As Bette Midler once said, “One of the hardest parts of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.” People will always rain on your parade. Never let their petty jealousy keep you from celebrating your wins. Let’s discuss.
Never Let Petty Jealousy Keep You from Celebrating Your Wins
Last year, when we talked about how it’s important to never let envy stand in the way of your happiness, we were talking about our own petty jealousy holding us back. That little voice in our head that, when we see someone sharing good news, thinks, “No fair! Why does she have all the luck?”
We’re all guilty of it from time to time. Most of us, however, get over it really quickly and realize that we’re truly happy for our friend. Or, at the very least, we privately whine to ourselves yet publicly applaud.
Sadly, though, there will always be people who get it backward. Instead of keeping their petty jealousy to themselves, they make snide comments to try to undermine your joy. They don’t just rain on your parade; they strive to be the hurricane that cancels the whole darn thing.
Why, though? What makes people act that way? Especially the people who are supposed to want good things for us? Supposed to clap the loudest when we succeed?
There’s a quote from the movie, A Bronx Tale, that perfectly explains it. Lorenzo Anello tells his son in the movie, A Bronx Tale: “They want to see you do good, but never better than them. Remember that.”
They want to see you do good, but never better than them
Many people want GOOD things for you, but never BETTER things than they have. They want to see you succeed, as long as your success doesn’t surpass their own. For example, a coworker will clap for you when you earn a promotion just beneath them but will seethe with rage when you earn the one just above them.
It seems to be basic human nature since we’re all guilty of acting and reacting this way at some point in our lives. I always assume that these things go back to our early days, where all of these negative emotions actually helped keep us alive. After all, if the family in the cave next door caught that dodo bird (or whatever cave people ate) before you did, they’d have their fill while you and your kids went hungry, right?
Somewhere deep inside of us remains that feeling that if someone does better (or has better) than us, they’ll take something away from us. That their win is our loss. It’s not an excuse, nor is it right, but it’s something that we all struggle with.
The thing is, most of us can recognize that struggle within ourselves. We realize that we’re reacting negatively to a friend’s good news out of that sense of fear. We can reign ourselves in, remind ourselves that their good fortune is not a reflection on us, and find our way to genuine happiness for them.
Not everyone can do that, though. So, it falls on us to remember that just because someone rains on our joy, it doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve said joy. It most certainly doesn’t mean that we haven’t truly earned our moment in the sun, our proverbial parade.
DON’T Keep that Good News to Yourself!
There’s a popular meme that gets shared often across my newsfeed that says, “Sometimes you have to keep your good news to yourself. Everybody is not genuinely happy for you.” While we’ve established that the last part is totally true, I couldn’t disagree more with the first.
Why should you keep your good news to yourself? To appease those who let petty jealousy rule their lives? To avoid snide comments like “it must be nice to be you.”? NO WAY! Sing that from the rooftops, my friend! YOU deserve that happiness. Anyone who doesn’t clap for you isn’t a true friend.
I’ll leave you with a final quote from Bo Sanchez, “Let’s face it: There are people who won’t be happy when you get too blessed. There are people who feel threatened by your success. There are people who, out of envy, will just not like you anymore.”
Again, I’d amend that by adding “…and that’s okay. It has nothing at all to do with you and everything to do with them. Never, ever, ever let someone else’s petty jealousy keep you from celebrating your wins. You earned your right to revel in your joy just as much as you earned that joy itself. So go ahead and celebrate. I promise I’ll always celebrate with you!
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