The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Solo: How To Become Happier In Life By Eliminating Envy & Replacing It With Admiration
Episode Date: February 16, 2024661: Today Michael is sitting down solo to discuss how to rid envy from your life in order to perform to your highest ability. He goes into how envy can negatively affect you & gives tips on how to ga...in perspective in order to have gratitude and focus on your goals.  To Watch the Show click HERE  To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE  To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  Produced by Dear Media
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and search WooMorePlay. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
Fantastic.
And he's a serial entrepreneur.
A very smart cookie.
And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.
Get ready for some major realness.
Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.
Ah-ha!
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to the Him and Her show. Today, I am solo. So I guess
it's the hymn show today. Doing an episode that I thought would be interesting. I'm debating doing
a solo series here on the seven deadly sins, not to get so biblical on you guys, but even if you're
not religious, the seven deadly sins are applicable to everybody.
And there is one that I want to talk about today that I think affects everybody to some
degree, maybe more so for some than others.
I think that if you eradicate this sin from your life, you will live a vastly more improved,
happier, more fulfilled life.
And that sin is the sin of envy.
For definition, for those of you that are wondering the exact definition of envy,
I have it written down here.
Painful or resentful awareness of an advantage or possession enjoyed by another
and the desire to possess the same thing.
I love what Charlie Munger said about this.
Charlie Munger recently passed this. Charlie Munger
recently passed. He was Warren Buffett's business partner. And he said, envy is a really stupid sin
because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun.
Why would you want to get on that trolley? And I think about that a lot. I love it.
And in my own personal life, I can gladly say now that I have pretty much eradicated all envy from my life. I can honestly say that, that I do not envy any other human being on's kind of like a horse with blinders. I'm
just doing my own thing, living my own way, trying to take care of the things that I need to take
care of, the family I have, the businesses I'm involved with. And I'm paying very little attention
to what others around me have or don't have. I don't really desire to switch lives with anyone.
I never look at anyone and say, I wish I had that. I wish I was them.
And there's a way that I got around doing that.
And I think that with social media now and everything we see and we hear, and maybe even
people that listen to this show and watch Lauren and I's life or similar lives or things
you see on the internet, that more than ever now, envy is affecting a lot of people.
We recently had Morgan Housel
on the podcast who wrote a book called Same As Ever. And he said, one of the biggest problems
in modern age is back in the day, you really only saw your neighbors and maybe what they had. So
when you were comparing yourself to someone else, you were comparing to what was in your
actual vicinity, your neighborhood, your school. So everybody kind of felt on similar levels,
even if that wasn't the case. But now you could be online and see people living crazy lives much
different than yours. And it might drum up these feelings of anger or in this case, envy. And I
think if you have envy in your heart and in your mind, you just have a really tough time sometimes
being able to be happy and navigate life. So I want to talk today about how
I've eradicated envy from my life. It's just a simple mindset shift that has been really helpful
for me and Lauren and in our life. And I can gladly say that with this shift, I carry no envy
whatsoever in my heart. And I know a lot of people say that. I really mean it. There's not one person
on this planet that I look at and say, man, I wish I had their life. I heard something a while back that
was basically along the lines, and I don't want to take this, I didn't coin it, but maybe people
out there can write in and say who said this, that if you would not be willing to trade 100%
places with your life for someone else's and take everything that their life entailed,
then you really don't want their life. So let me give you an example. If you see somebody online and you think, man, I wish I had their life, you have to be able to take everything with their
life. The good, the bad, the ugly. If they have a broken marriage, but a successful business,
you've got to take the broken marriage. If they have a sick child or if they have a medical issue
or an ailment, you have to take all of the good with the bad.
And so I think immediately when you start thinking about that, you start to think, hey,
maybe I don't want to switch spots.
And the other thing to point out is that this is not only for people where you can see maybe
something going wrong in their life.
This really applies to anyone.
So let's get into some of the examples.
If you are somebody that is looking at someone
online and you're like, man, this person is so successful. Their business is so great.
My business isn't there or my career is not there. I wish I had this. I would caution everybody to
take a deeper look. Does that person also have a healthy body? Do they have a healthy mind?
Are they putting so much energy into the
business that they're letting themselves go mentally and physically? Is their marriage
suffering? Do they have a strained relationship with their children? If I were to say to you,
hey, I'm going to give you all the money in the world and the best business, but all of those
other things are going to suffer and be strained and you're going to be in terrible shape. You're
going to have a terrible mindset. You're going to be stressed all the time. You're going to have a bad relationship with your
children. You're not going to have a great marriage. Do you really think you should still
envy that person? So what I do in my life is I look at all of these people that many people would
assume to admire. These could be business leaders. These could be athletes. These could be creators.
These could be anybody that normal people would look at and say, hey, that is somebody who's really exhibited a win there. And what I will do is I will look
and try to decipher the rest of their life if they're also exhibiting wins in those areas.
So again, using the business example, if I find somebody who's a business beast,
and by all metrics on the finance and business side, they're killing it,
but then their personal life is suffering, their marriage is suffering or their body's
in shitty shape or they're just not doing well in other areas.
I immediately am able to say, you know what?
That person may have some interesting things to say about business, but it's clearly affecting
other areas of their life that are not going well.
In which case, I really don't want to trade spots.
If it's say someone like a relationship coach and they're giving relationship advice and it looks like on the surface, they have a perfect
marriage and they're gallivanting around on the beach and kissing and hugging. But because of that,
their business is a disaster or their children are suffering and who knows, whatever it may be,
I will look at that and say, you know what? I'm going to discount that as well. I'm not going to envy that lifestyle. You know, even picking on Lauren and I, if you
were, if someone were to see our lives from the outside and say, Hey, this looks nice running
Dear Media and doing this podcast. And it looks like they've got their shit together.
What I would do is ask yourself, you know, do you really want a lifestyle like this for Lauren and
I, there's a lot of travel all the time that is not as glamorous as it looks where we have to leave our children and get on planes and go do work. There is a ton
of stress managing people and running businesses and dealing with the blows that come with being
an entrepreneur. There is a ton of work and very little room for play these days. We try to squeeze
it in where we can, but there's just a lot of stuff that comes with that. For me, I like that lifestyle. It fits for us and what we're doing. But someone else may look at us
and say, you know what? Now that he's talking about it, I really don't want that for my life.
And maybe that's not something that I should envy so much. To be clear, that is not to say that I
don't admire a ton of people. I admire almost everybody. And I think if you could switch envy to admire,
that little trick alone is going to make you a happier person. So for example,
I may say, see somebody that is just killing it in some area of their life. I don't then go to
the place like, man, I wish that was my life. I wish that was me. They have it so great. What I
do is I say, wow, that's like really commendable, really admirable what they've built in that area
of their life. Or, you know, maybe they've taken care of themselves physically, or they've gotten
the relationship to a really great place. I admire. And as soon as I admire and stop envying,
I can then aspire to get there myself. I think so many of us make the mistake that, or where we,
instead of admiring, we start to get jealous and envious. And I've definitely been guilty of that.
I know Lauren has too. We've gotten better over the years. And when you do that, it puts you in this place where you can't grow and you can't
aspire to be more. And so just that simple shift of saying, you know what, I really don't envy this
and I wouldn't want to trade lives, but man, they've really got it together in that area.
And I'm going to now aspire to do the same myself. That mind shift in perspective is such a game
changer. I think the big takeaway here is that you have to be really, really careful who you
decide to envy if you're going to go down the path of envying your life.
And you have to be very aware of not only the certain area of their life they're envying,
but the areas of their life that you may not want to touch with a 10-foot pole.
Lauren and I, doing what we do, have met all sorts of different, I guess, celebrities,
A-list celebrities, people with huge platforms and a ton of notoriety.
And not to take anything away from any of them, they're living their life and many of
them are very happy.
But what I look and see personally sometimes is I could not imagine having that level of attention, not
being able to go out in public without people photographing me and going crazy and not being
able to do anything without people writing about it.
But I look at that and I say, you know what?
That's great that they've got all these other accolades and accomplishments.
That's great they've got these attentions and financially they're probably doing very
well.
But would I want all the other stuff that comes
with it? In this case is no. So again, what it does is it creates a situation where I can admire
those people from afar in certain aspects of their life, but I'm not envying their lifestyle and
saying, man, I wish that was me. Because if I cannot take 100% of something that is going on
with someone's life, and if I wouldn't want 100 percent of that for myself, then for me, it's a admire from a distance, but never envy. And so I can honestly say,
I have not yet come across somebody that I have looked at and said, you know what? I envy every
single area of their life. And I would trade everything in my life. That would mean, you know,
I would have different children. I would have a different relationship. I would have a different
career. I would have different, all these things. If I'm not willing to have a hundred percent of that, it's really
like, you know what? That's awesome. Very aspirational, really admire it, but it's a pass
for me. And I think as soon as people can get into that mindset and they can focus from envy to
admiration and also be able to distinguish that you may see one area of someone's life as a 10, but in other areas,
they may be a two. We've all seen the highly successful entrepreneur that makes all the
money in the world whose life personally and with their children and their friendship is in
absolute shambles. People don't like them. Do you really want that life? We've also seen people that
have gone the other way where they put every
single ounce of their being into their children and they don't have a life of their own anymore
and they don't have their own identity and everything's about the kids and their business
is struggling and their relationship with their partner is struggling because everything's about
the kids. Do you really want that as well? Even it's a picture perfect family photo and you look
and say, man, I wish I had that family. And then behind the scenes, you realize that that person is struggling because they don't have their own identity.
So again, I think the big takeaway here is envy is doing nothing but holding you back.
Much better to admire and shift that focus into aspiration. The other thing is if you're going to
be following anybody online or on any platform, really don't just look at the shiny stuff.
Look at everything under the shiny stuff and say, is this really someone that I should be admiring?
I'm very, very careful about who I follow online, not to go on a crazy tangent, but I'm very careful
to not get sucked into a vortex of someone who seems to have it together in one area, but not in others. A big thing for me is
if they've built a business on a specific set of information and are really pushing that,
I want to know if that lifestyle is also supporting other aspects of their life.
If they're somebody who's, I don't know, let's say some of these people that do courses pushing
financial advice, I want to see like, have they
really built a great business? Do people admire them? Do people like them? Do they have a good
family life? Do they have a good relationship with their children? If not, again, it's like
can admire certain aspects, but it's a pass when it comes to me either envying or even actually
following them to any kind of significant degree. So what I'm saying here is that you have to be very careful
what you consume. You have to eradicate envy from your life. You have to admire and aspire as
opposed to be envious and defeated. And it really just takes a little simple shift and saying,
you know what? I've got an incredible life. And if I'm not willing to change 100%
of my life for somebody else's, then it's not worth it. You may be someone that's like,
I hate my life right now. And I would change with anyone. I would start looking a little
deeper and start thinking, is that really true? Do you really want to get rid of the friends you
have? Do you really want to get rid of the family you have? Are you really that unhappy in your own
skid, in your own body, in the way you look, in the way you feel? I think there's some
soul searching that needs to happen there. But just eradicating envy in the way that we look
at other people and the way that makes us feel is so important. Another way that I kind of go
about this and trying to figure out who I'm going to admire and whose life that I want to model off of is I read
a ton of biographies. So maybe it's somebody that I look at on the surface. I'm reading a biography
right now by Teddy Roosevelt, who lived a pretty extraordinary life. But I will look at him and say,
okay, what are the things in life that I really admire in the way that he lived? And what are
the things that I might say, that's a pass. I read Rockefeller's biography the
other day and there was a lot of great things in there. People would be surprised about how many
great things there were actually in that book. And it's only top of mind because I just read it,
but there was obviously some aspects of his life I would say, I really wouldn't want that.
As I model my own life and as I think about who I want to follow and what I want to aspire to,
I'm pulling elements that I think work for people, but I'm being more cautious about
looking at the stuff that really didn't work for those people and what may have derailed
other areas of their life.
And I think that if you guys do the same and look at it from that perspective and are just
very careful of the content you consume and from who you consume it, life just gets better.
When you get rid of envy, you're just happier. You're more aspirational. You're less threatened. You're
less depressed. You can focus on yourself and the things that you need to focus on putting the
horse blinders on. And I know it's tempting to go onto these platforms and look at, you know,
everybody else and the way they're living their life, but everybody has their demons and everybody
has skeletons in the closet. And so that's what I try to look for more and what I try to pay attention to more as
opposed to just the shiny stuff.
So that's my episode on envy and eradicating envy.
If you guys like the idea of doing a seven deadly sins series, let me know and I will
think about doing a couple more.
Also, be sure to check out Lauren and I's newsletter.
If you just go to tsepodcast.com, we have a newsletter now coming out every week with
him and her tips of the week.
So think wellness, book recommendations, relationship advice, business advice, things that we find
interesting, things that we're doing, and it comes out every single week.
And it's easy and free, tscpodcast.com.
With that, we'll see you next time.