When you're envious of another, you lose sight of your own uniqueness

It's easy for us singles to be envious.

We imagine that married couples' lives are so much more fulfilling than ours. We crave the love and affection a marriage partner would bring, and we often think that if only our life was like theirs, we'd finally be happy.
Part of this feeling comes from our culture. Most advertising is geared toward making us dissatisfied, implying that if only we own a certain product or buy some service, it will solve all our problems. If we fall into that trap of searching for the "silver bullet," we find ourselves constantly discontented.
Surprisingly, many married folks don't have it as good as we imagine. The fact that about half of today's marriages end in divorce shows that many marriages are in trouble.

Never satisfied, never happy

Being envious of others is an easy way to make yourself very unhappy. I should know. I was jealous of other people for much of my life.
When I went to art school, I was envious of the other students' talent. I was envious of comic book artists who were able to realize their dream, while I could not. For many years, I was jealous of successful novelists.

We don't have to look very hard to find something to be resentful about. Whether it's another person's career success, appearance, or wealth, we imagine that they're so much happier than we are.
It's a treadmill that's hard to get off, and like a treadmill, it takes us no where.
God saw the danger in this kind of lust thousands of years ago and banned it in his Tenth Commandment:

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
 
Nobody uses the word "covet" any more, so we think we're not breaking this commandment when we envy someone. But the two words are interchangeable.

The real danger in envy

By focusing so much on another person and what they have, we forget about what we have. We become ungrateful. We spend so much time comparing ourselves to others that we fail to develop our own talents and abilities.

God wants us to become the person he created us to be, not a copy of another. The breathtaking aspect of God's creation is that everything is unique. Even two sparrows that appear identical truly are not--and as we all know, God values us so much more than sparrows.
Sometimes it's hard to find our own talent, so we try to emulate another's. But talent, like personalities, is also unique. There are thousands of Elvis impersonators, but there was only one Elvis!
God will help you find your talent and abilities if you ask him; he'll also help you develop them. And most of all, he will help you grow those qualities that make you like Jesus. That's something worthwhile to aspire to, not be envious about.

Where to start

o stop being envious of others, we have to recognize the true value in ourself. This starts with building our self-esteem.
When we understand that our worth comes not from something we do, something we own, or what we look like, but from our relationship with Jesus Christ, we've made the first big step in booting jealousy out of our life.

It was a struggle for me. It took years. I had to let go of some of my dreams, but God gave me new ones, dreams he custom-made to my talents and desires.
You can root envy out of your life, too. How much more exciting it is to build your own life instead of being a knock-off of another's. What a thrill it is when God arranges circumstances and introduces people to help you grow.

This is one of the most electrifying parts of the Christian adventure.
Don't worry about what someone else is or can do. Concentrate on being the best you that you can be. When you do, God will pour so much excitement into your life that envy will become a thing of the past.

 

5 Tips on How to Build an Envious Twitter Following

If you're new to Twitter or have an account but just haven't put it to good use listen up as I've got some tips for you on how to get Twitter followers, and not just any followers but followers who will be interested in what you have to say on the micro-blogging platform.

1. Promote Intriguing Content

This may go without saying however the more often you tweet, naturally the more followers you will receive. And to do this you don't need to create your own content if you don't want to. One of the quickest ways is to share worthwhile articles and blog posts that you find online written by others.

2. Look for Highly Rated Twitter Users to Follow

Not sure how to tell who is worthy of following and who is not? One way is to look for Twitter users who are being followed by many but who aren't following people themselves. The larger the disparity between followers and people following, more likely than not the more influential that Twitter user is.
Another way to determine whether a person is worthy to follow or not is to refer to the number of lists that the individual is apart of. The higher the number, the higher the chance of the person being influential.

3. Be Yourself

To increase your number of followers, being personal goes a long way. It's really all about establishing a connection with them, which means that you don't upload a random picture as your Twitter avatar but rather use a head shot for people to identify with you. The rule of transparency should be adhered to at all times possible.

4. Focus on Keyword-Rich Content

The name of the game to be found by others really boils down to "keyword-rich content". What this means is making sure your Twitter profile and tweets are optimized correctly for being found by others searching for certain key phrases and words on Twitter.

What you do want to avoid those is a practice known as "keyword stuffing", which means that your profile and/or tweets become unreadable due to having too many of your keywords strung next to one another.
A good point to remember is to keep a good balance between legibility and enriched keywords.

5. Allow Leeway for Retweets

Another way to increase your following on Twitter is to have your tweets retweeted by others. If you provide good content, people will pick it up and spread the word about it to their friends and followers. But in order for this to happen, there has to be enough space in your original tweet for the characters "RT" (retweet) and your Twitter name to be inserted by another Twitter user. Therefore as a rule to follow, I would advise against maximizing out your 140 character space and instead limit yourself to about 120 characters.
As there are many tips and tricks of the trade when it comes to Twitter and tweeting, hopefully this will give you a start in the right direction when it comes to getting Twitter followers.

 

Dealing with Envious People

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Reach a high enough level of success, skill or happiness, and you find out there are a lot of little green monsters around you, many of which you used to call friends, colleagues, partners or collaborators.
Since envy is a common and tricky interpersonal occurrence, I believe that dealing with envious people effectively is one of the important people skills to master. The primary thing to be acquainted with is not technique, but the fundamental philosophy of handling envious people. This is what I’ll focus this article on.

Reality Check

Before you think about dealing with envious people, answer this question: Are they really envious of you? You see, one thing I’ve noticed coaching people to improve their people skills is that in a many cases, envy is a false diagnostic.

What’s really going on is that a person has a better image of their skills or success than it’s warranted, so they act all arrogant and they expect special treatment. When this special treatment does not happen, the person wrongfully concludes that people are envious of them.

Here’s an example: a recruiter who believes they are the best recruiter in the company and should get the most important recruitment projects. However, their manager accurately believes that this person is not the best recruiter and gives them regular recruitment projects. So, the recruiter decides that their manager is just envious.

This is why it’s good to open your eyes really wide, notice what’s really going on and then decide if it’s a case of people green with envy or rather you being a self-righteous pain in the ass.

Putting Envious People in One of Two Boxes

If you decide that you’re dealing with real envy, the next thing I recommend is to think about those people who are envious of you and their real power to have a practical negative impact over you. Based on this, put them into one of two boxes:

1. The Harmless Box. These are the people who besides making some bad jokes and not liking you very much don’t have the power or the guts to actually do something which can harm you.
2. The Potential Threat Box. These are the people who do have enough power and nerve to potentially harm an aspect of your life, such as a work colleague who is very well trusted by all the top management in the company.

Ignore, Ignore, Ignore

The people in the first box are the people you just want to ignore. Let their jokes and passive-aggressive comments be like spears passing through water. There is no real harm they can do and often, if they see their comments have no effect on you, they eventually back off and continue hating you in silence.
By defending yourself in front of them or becoming passive-aggressive yourself, you are giving these people more importance than they deserve. Many of them are hopping this will happen, because they derive power not from real results, but from manipulative, power games.

Address Them Head On

The people in the second box, they are a different scenario. Since they can actually sabotage your career, relationships or life, you want to deal with them as soon as you notice comments or behaviors that suggest envy.

The first approach I recommend is talking to them. Point their conduct, express your honest opinions in a tactful way and seek to get their perspective on things. Yes, if your communication style is good enough, this does work and you can get the other person to back down.

If this approach fails, it’s time to put into play one of my favorite people skills: cutting this person’s power over you. This means you change your environment and your social dynamics so the envious person no longer has power to affect you.

One person I know who had an envious manager did so by becoming a good friend with and earning the trust of their manager’s manager. Another person with an envious manager did so by quitting their job and finding another one. Alternatives do exist; the essence is to act on them.

Envious people can be a bother, but they don’t have to. Know how to deal with them wisely, have the confidence and the people skills to do so, and they become insignificant; which is how I think envious people deserve to be.

How to Deal With Envy

Jealousy is a VERY big role in everyone's lives. It tears apart friendship, and ruins a lot of people's lives. This says how to deal with it.

Steps

1. Make sure the people know it doesn't bug you. Sometimes people try to make you jealous. If you can tell that they are trying to make you jealous, like, for example, they hang out with the people you don't like, make new friends. hang out with people THEY don't like.
2. If you are very close to them, let them know how you feel. Just say to them nicely, "Listen, I just want you to know I am kind of jealous that you hang out with other friends over me." There's no way you can get in a fight over that, and if they were really a good friend, they'd understand.
3. If you are the one trying to make someone else jealous; Talk about how much fun you had with a friend around them, or brag about a good grade on a test, or something you just bought.

Tips

• Jealousy can cause a lot of drama. Instead of wanting what you don't have, be thankful and make the best of what you DO have.

Warnings

• Be careful, when put in a certain situation, Your friend may say a lot of things that aren't true just to crush you. Don't let your guard down.