Patience

 

Jealousy

It’s my understanding that it’s “bad” to be jealous. The scriptures teach us to avoid jealousy. When we see jealous behaviors or overhear a comment that’s been made out of jealousy, we often feel turned off.

Like any other character traits which have been determined as less than desirable, we may explore why we feel as we do and how we might improve.

I remember a time when a friend had been petty to another friend and the “petty” one laughed at himself for how he acted. He verbally questioned his behavior in our conversation and something occurred to me that I have had little lightbulb moments about in the past. Why do we feel jealousy?

Well, there is a concern involved. That concern could sometimes be labeled as fear. What are we afraid of? Well, it’s kind of simple. Love. We are afraid of not being liked, loved, appreciated, or adored.

Like it or not, we all need to be liked, loved, appreciated, and cared for.  We live in a society where often there isn’t enough of all of those things to go around or life has given us circumstances in which we feel deficient in love and caring.

If we see someone more attractive, younger, more athletic, smarter, more popular, more successful, etc. than we are, it’s so easy to feel jealousy. We may look for flaws in the person or begin to strongly dislike them. We make try to inflate the positive qualities about ourselves in hopes to be more or “better” than the other person. If we are unable to do that, the sentiments of jealousy usually only increase.

Why is sometimes hard to feel happy for someone or positive admiration instead of being envious? I think it’s a personal kind of FOMO. Fear of Missing Out! What mentally healthy person wants to miss out on love and respect? No one does.

So it’s another dig deep situation: getting over jealousy. Feeling envy toward another person will not earn you the love and attention you may feel deficient in. We need to feel gratitude for the positive traits that we do have. We need to cultivate new relationships in which to feel love and to nurture the already loving relationships that we may have. We need to strengthen our strengths and grow in our talents. We may even need to build ourselves up where we aren’t strong.

The most important exercise in diminishing jealousy and toward increasing our strengths is to remember where we came from and to Whom we belong. You are a child of God and therefore of divine creation and heritage. We all have the potential for a glorious inheritance that lasts through eternity (see Matthew 25:34). The more we try to become like Our Savior, Jesus Christ, and the more we develop ourselves; the more prepared we will be for that eternal inheritance.