Jealousy

Almost everyone experiences a visit from jealousy, the nasty green-eyed monster, at some point in our lives. Either it's over a best friend's career success or a gorgeous person flirting with their loved one. We tend to think of jealousy as a single emotion, but it is actually a mixture of a whole bunch of feelings. It can manifest itself as sadness, hurt, anxiety, fear, loneliness, paranoia, self-doubt, anger, and even extreme rage.

While we can't necessarily stop this visit from jealousy from time to time, we can control how we choose to act when it hits. When it consumes our thoughts or triggers behavior that can harm relationships or another person, that's when jealousy is truly a monster.

For every jealous feeling there is an emotion lurking behind that is much more significant than the jealousy itself. Jealousy is just the finger pointing at the fears that we are afraid to face. More often than not, the culprit is a feeling of low self-worth and a fear that we are not good enough to hold on to the things that mean to us.

The law of love constrains us to rejoice rather than to be distressed at the good fortune of our neighbour. The envious man tortures himself without cause, morbidly holding as he does, the success of another to constitute an evil for himself. Jealousy is most evil when one repines at another's spiritual good. It is then said to be a sin. In its intense forms, it is a horrible, tormenting obsession.

Jealousy involves having something highly valued and losing it to the competition that hurts, angers, and shames us. Even if you try to bury your jealousy and never verbalize it to anyone, you have to realize that you are building walls and separation between you and other people until you deal with it and heal what's underneath.

Just to straighten things out:

• Jealousy is experienced when something you have is taken away or is threatened by someone else.
  
• Envy is when you do not measure up to someone else or you very much want something someone else has.
  
• Rivalry is when no one yet possesses the thing you desire and there is keen competition for the desired goal.

So which of this is the one actually bugging you? The best solution to overcoming any of this is getting away from it. Find other things to amuse yourself. Self-indulge yourself in things you like doing. If you are not meant to have something, then it is meant to be like that.

Don't try to force things to happen. Things happen for a reason somehow. There is a whole wide world out there. No point staying back in the past tormenting yourself because that will not get you anywhere but in your own selfish obsession. Imagine how much time and energy you spend on being jealous when all you have to do is find something new and refreshing and by then you'll be saying "Jealousy who?" =P

It does take sometime getting use to but you'll find that in the end, its just one of those days when things just don't go the way you want it to. If you were given everything you wanted so easily, you'll never appreciate what you have. So there is something good out of this but jealousy can cause insanity and possessive of things or persons. So watch out for the green-eyed monster.

~ In jealousy there is more self-love than love~