Remember those movies depicting the viciousness of high school life, like Mean Girls? Well, some people are still in that place mentally and emotionally. We’ve all experienced feeling jealous during our lives at one time or another. Perhaps you were jealous of your ‘perfect’ beautiful friend as you grew up together riddled with insecurities, or when another woman attempted to make moves on your high school sweetheart – this is a normal reaction. What we’re referring to here is that intense jealousy that ruins relationships and destroys everything in its path.
Is Jealousy Ruining Your Friendships? 6 Tell-Tale Signs
1. You label the accomplishments of your friends as ‘lucky.’
‘Lucky’ describes someone randomly winning the lottery, or walking into a random swirl of $100 notes. When your friends accomplish acing an exam, losing weight, finishing a marathon or making a profit in the first year of their start-up business, these achievements have nothing to do with luck. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into making these moments happen. Rather than be jealous of your friends’ or colleagues’ successes, why not work towards achieving your life goals?
2. You put others down to try and make yourself look better.
If you find yourself constantly arguing the workability of ideas and suggestions of friends or colleagues to make yourself look better, you are playing a dangerous game that you will lose. This is one of the oldest poisonous personality traits found in the How to be Toxic handbook. Everyone will soon catch on, and you’ll earn yourself an irreversible reputation as a difficult person.
3. You pick petty fights.
If you feel like you’re living in someone’s shadow, you’re likely merely jealous of them. If you throw shade at them for being able to afford another vacation this year or for being asked out on yet another date, you’re jealous of their successes. Why not focus the energy you spend on inflicting this negative energy on exploring what it is you want to achieve in your life?
4. You compare the main target of your jealousy to others.
There will frequently be people in your life that are better than you at one thing or another, and you need to learn to accept that. If you find yourself constantly comparing the target of your rage to people you perceive to be better than him or her just to put them down, you’re jealous. It’s time to get to the root of this problem and figure out why you feel so jealous of this person. Use this as an opportunity to assess why you’re so dissatisfied with your life.
5. You get angry when people give you advice.
Unless someone is purposefully trying to patronize you, people are giving you advice because they have experienced your problem and would like to offer their support. If you find yourself reacting negatively to this, you may just be harboring feels of bitterness and jealousy towards the advice giver.
6. You’re happy when others fail.
This is just a no-no. Everyone deserves to be happy. Even if you dislike someone immensely, you should never take pleasure in their unhappiness or failures.
