The Psychology of your 20s - 279. The psychology of career jealousy

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

When you're struggling with your sense of purpose, job hunting or feelings of success, it can be very hard to see someone else who has everything you want, and not feel jealous. In today's episode, we break down the very important psychology of career jealousy in our 20s, including:  The 3 types of career jealousy Why it's most common in our 20s  Career jealousy between friends and siblings The unspoken consequences  How to turn envy into inspiration and admiration  4 tips to not let envy control you + questions from the listeners Listen now!    PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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course break down the psychology of our 20s. If you can't already hear it, surprise, surprised, I am once again ill. I have a pretty nasty like cold slash chest infection. So I really apologize for my voice being very, very nasally. I just got back from a lot of travel like three weeks in the United States and then traveling for a family birthday. It's obviously taken a little bit of a toll, but I'm on the up and up. I'm feeling better. I just want to say sorry slash acknowledge that my voice is going to sound perhaps a little bit nasally in this episode. Hopefully by next Tuesday, I'm fully mended and you guys don't have to bear with the sick voice for any much longer. But I really didn't want to skip this episode. I didn't want to

skip this Friday's topic because we're talking about something I think is very near and dear to a lot of 20-something-year-olds. Navigating our careers in our 20s is tough. There are a lot of dead ends, a lot of moments where we feel incapable, we feel like we're falling behind, we can't get the promotion we want, let alone the job. And the thing that always makes it worse is seeing someone who is seemingly not struggling at all. They have the dream job, they have the career progression, the success, the accolades.

maybe it's not even someone that you know. It could be a celebrity, an influencer, someone you follow online. Regardless, we can't help but look at all that they have and feel not just envious, but pretty terrible about ourselves. It also probably elicits some thoughts like, why not me? Like, this is so unfair. They don't even deserve it. And with those thoughts comes a lot of shame because we have been taught from a lot of. an early age, that jealousy is a so-called ugly emotion, and we should just be happy for others

rather than bitter. I think anyone who has experienced career jealousy or jealousy of any form knows that that is not always a choice. And that is a very, very lovely sentiment to be happy for everyone at all times. But jealousy is just a part of life. It's hard and it's sometimes miserable, but it's also not an emotion that we are going to let define us. We want to form a healthier relationship with it, especially in our 20s and especially when it comes to our professional lives. So today we are talking career jealousy in our 20s, why it happens, what it feels like, and most importantly, how to ensure it doesn't weigh you down because we have so much more to worry about in this life, what other people may or may not be doing or may or may not have

should not be added to that list. I really want to take us through, of course, the psychology of this experience. And I want to talk about my own personal struggle with this because I'm going to be super vulnerable. This is something that, especially when I was in my early 20s, I think, ended up hurting a lot of my relationships that I was quite jealous and I felt quite insecure about where I was heading from those experiences. I hope, and I do believe I've learned a lot. So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and maybe take something from my wisdom. But I also want to talk about how this shows up between siblings,

between even our bestest of friends, the role of self-esteem, culture, even social media influences. There is a lot packed into this episode today. Hopefully it is an entire guidebook if you are struggling with this in your life right now. I hope you know you're not alone. I hope you leave this episode not feeling too terrible about yourself, but also knowing how to manage this very complicated feeling. Without further ado, let us get into the psychology of career jealousy.

So what is professional or career jealousy? Let's start with a nice, good old-fashioned explanation. It's pretty simple. Career jealousy describes feeling envious, almost exclusively. towards someone's professional life compared to your own and seeing something in their life or professional success that you want or maybe even feel that you deserve. Let's be super, super clear here. It is so much more common than you think. Jealousy in general is a very universal human emotion, of course. About 75% of people polled in a recent piece of research reported that they experienced

jealousy at least once last year. And career jealousy is in fact one of the top ways that we experience this feeling after firstly material jealousy and interpersonal jealousy. So feeling jealous of the relationships that someone has with someone else. Current estimates say that around 27% of people experience career jealousy in their lifetime with that typically spiking at two different points in time. The first one, of course, is our 20s, and the second one is actually in our 50s. Of course, unsurprisingly, it is exceedingly common in our 20s, as I just said. And I would even say more so now in this generation compared to those who have come before. It's common in our 20s, I think, because insecurity around just about everything is common in our 20s. It is such a general

experience that we are all going to have to feel as if we have absolutely no clue what we're doing in almost all areas of our life. And so when we see someone who apparently does know what they're doing, it can be shocking and immediately elicited a sense of panic. Like, wait, hold up a second. Is it just me who's falling behind? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is there something that no one is telling me that these people have somehow figured out? Now, if those, thoughts aren't deliberately shut down pretty quickly, this can become a chronic thought pattern for us and that obviously takes a massive toll in our self-esteem. It can also have us looking around for more evidence that we are indeed failures. So we start selectively searching or

seeking out further examples of what we have now already tend to believe about ourselves, that we're behind, that we don't know what we're doing, that we are the only ones. It's a very nasty trick that our mind plays on us. You probably know it by the term confirmation bias. The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms our prior beliefs or values, including the mean beliefs that we have about ourselves that are just in no way helpful. Thinking of yourself as a failure is in no way. helpful, but for anyone who has struggled with that, they know that that is not always the easiest thought pattern to break if it has become ingrained by repeated instances of you

thinking that that is the case. That kind of also means that you stop seeing or acknowledging the people who are struggling, the people who are unsure of what they want in their careers, who are unemployed, and you only unconsciously pay attention to the people who have it all together. So you end up having this very selectively skewed vision of people in their 20s and what professional success looks like for them in general. This can also cause a lot of anger and resentment because when you feel terrible about your circumstances, there are kind of only two alternative routes for your brain to take. You can either feel bad about yourself and believe that your circumstances reflect your character and your worth, that's option one. Or you can feel angry at the world and you can

feel angry at other people and say, well, you obviously don't deserve this. This is unfair. Like I said, it's very, very nasty and it's often subconscious or unconscious. Now, career jealousy is not a one-dimensional thing. It's not just one big bucket of fear, insecurity and frustration. I've come to realize that I think there are actually three forms of career jealousy. Firstly, I think we can be jealous towards someone just for having a job. You know, like I said before, it's bloody tough out there. It is tough. Sometimes if you're in the trenches and one of your friends suddenly gets a great job whilst you've been working really hard and looking for way longer, it's very difficult not to resent them and resent your circumstances. Secondly, we can feel professional jealousy

over someone else's sense of purpose. So it's not just that they have a job or they have a career, but they have something that they really care about. And who amongst us doesn't want that? Having a purpose when it comes to our profession, I think turns a job into a career. Like a job is something that you can just do because it makes money. A career, and even bigger than that, a mission is something that you are personally invested in.

and there's like a fire in your belly. We know from repeated psychology studies in this area that this sense of purpose is linked to increased life satisfaction and sometimes even life expectancy. So when you're in your 20s and it seems like everyone is slowly figuring out what they want to do and you haven't figured it out yet, you can feel really, really envious. I will say, I think the older we get, the more we realize that our profession or our career, is not our primary sense of purpose in life. It's not the sole thing that can imbue your life with a sense of meaning.

So I know those statistics I just gave or like those findings seem kind of scary. Like, oh my God, are you telling me if I don't find my purpose? I'm going to die sooner. No, no, absolutely not. You have a lot of time to find your purpose. It's more that I think people struggle with thinking it's only going to come from a job. The people who are truly happy realize that it comes from more than just that. but sometimes career can fulfill that need pretty early on in our lives before we've learned that

lesson. Okay, finally, the final kind of bucket of envy is envy towards someone's progress, success and the material things that they have been rewarded with. You know the friend or the person online who you see and they are going on these amazing trips and they are suddenly buying nice clothes, nice dinners, winning awards. They've been promoted like three times before 20, they've bought a house from their job. These situations of material success, objective material wealth, can serve as a very stark and a very tangible reminder of what we don't have. Maybe I'm going to say this, of what we don't have yet.

That's the other cruel part of career jealousy. All we can never focus on is what we don't have right now, not what we've had in the past, not what we may have in the future. and we don't focus on what we actually don't want. You know, you might see someone who you're like immediately envious of. They're famous. They're successful. Immediately you're like, well, maybe I should be doing that.

What you don't think is, you know, I probably don't actually want to be famous. I probably don't want to work 100 hours a week. I probably don't want to live out of my suitcase. But it's this want what I can't have mindset. and cherry-picking all the situations and the selective parts of someone's story that make us feel miserable. Why does this happen? Because I think we can all agree that given how awful career jealousy feels, it's not something that we are voluntarily opting into. Career jealousy, I think, is on the rise for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think the reason that we're experiencing it more is that we have just more opportunity,

to compare. This day and age, every single thing is public and online. There's a really fascinating research paper I found when I was researching this episode, which explored envy towards social media influences in South Korea, and it found that our level of personal jealousy increases alongside our usage of social media. Now, that might seem pretty obvious, but yeah, the more you are exposed to these perfect ideas of success that are very, very present in this generation, the more we feel lacking. There is also, you know, literally a social media for our jobs, LinkedIn. I remember writing an article when I was back in university and it was titled like, in hell they make you use LinkedIn, where I talked about how it's basically just another way to feel constantly behind.

It's another example of appearances. And I think my opinion on it still stands. When all you see of people's careers is the glossy outside, not the grueling inside, it's very easy to feel like you're missing out. The other reason that we might feel jealous is that career does just make up such a big part of our identity. It is, in fact, one of what we call the big buckets of identity. So if you think about who you are, there are all these different areas where you can pour energy. into that make you feel accomplished as a person and build upon your identity.

So your relationships, your values, your family, your history, your career. Career is a big bucket. When something is that prominent in our lives, when you could be spending a third of your waking life in your job or working towards your career, of course your brain is going to want to make sure you're doing okay relative to others. comparison in this way acts as a form of validation that we are doing okay. Our brain naturally goes to that place. It doesn't always realize that we're going to come up short in our own minds.

So comparison is obviously a huge reason we experience career jealousy. There are two ways that we compare ourselves to others, upwards and downward social comparison. I'm sure you've heard about this on an episode before. Upward social comparison, you're going to look. at someone who is perhaps doing better than you and think, oh my gosh, wow, they're really amazing. I want that. Why don't I have that? You're looking upwards. You're comparing beyond what you are currently capable of. That can either elicit feelings of inspiration and motivation or despair.

Then we have downward social comparison. Now downward social comparison balances out upward social comparison by allowing you to look and observe people who you think aren't doing as well as you and experience a self-esteem boost. Basically, you're saying, and it sounds really terrible, but this is genuinely what's going on in your mind, well, at least, you know, I don't have it as bad as then. So which direction of comparison you will gravitate to in this situation often depends on your personality and your current emotional state and factors like resilience and self-esteem. So for those of us with a high need for achievement and high levels of confidence, we typically gravitate towards upwards social comparison, specifically the kind

that brings about admiration rather than feelings of insecurity. If you are someone who believes in yourself who really wants to succeed, who believes they can succeed, you are not going to be threatened by someone doing better than you, you're going to use it as an asset. Now, if you are lacking self-confidence, you feel less self-assured, maybe you've seen your self-esteem plummet recently, you are more likely to engage in downward social comparison as a deliberate form of comparison, but upward social comparison as a less deliberate form. I'm going to explain that. lots of words in that sentence. Essentially, intuitively, your brain is going to want you to compare to people who are doing so-called worse than you because it makes you feel better. But actually what

ends up happening is when you get into that comparison mindset, you can't help but kind of slowly move over into comparing yourself to people who are doing better than you. It's going to make you feel pretty terrible. Now, this might be an uncomfortable, but obvious truth, your career jealousy and comparison is probably also related to your current levels of insecurity, more specifically a greater fear of inadequacy that you might have. And this fear is a lot more common in individualistic societies. So individualistic societies are those in which we value personal wealth, status, material success, things that make one person.

look very, very good. This is in comparison to collectivist societies or collectivist cultures whereby the success of one person is everyone's win. So we are more likely to put effort into seeing the community succeed into making sure every member of our family is succeeding rather than just being focused on our own success. If you were raised in an individualistic society, so, you know, if you were raised in the US, if you were raised in a lot of parts of Europe, if you were raised in Australia, in Canada, a lot of the times, your main focus and what you have been taught to focus on is how well you are doing in comparison to others,

not how well the group is doing. And so it does create this obsession with personal success, meaning that other individuals in your community, in your kind of social stratosphere, their success doesn't make you ever, is never going to make you feel good the way that it wouldn't a collectivist culture. It's only going to make you feel terrible. So again, if you're sitting there feeling career jealousy thinking,

oh my God, I don't want to feel this way anymore. I feel so bad about it. I just want to be happy for my friend, for my sister, for my relative, for that person, my colleague. Often it's not your fault. It's how your brain has been trained. The other really insidious part of comparison that we haven't mentioned is comparison, specifically negative upward social comparison, often continues even when you do find success.

So there are a lot of examples of what we call the achievement treadmill, where people who have seemingly done it all, they are happy, successful, fulfilled, they're at the top of their game, they still feel like they could be doing better. they still feel like there is more to achieve. And so you are never happy with where you are. This is why we really, really need to tackle this cyclical comparison sickness almost early on in our lives, early on in our 20s, perhaps before you found success.

Because otherwise, if you get into this mindset of, I can always be doing better, I can always have more, that is also the mindset that is going to make you deeply, deeply unhappy. I want to talk about one final reason here as to why career jealousy is probably on the rise. We talked about social media. We talked about how there's more room for comparison. Let's now just talk about the very nature of our professional environments right now or the job market. Simply put, the job market right now is so difficult. I know a lot of you have been experiencing this personally. you've been DM me saying, I just, what am I doing wrong?

Maybe like you've been looking for a job for months. Nothing is coming your way. Eventually, when we're in that situation, we're going to start to think that something is wrong with us. But objectively, I want to tell you right now, job vacancies are declining, there is increased competition for a smaller number of positions. People are taking longer to hire people and they are hiring less overall.

or AI has significantly shifted what kind of roles people are hiring for. All of this to say a big contributor to our psychological state is always going to be the environment in which we are in. And the environment in which we are in right now is not particularly conducive to feeling optimistic or happy about where you're out in your career. Now, if we're in this situation where a lot of us are struggling and then suddenly there is this person who is not. who, you know, got the jackpot who had figured it all out.

Of course we're going to feel envious. It's this primal instinct of ours kicking in, saying, how can we have that? It's very much born from the days when we could fight and steal for the better territory. We could fight and steal for the better piece of meat, for the position closest to the fire. Nowadays, we've been socialized to realize that, you know, you probably can't go up and wrestle with someone for their job,

a big four firm. But those old parts of our brain that see something we want and immediately are trying to figure out either A, how we can get it, or B, why we want it so much, it's still very much alive. So let's discuss some of the further unspoken consequences of this, but also what is the path for getting out of this professional jealousy rut and just being happy or at least proud of where we are now? All of that and so much more after this. short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%.

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I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're talking about career jealousy, and yes, it can feel like frustration, it can feel very shameful and ugly, it can feel like secretly wanting someone to fail, which we never want to feel like, makes us feel like a terrible human. Here's what else can happen.

I think the two most common manifestations of envy are disparagement and distancing, specifically in relation to our social relationships. You begin to resent your friends, you resent your colleagues even, and you act out in a bitter and annoyed way. Comparing to strangers is one thing, and I think the consequences of that are very isolated. They're very much individual for us. But comparing to peers, let alone close friends, is when we really start seeing interpersonal consequences. So I'm talking drama, tension, fighting, distancing between us and our friends.

Honestly, though, you are. more likely to feel jealous of a friend than a stranger. It's why it is so common. So there was a 2015 study that found, yes, we are more likely to feel envy when the person we are comparing ourselves to is a similar age, the same gender, has similar values or even physical similarities to us, because it just gives more of a stark contrast to what we don't have. This person is a similar age, this person is our friend, this person maybe went to the same university, so much about our situations are similar. So what is it that we don't have in common that is setting our experiences apart? When someone is like us in many ways, it can further highlight what we are lacking

and make us feel really terrible. I received this message from someone actually that I think describes this very, very well. She said, something I've been struggling with is my best friend and roommate recently landed her dream job and it's all she talks about. Rightfully so, but I'm struggling so much with my hatred of my current job. How could I be more enthusiastic? I honestly, I could have written this myself because I was once in your shoes. I literally was my best friend and my roommate got their dream job in the firm that I wanted a job in and I didn't get any bites. basically I was unemployed for the summer. And I'm going to admit it, I did entirely the wrong thing because I was so insecure.

I didn't want to talk to her about it. I shut her out. I distanced myself because her happiness, honestly, it made me feel bad about myself, not because I didn't want her to be happy, but because I wish that I could be happy with her. And the only way I saw that happening was if we were having the same experience. My biggest piece of advice in that situation and what I wish I had done, I wish I had just told her. I wish I had just said, hey, I am really trying to be happy for you.

And I'm sure that if I was in your, if our roles were reversed, you would be so much better at this than I am. But just given how horrible I feel right now, I just can't be there with you. I just can't match this level of enthusiasm. So I really think we should just have some time. to talk about other things before we talk about work. Can we please talk about something that we have in common? Can we talk about something? Can we have more shared experiences so we can go off and talk about those things together? My other piece of advice is to be curious, to be open, to want to learn rather than judge yourself for what you don't have. And just addressing it

before you spiral is essential. You know, I always promote repair and honesty in these situations. it does feel more difficult, but it is 100% the path that you never regret. Because you will regret looking back in five years' time and saying, wow, that is my best friend. That was my best friend. I really cared about her. How come we don't speak anymore? Oh, oh, it's because I just didn't speak up and say something. Please, please take it from me.

Another unspoken consequence of career jealousy is that you end up losing motivation and you become quite discouraged. Jealousy is this weird thing where because we are only focusing on other people, we actually lose focus on our own performance and we start to neglect our own efforts to be better. Specifically, we start to focus on external factors for our lack of success and someone else's success. Typically, that comes down to things like fairness, things like luck, things that we can't control. So essentially what happens when we focus on. too much on what we don't have in comparison to someone else, is that we start shifting from an internal to an external locus of control. So this is a psychology term. Essentially, it refers to

how we view our problems and our ability to change an outcome or to change a situation. So an internal locus of control, you believe that you are the master of your own destiny, you are the guideer of your fate. There are actions that you can take to change what your life looks like and you feel willing to take them. An external locus of control is where you look at your circumstances and you put it all down to factors that you can't do anything about. So factors like luck, factors like fate, factors like, I don't know, status, money, where you were raised, you know, who you were born as. Those factors do play a role and I'm not going to deny it. But when we only focus on those, those are things we can't change. And so our circumstances is something that we can't change.

I need you to please stop focusing on the unfairness or the role of luck and start focusing on action. What can you do in this situation? I will say you are allowed to feel kind of bad every now and again. You are allowed to feel frustrated. Don't suppress those emotions entirely. But treat it as an indulgence, treat it as a treat rather than the whole meal. And when you realize that you have been stuck in a pity spiral for too long, I need you to turn around and say, Okay, we need to do more in the opposite direction.

We need to do more towards our goal rather than towards despair. Okay, let's talk about how to handle and manage career jealousy. I had this weird epiphany at the gym the gym the gym. And at my gym, the treadmills are set up, so it's like two rows. So when you're on the treadmill, there is someone directly in front of you, or there is a treadmill directly in front of you, and there is someone probably running on that treadmill. during the busy times. And I was going not very fast. I was obviously, I'm recovering still in an

illness. And I was watching this girl in front of me. And oh my lord, she was quick. She was doing 11 kilometers an hour at like a 5% incline or like a 5.0 incline. And I was watching her and I was watching like the kilometers tick up and whatever. And I was like, oh my God, I need to catch her. I need to catch her. And I was like, wait, I'm on an entirely different treadmill. What am I going to go do? Run on her treadmill with her? Like, I can match her pace. I can do everything that she is doing.

We are still running our own race. When you compare your career to someone else's career, you are comparing two people running on two different treadmills. There is no way that you can catch up with them. But you do need to focus on your own race. I don't know. I was just in that situation and I was like, wow. This has just made me rethink.

Every time I've tried to feel like I need to beat or best someone for whatever weird reason my brain is cooked up. I also want to remind you, and this is specifically advice for those of us in our 20s, which I'm assuming is a lot of you, you are comparing the very beginning of your race. You know, there are so many years to come. So many peaks and plateaus that everyone's career will naturally go through. No one's career is always going to be on the up and up. There will be times where they're not motivated, where you get made redundant, where the culture and the environment shifts. But what we're doing is we're looking at what, possibly only the first 10 years maximum of our career and thinking,

this defines the entire race. This defines all of my circumstances from here. until I retire. That is totally not true. How someone's beginning looks is not always indicative of how their middle or their end will end up. Just think about Olympic races or sports games. Even then, like our career is a lot longer than a 200 metre sprint. It's a lot longer than a two-hour ballgame. Like it's for a lot of us, the majority of our lives. So there are going to be peaks and troughs what you are comparing right now is just the beginning. With all that being said, I do think it's almost impossible to will yourself out of feeling envy because it is quite a spontaneous emotion, right?

So it's not an emotion that we can call on and then get rid of at our will. It often comes when our guard is down. But I think to keep chronic and acute envy at bay, you have to accept the discomfort, but refuse to give in to the shame that often follows. I think to keep comparison, specifically professional comparison, from becoming self-defeating, I want you to really explore why it is that you feel so jealous. I want you to get curious about what has triggered this feeling for you. Now, at times, career jealousy is actually an asset because it can spur on admiration and therefore inspiration,

alongside envy. Career jealousy is actually telling you something pretty important about what you want. If this person had a life that you didn't care about, if you didn't secretly want what they had, you would not be feeling jealous. You only feel jealous because you feel invested in that situation and the reason you feel invested or emotional about it is because it is something that you desire. And so in that way, our jealousy is a great way at providing us with direction. I heard someone say this the other day, and what they said was, if you're ever struggling to know what you want from life, if you're ever struggling with direction, ask yourself, whose life am I most jealous of?

Isn't that so funny? Like, what is a painful emotion is actually a really important one because it can reveal all of these parts of you, all these things and these ambitions that you secretly have. So I want you to reframe jealousy as proof of what you want. And I also want you to reframe jealousy as proof that you can get there. Because the only reason you're feeling envious is because someone has done what you want to do. So they've done it. This is really essential because then what we have here is admiration and motivation rather than just jealousy. So once you have thought about the person that you are most jealous of, you now have to realize

Actually, they are probably also going to be the person that I admire the most. Now, you can do a bit of a reverse psychological engineering exercise. What I mean by that is, I want you to get more curious about their life. What specific behaviors, habits, or strategies are they using? What are they doing that you are perhaps not that you can realistically apply to your own career? What path did they take? What knowledge do you think they have? What kind of wisdom? Essentially what I'm saying is, please, please, please lean in, move towards not away from those that you envy. Now, if you're

finding that particularly difficult, there's evidence that doing small favors for someone that you envy can actually make you like them more. So this is called the Ben Franklin effect. If someone's success is really almost hurting you emotionally. Ask them for advice. Ask them if you can get involved in their project. Ask them if you can study with them. Ask them to sit down for a coffee with you and shout them the coffee. Now this really flips our brain's perception. The people we envy, they're an ally, not a threat. Now to kind of focus on you, you know, a lot of this has been about what we can do to change our relationship to others. What can we do internally for ourselves? I want you to make a list of everything that you feel that you are proud of and that you are good at

that has nothing to do with your professional career or your job. I want you to work on focusing on the areas where you are excelling, even if externally and in an individualistic society, those things aren't as celebrated. So let's go through a couple. You know, maybe you're training for a long distance run. Maybe you go to the gym every single day. That's something that not a lot of people can say they do. Maybe you commit time to your hobbies.

I would be really, really proud if I read five pages before bed every night. Maybe you call your grandma more than the average person. I want you to feel proud of something and I want you to focus on your assets and what you are good at. There are so many important psychological studies that show feeling proud of yourself is endlessly correlated to high self-esteem and fewer feelings of jealousy. And the other part about self-pride is that it's often self-determined. Now, we're not talking about arrogance, we're talking about genuine pride in your accomplishment. That is something that if you find, every single one of us, every single one of us can find something that we deserve to be proud of.

Really, I think this whole idea of turning inward is so important here. Stop looking externally for proof that you're doing okay and start measuring your value by how fulfilled you feel, even if others don't see value in what you're doing. How happy you make others feel. How purposeful you are. How genuinely happy you can say your days are. The progress that you're making in your own small ways. Taking more time as well to figure out what you want.

want, taking more time to find the perfect job, or just to find some kind of path, that's also an asset for you because you are not tying yourself down or flinging yourself onto a moving train too early in your life with no way of getting off. So I do actually think that's really, really important. Sometimes we see these people and they're like wonderkins, right? Like they're 21, 22 doing these amazing, amazing things. There's a line from a song that says, I'm always terrified of elevators that rise too fast, they never last. And a lot of people who are in those situations will tell you that around the age of 30 or 35, they really have to battle some of the real existential questions about deeper personal meaning that you're probably managing right now.

So my final tip is to engage in some kind of mental time travel. There's this brilliant study in psychological science that found imagining yourself 10 years into the future actually really helps reduce the intensity of current emotional struggles, jealousy, envy, frustration included. So I want you to ask yourself right now, will I care about this in 10 years? What advice would my future self give me about this moment? If everything works out well, if I focus on myself, what is the version of me in 10 years going to be most proud of me that I did? I think this really helps dampen the jealousy response, and it keeps you having that forward-focused vision for yourself. Okay, we're going to take a short break, but when we return, I'm going to talk some final reminders,

and also introduce you to some listener questions about this topic. Stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.

We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO%. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim?

Well, you can find out. on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but yeah, yeah, literally.

But just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing,

we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person

while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions. bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keer Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in.

And her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alesspian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. this is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules

that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So my lovely listeners, this is a brand new segment of the show, the very first of its kind that I'm trialing out. And it's a little Q&A section. So what I was finding was that after, I was releasing episodes. A lot of you were saying, hey, you didn't talk about this and this is really what I needed advice on. And I thought, you know what? I think that we can bring this in.

I think that we can bring in some of your questions so that I can answer them right now, right here on the spot. Now, given that this is a new part of the episode, I really do want feedback. If all of you come back and say to me, hey, we actually hate this. It's going away. this is just as much your show as it is mine. But I just thought it would be fun to give it a go. I'm going to try it for the next four episodes. And after I've done it for four episodes, I'm going to ask you guys all again,

what do you think, do you like it? And depending on what you say, will determine its future. So please provide all the feedback that you want. But let's get into the questions. Now, the first question I got was, how does career jealousy and anxiety arise in siblings and how do you manage it?

Honestly, I think the career jealousy between siblings is a lot more common than you may think because there is of course innate familial comparison. There's also all these family archetypes that we tend to fall into, right? The golden child, the black sheep, the underachiever, the overachiever and they really contribute to this sense of needing to prove yourself particularly in comparison to a sibling. Now we also talked about how we compare ourselves to people who are most or more. similar to us, specifically friends. Well, let's talk about siblings for a second.

Like, you share some of the very same genes. You often share parents. You share a childhood environment. So there's all those differences between you do feel particularly pronounced. Also, you know, I've seen so many situations where parents often, you know, it's terrible to say, but they do favor one child and they do really focus on their success. you see it a lot with child actors actually, child actresses or actors who their parents put so much into them and then the other children are kind of like, okay, well, what about me? Just because my goals

and my dreams are different and my success looks different based on the industry that we're in doesn't mean it's any less important. So I think those are the circumstances that we're kind of dealing with here, innate competition and families, archetypes that we tend to fall into or roles we fall into. What I really want you to do is realize that a win for them is your win as well. No matter how much you have been conditioned to see them as competition, seriously, is that mentality hurting or helping your relationship? Sibling relationships are, oh my God, so underrated. So underrated. They are so important. They are so special. They are the people who will hopefully be with you for so much of your life.

And if you have been raised to be in competition, I think it does get to a point where you have to seriously look at each other and say, I don't want to be, have this relationship with you anymore. Like this is not helping us. So fight back against that natural instinct. Take interest in their life, invest mentally, invest your curiosity in their life. And also talk about it with them. You know, if you can't talk about your insecurities with your sibling,

Who are you going to talk about it with? Oftentimes they are so forgiving, and I wouldn't be surprised if your eldest or youngest sibling who you naturally compare yourself with doesn't turn around and say, oh my God, I do the exact same thing, because this is how we've been raised. This is who we have been raised to be, competitors rather than friends. So that's my advice for that question. Our second question from another lovely listener, how to navigate the scarcity mindset in particular that can treat. contributes to career jealousy. So for those of you not familiar with this term, the scarcity mindset is basically, it's a commonative fallacy in which we believe that resources, including financial resources,

emotional resources, social resources, jobs are limited. And so we end up becoming preoccupied with what we lack rather than what we have. and we get into this mindset that there is not enough out there in this world for us to have what we want. I want to remind you here, success is not a finite resource that has an end. There's always room for another famous celebrity. There's always room for a new pop star. There is not only so much to go around. There is room for you.

And I need you to know that. Otherwise, I do think you'll begin to see someone else's advancement as costing you your own. And so you're never able to have that real kinship and ally mentorship relationship with other people. And you'll get into this them versus me mindset, which, you know, I actually really understand. I've fallen into it a lot of times. It comes from this idea that what we want is lacking in the world and there's only room for a couple of people. You know, it's based on this mindset, of course, if I get the job, someone else loses theirs.

If my friend is successful, well, I can't be until they're not. It's very, very untrue. My biggest piece of advice is to work really hard to undo this mindset, keep applying for jobs, keep your options open, volunteer, search for opportunities in as many areas as you possibly can. And remember that your success, just because it's not happening right now, doesn't mean that it's never going to happen. your dream job, your dream career, your big break, it might not even exist yet, it might not even,

you know, all the dominoes may not even be aligned to bring it into existence yet. It doesn't mean that where you are now is where you will always be. There is definitely room for you at any table that you want to sit on, sit at, I guess, even if you need to carve that space out over time for yourself. All right, let's talk about this next question. Why does it feel like sometimes it's up to luck and not? not meritocracy. So meritocracy based on merit. It basically suggests that if you work hard enough, there is something that you should be entitled to. I'm going to tell you something that I think a lot of

people probably deserve to be told earlier. And I'm very sorry if it's upsetting, but really sometimes things are just up to luck. A small part of everything is luck. Right place, right time. they just happen to choose or make the right decision at the perfect moment when it worked out for them. I know it's really, really rough, but I feel like it's kind of unfair that we've all been sold this idea that, yes, if you work hard, there's something that you are innately deserving of. There's so many more factors at play. Here's the good news, though. Luck is not a finite thing, just like success.

There is actually heaps of luck to go around. and luck also turns. Luck is this tricky little thing where we are so, so focused on what it feels like to not have it, that actually when we are rewarded with it and when the luck does come our way, we kind of almost don't see it. We're only focused on the moments when it's not ours. Really, I always think about my, I think it was like my eighth grade math teacher. Her name was Miss Marianne.

I think Mary Ann something. And she always said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So you may not have the opportunity part yet, but you can work on the preparation part so that when everything aligns and it's your moment, you are there to take it. So our final listener question from the day is about the third type of career jealousy that we experience. If you remember, we have three categories. The third type is material jealousy.

So this person says, my friends are paid four times more than me. I feel left out of their lavish lifestyles. What can I do? Let me just say that is rough. It's really rough when it feels like your friends are entering this entirely new financial chapter of their life and you are stuck in the past. What I really want you to do is to open communication with them. hopefully money hasn't changed their mindset and money hasn't changed their opinion on you i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it hasn't and so i'm assuming they still very much love you

they desire your company they want your company i really want you to just discuss with them opportunities to do things that are less expensive and that um are more affordable and that maybe don't include four-course meals and don't include luxury spending but are simple honestly I feel like I've had conversations with friends like this before where I've been like hey like you know I can't come to your birthday dinner but I would love to do this smaller thing with you or someone said hey I can't afford to contribute to this gift or I can't afford to go on this trip but I want to still be involved in some way a good friend will be receptive of that I also I want to give you a really really strong piece of advice here

please do not try and match their spending. I'm not a financial advisor, obviously, but I've seen people do this. I remember reading an article about someone who got into a significant amount of debt trying to keep up with their friends' lifestyle. If they are your friends, you don't need to impress them. And doing things just for appearances rather than meeting your actual needs and spending money where you feel its purpose is, is a very dangerous game to play

and I wouldn't want to see you get into debt or into trouble because you feel like you need to impress your friends. If they're the people who need to be impressed, they're probably not your friends. So obviously I don't have all the full information but I would really just say have a chat with them about it.

Don't excessively spend money and if you feel like their priorities have changed beyond, well, because of the money maybe start considering whether your priorities towards friendship should change as well. Okay, my lovely listeners, thank you for joining me for this new segment. As always, please let me know what you think of this. Also, what I'll be doing is I'll be putting up the questions three to four days in advance on Instagram. So if you want to get involved

in these questions, you want to be able to contribute to episodes. Please follow me over there. It's at that psychology podcast. And also, I love hearing feedback. I love hearing episode suggestions from you all. We really do have such a beautiful community. So come on over, get involved. And if you're already there, well, say hello. I'll see you over there. Make sure that you were following along with the podcast so you know when new episodes go live and leave a five-star review if you feel called to do so.

Or share this episode with a friend who feel like might be struggling with a lot of career jealousy. Trust me, a lot of us are in the same boat. This is a no shame zone. Hopefully you have been able to learn how to better navigate. get these feelings or at least reframe your thoughts towards your jealousy. As a reminder as we end this episode, please be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself and we will talk very, very soon. On the Look Back at it podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. Eighty-four was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down,

and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. It was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to learn the hard way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?

I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Manchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs. when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness,

fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO%. On the I-Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human