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Why We Should Feel Grateful, Not Jealous, When Someone Succeeds
It’s not what it says about them, it’s what it says about you
“It just burns my butt that Sara got that marketing job. You need to be creative in marketing, and Sara’s not that creative. Besides, she’s only 25. It seems like a position like that would require more life experience. Experience, I mean, other than sucking up to senior corporate management, which seems like Sara’s main tool to get what she wants.”
“Every time I see Bill out, he’s got an attractive woman on his arm. It seems like it’s a different woman every time, too. Don’t they all know about each other? Don’t they know he’s a player? Meanwhile, there are good guys who would treat a woman right, if they’d give him the time of day. But they’re stupid enough to prefer Bill…”
STOP IT.
It’s an ages-old cognitive strategy. We hear about someone’s good fortune, like Sara’s success in the job market, or Bill’s success on the dating scene. We are human animals, after all, and their success seems to push us farther to the back of the pack. So it creates cognitive dissonance for us.
The cognitive dissonance is intensified if our successful peer lacks key traits we see in ourselves — traits like intelligence, creativity, hard work…
