Happiness and contentment are the type of life goals everyone strives for. Maybe we don't acknowledge it or realize it, but in our hearts, everyone truly wants to live a happy life. There are a lot of things that can ruin that happiness for us, however, and being a girl, I know that jealousy is often the fastest way to destroy our happiness. Once you catch a bad case of jealousy, it becomes so hard to shake.
Our culture is filled with advertisements of perfect-looking celebrities living the high life and smiling constantly with those perfectly white teeth and if we're being completely honest, it's hard not to compare you life to theirs and wonder how they do it. And if we want to be even more honest, sometimes it's hard to keep from looking at people's lives around us and wonder how it looks so perfect.
Too often that innocent curiosity leads us to examine our own life and come up disappointed that it doesn't seem as glamorous. That tiny seed of disappointment sticks with us and jealousy slowly creeps in. Once jealousy has made it's way in our hearts, we look up days, weeks, or months down the road and we completely despise the other person. Why? How? And how can we make it stop?
"Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?" Proverbs 27:4
"A heart at peace gives life to the flesh, but jealousy makes the bones rot." Proverbs 14:30
Jealousy is a nasty disease. What is really sad is that, in today's culture, it's become a trend to call yourself a "jealous girlfriend" or to proudly flaunt your jealousy as a warning to others to "back off." What people don't realize is that a small dose of jealousy can wreck and ruin your happiness and turn you into a bitter, hateful person so quickly that you won't even realize how you got there.
The only way to stop it is to find the real issue behind the jealousy and to start your repairs right there. What is jealousy? It is a state of being discontent that is often brought up by the want of what someone else has. So if we get down to it, jealousy often stems from discontentment with ourselves. Discontentment with ourselves is the result of poor self image, a lack of self confidence, and insecurity.
If you think about it, it really does make a lot of sense. When we are unhappy with ourselves and feeling insecure, it is easy to look at someone else and wish we had their life. Sometimes it is not even a conscious thought. Sometimes you can lack in your self confidence and not even realize it fully. If you begin to find yourself feeling jealous of others, look back at yourself. What about you is making you unhappy? What is stealing your joy? Too often we blame others, but if we got right down to it, our own disappointment in ourselves is what causes us to not only feel jealous of others and to dislike them, but to dislike ourselves as well. We begin to play the comparison game to make ourselves feel better and to bring others under us, maybe not out loud, but at least in our own hearts and minds.
There are a million reasons why you could dislike yourself. Maybe you want to lose a little more weight and you think you'd be happy. Or maybe you think going to the tanning bed will make you like yourself a little more. Or maybe a new makeup style or teeth whitener or haircut or outfit will make you feel confident.
Maybe.. but it's not likely.
Yes, there may be a million reasons to be unhappy with yourself, but there is one reason to love yourself that supersedes all of those reasons:
"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them." Genesis 1:27
"For man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God." 1 Corinthians 11:7a
"I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Psalm 139:14a
"But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:8
How can you allow yourself to be unhappy with exactly who you are and how you were made when God tells us that we were made IN HIS PERFECT IMAGE and that we are "wonderfully" made? How can you look in the face of our holy God and tell Him that what He molded with His hands is just not good enough?
But you wanna know a secret? Confidence isn't built by attaining the perfect looks, money, clothes, or working out. Confidence isn't a switch you flip, or a trait you learn. Confidence is an outlook. When you consciously choose to be positive, you will find that you are much happier. Why? Because seeing the bright side of things is much more enjoyable than dwelling on the down sides.
So how does that work for self image? Well, if you choose to look at yourself positively, the positives will outshine the things about yourself you might want to change. When your focus becomes the good in you, rather than the bad, you become happier and more content with yourself. This contentment gives you self confidence in yourself and jealousy immediately begins to dissipate. When you're happy with who you are, you focus less on what others are (or have) that you are not. You look at the positives, rather than the negatives. All around, life is happier.
But to clarify, having confidence doesn't mean you'll stop wanting to improve yourself. It doesn't mean you won't ever feel the need to lose weight or go tanning or buy the red lipstick. All it means is that in the process of improving yourself, you will learn to love yourself exactly how you are, with or without the improvements. It means that your happiness is no longer tied to standards you set for yourself, but rather the way you choose to see yourself, the world and others.
"Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself." Philippians 2:3
Who knew that the stronghold of jealousy could be broken by simply changing your thoughts and choosing to see yourself and others positively?
