedule an appointment with “Temple’s Counsel”  visit our counseling page, chat us up via our website or send a whatsapp message to +2348109055475.

International Appointments are scheduled within 24 hours when clients make payments via this link here and then sending an email with the receipt of payment to templescounsel@gmail.com.

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