How to Handle Jealousy & Comparison with Meredith Rom
Episode 160: SUBSCRIBE ON Apple Podcasts
Have you ever found yourself comparing your life, relationships, or success to someone else's? Whether it's seeing another woman thriving in her business, traveling the world, finding love, or creating something you've always dreamed of, jealousy and comparison can leave us feeling small, stuck, and disconnected from our own power.
In this solo episode of Rising Women Leaders, I'm sharing 8 steps to transform jealousy and comparison into greater self-awareness, gratitude, and abundance. We'll explore how jealousy can reveal our deepest desires, how to release scarcity and reconnect with our own unique path, and how to find genuine happiness in another person's success. I'll also guide you through 3 spiritual practices to help you cultivate loving-kindness, appreciative joy, and a deeper sense of connection and belonging.
In this Episode We Discussed:
Why jealousy and comparison can be some of the biggest barriers to sisterhood, community, and belonging
How to recognize jealousy as an invitation to own your desires and step into your potential
Using journaling and affirmations to transform comparison into empowerment
The relationship between scarcity, gratitude, generosity, and abundance
A guided gratitude meditation to appreciate all that you already have
Practicing Metta (loving-kindness) to cultivate compassion for yourself and others
Practicing Mudita (appreciative joy) to find genuine happiness in another person's success
The meaning of the ancient mantra Tat Tvam Asi and how others can reflect our own infinite potential
Why putting the blinders on and protecting your creative flow can be essential to staying true to your path
Releasing attachments, clarifying your values, and finding peace in the present moment
Spiritual Practices Mentioned:
Metta (Loving-Kindness Meditation): Read more about this practice
Mudita (Appreciative Joy): A Buddhist practice of cultivating genuine happiness for the joy, success, and good fortune of others.
Tat Tvam Asi: An ancient Sanskrit teaching reminding us of our essential oneness with others and the infinite potential within ourselves.
Links:
Watch this episode on Youtube
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Stay in Touch with Rising Women Leaders:
Instagram: @risingwomenleaders and @meredithrom
Make a donation on Patreon
Notes/Transcript:
This is a topic that comes up often in my work with women, especially if they are preparing to lead retreats, and offer programs or courses.
Comparison - you see the person on social media, you see their followers, you see the people around you succeeding
Or maybe it’s jealousy seeing someone else take their family on vacation, or that person who has the partner, or just had the baby, or maybe it’s looking at the person with so much freedom to travel
We are kind of wired to want more, to want what we don’t have - unless we consciously choose to let that go, and have practices like meditation in our life that support us to find non attachment and releasing of desires
It's really not easy to be in that place of comparing yourself to another person. I’ve been there before, early in my business I was looking at other women's websites asking, "Why didn't I figure that out yet?" or "She's doing this so much better than me!"
I began to see the negative self-talk and stopped myself in my tracks. I remembered:
Jealousy is the biggest barrier to sisterhood, to community, to feeling a deep sense of belonging. It keeps us small. It prevents us from seeing our own power. And, it prevents us from focusing on the work that needs to be done.
So how do we release it? I often turn to my journal here are a few steps that may be helpful:
1. Write out a list of everything you're jealous of about that person
Get it all out on the paper. Be honest with yourself and purge.
2. Turn the list into statements of affirmation
For example, turn, "She has lots of awesome girlfriends" into "I am making lots of awesome girlfriends." Sit with it. So often, when we are jealous or stuck in comparison, it is because that person has or is doing something we want.
When we feel jealousy, it is an opportunity to OWN our desires.
3. Ask, "What would it feel like to already have it?"
When you read your new list of affirmations, ask yourself, "How does that make me feel?" Expansive? Powerful? Bold? Write it down. Then feel it in your body.
Spiritual Practices:
4.Ask, "What am I grateful for?"
This is when you can step back and look at all you have done and all you do have in your life. Then let yourself feel good about it.
Envy is being in scarcity - if they have that much, there will be less for me
Scarcity is somewhere we all get stuck at some point:
Generosity is the pathway to abundance
God and his universe is inexhaustible
When we align with Faith, Surrender, Service, Abundance will follow
It is a natural progression of God’s Laws
The Antidote to scarcity is Gratitude
Take a moment to be so grateful for what you have
Gratitude meditation
5. Practice Metta (loving kindness) for yourself and the person you're jealous of
Metta is a meditation practice of loving kindness. It is simply accessing the feeling of love and peace, sending it to every cell of your body and then sending it out to the person you are comparing yourself to.
6.Practice Mudita:
Mudita - appreciative joy of another’s success
Muditā is a Sanskrit and Pali word meaning sympathetic joy or appreciative joy—the ability to feel genuine happiness for another person’s happiness, success, beauty, or good fortune.
(In Buddhism, muditā is one of the Four Brahmavihāras, or “divine abodes”):
Mettā — loving-kindness
Karuṇā — compassion
Muditā — sympathetic/appreciative joy
Upekkhā — equanimity
A simple way to understand mudita is:
“Your joy brings me joy.”
It’s considered the opposite of envy or jealousy. Rather than experiencing someone else’s abundance as diminishing our own, we allow their happiness to expand our own capacity for joy.
It can also have a beautiful spiritual dimension: delighting in goodness wherever we encounter it—in another person’s gifts, awakening, love, creativity, success, or happiness.
Meditation:
I wish you unlimited success
May you flourish in all ways
May your happiness increase
This person’s success does not inhibit my own
7. Use the mantra, "Tat T'vam Asi"
It means: I see myself in the other. I see the other in myself.
The other is just a reflection of your own infinite potential.
This mantra reminds us of what is possible. It reminds us that all the people who trigger us are a beautiful mirror for what we need to see in ourselves.
8. Protecting Your Creative Flow ~ Put the Blinders On
Comparison - Blinders - sometimes it’s really important to put the blinders on.
Especially if you feel there are people doing similar work to you - mute them, unfollow, unsubscribe to stay true to your creative flow.
Jealousy can show us what is possible for our own lives.
That shift in perspective can empower us instead of making us feel small. Jealousy shows us what is possible and pushes us to step into the next level of our purpose and our calling.
Imagine who you are comparing yourself to
You do not know their struggles
There’s more to the story than what’s on the surface
If you knew the whole picture you would most likely feel very happy with your own life and own problems
So next time those feelings of comparison, judgment, or jealousy arise, try out these steps and see if you're able to dissolve it.
See where you’re playing small, and where you aren’t giving yourself permission to want what you want
You might realize when you give yourself the permission to want what you want, you don’t even really want that, you might have different values, different places where you want to put the money right now
It’s an invitation to go deeper into our gratitude, to step into generosity, to create more abundance and flow with the universe, it’s an opportunity to clarify our values, how we want to spend our money, how we want to spend our time, and also where we can offer up our attachments.
So thank yourself for all those difficult feelings to take you deeper into your heart, and for maybe finding true peace in another person’s happiness
May our soul remember its true nature…
Meredith Rom is a yoga teacher, author, women’s leadership coach and host of the Rising Women Leaders podcast. She supports women to heal past wounds and release limiting beliefs to fully embrace their greatest gifts and soul callings. Her mission is to see women shining at their brightest, owning their worth and using their voice to be a beacon of light for others to awaken in this world. After graduating from NYU she followed her intuition to Northern California where she teaches yoga and mentors women to rise in courage, self-love and feminine leadership. Learn more at www.meredithrom.com and on instagram @meredithrom
