{"id":3741,"date":"2026-06-21T11:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T17:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=3741"},"modified":"2026-06-21T11:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T17:04:20","slug":"what-i-dont-see-when-im-jealous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3741","title":{"rendered":"What I Don&#8217;t See When I&#8217;m Jealous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m getting to the age where peers have accomplished a lot. I&#8217;m not talking about people who were exceptional out of the gate and did great things in their 20s and 30s. I&#8217;m talking about people that felt like genuine peers, but now have done things like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>made a boatload of money<\/li>\n<li>built a business such that they have all kinds of freedom<\/li>\n<li>are well known in their fields<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These folks have things that <strong>I want<\/strong>. And I feel like <strong>I&#8217;m just as talented<\/strong>. I could be where they are and have what they have.<\/p>\n<p>In my mind I often think &#8220;why does &lt;X&gt; have that and I don&#8217;t&#8221;. This jealousy is not constructive, but that doesn&#8217;t stop it from popping up from time to time. I think I&#8217;m getting old enough that status and legacy are starting to matter in a way they didn&#8217;t a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>Here are strategies I use to combat this jealousy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Remind myself that I don&#8217;t actually know everything they have. I can see certain aspects of their life, but even for close friends I don&#8217;t know everything, just what they choose to share. The friend who is a professor who works with interesting projects and gets the summers off might have to deal with horrible politics or a low salary. I just don&#8217;t know. That means I don&#8217;t know enough to know if I&#8217;d actually want to trade places. I am idealizing what they have and not understanding the downsides.<\/li>\n<li>Even if I would want to trade places, I don&#8217;t know what they went through. When I see a friend with the thriving business who has flexibility and can work when he wants, I don&#8217;t see everything. I don&#8217;t see how he had to be tethered to it for years, or the risks he had to take, or the multiple years of 60+ hour workweeks and the stress that wrought on his body, family and friends. I try to imagine the late nights and the worries in the same way I imagine the benefits.<\/li>\n<li>Remind myself that I have agency and can work toward what they have. Even though I&#8217;m mid-career, if I wanted to adjust things to move towards what someone I see has, I can do so. As mentioned above, I need to be willing to make sacrifices, but I am lucky enough to have the space to consider it. With sufficient focus and effort, I can do most anything, I just can&#8217;t do everything.<\/li>\n<li>Even if I want to trade places with a friend, know what would make me happy, and would have been willing to make the sacrifices to be where they are, I am still discounting my current situation. It&#8217;s very easy to think &#8220;oh, &lt;Y&gt; would make me happy&#8221; but if I can&#8217;t look at where I am and be grateful, I might be kidding myself. And when I do take a hard look at where I am, I do feel more gratitude and satisfaction. One of my hacks when I&#8217;m feeling down is to just list 2-3 things that I like about my life.<\/li>\n<li>Related to feeling grateful for what I have, I also try to remember that just as I am looking at people and saying &#8220;why can&#8217;t I have what they have&#8221;, other folks might be looking at me and saying the same. In fact, I might have said the same 20 years ago if I was looking at someone where I am now. It&#8217;s easy to discount what you have and focus on what you don&#8217;t, but thinking about these folks makes me more grateful for what I do have.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;d be surprised if I&#8217;m alone in feeling this way.\u00a0Do you feel jealousy? If so, how do you deal with it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m getting to the age where peers have accomplished a lot. I&#8217;m not talking about people who were exceptional out of the gate and did great things in their 20s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,89,96,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifehack","category-mistakes","category-thanks","category-useful-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}