Making Envy Work for You – Helen Gurley Brown
The life lesson: not only can you make envy work for you — it can improve your life! The successful woman: Helen Gurley Brown – a woman envied by men and women alike.
Here’s what Gurley Brown says about envy:
“Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.”
Few women are born successful, fulfilled, happy, and living the life of their dreams. To make envy work for you (instead of draining your energy and deadening your spirit), remember that the successful woman you envy had to work hard - and overcome criticism, rejection, and failure – to fulfill her dreams and aspirations. Did her success simply fall into her lap via an inheritance, marriage, or sheer stupid luck? Maybe, but don’t forget that she’s facing a hard battle, too. Life is hard for everyone – just in different ways.
The following info about envy comes from the amazing book, 9 Secrets of Women Who Get Everything They Want by Kate White. I read the whole thing in a day – and I’m dying to read it again, because of all practical information and personal insights White offers. She was the editor-in-chief of Redbook when she wrote this (Helen Gurley Brown was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine).
Making Envy Work for You – Helen Gurley Brown
“What I learned from successful women is that rather than suppress or deny envy like the rest of us, they do something with it,” writes White in 9 Secrets of Women Who Get Everything They Want. “Think of envy as a compass of sorts. An envy attack can point you directly to what you want the most.”
Envy can work for you by showing you want you really want out of life – not what other people think you should want, or even what you think you should want. I’ve always envied women who have strong family ties, because I grew up with a single mom and almost no relatives. It’s hard not to let my envy of close-knit families get the better of me – especially as I think about having children of my own – but I’d rather cultivate the relationships I do have than waste time wanting what I’ll never have.
“The big surprise about envy,” says Ann Ulanov, PhD, author of Cinderella and Her Sisters, “is that it really can lead to something good. If you can stop and examine the feeling of wanting what someone else has – which takes a lot of energy – you’ll find that what you’re seeing in the other person’s life is really a good thing. Envy, after all, is admiration gone sour. At the bottom of envy is a lavish, all-out sighting of good qualities and a registering of awe and amazement at them.”
To make envy work for you, remember that envy tells you what you want. Listen to your envy. Use your envy to nourish your passion and excitement at the thought of getting what you want out of life! Focus on motivation, connection, and direction (rather than dejection, bitterness, or pointless jealousy).
Do you envy a successful woman – and how do her achievements make you feel about yourself? Can you turn that energy around into a motivating force? And, if you have any thoughts on the difference between envy and jealousy, I’d love to hear them…
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I had a friend who was quite resentful of my boundaries, and I felt terribly guilty for the longest time. I won’t take personal calls during the day (I’m WORKING!), and even after 2 years, my friend still gives me little digs about it. It’s easing up – both my guilt and her resentment – but boy, it was tough at first.
A great example of how to focus your energy on Twitter the other day: a woman said that she vows not to overeat that whole day. Another woman – a life coach – encouraged her not to use the words “not” or “won’t” because the Universe doesn’t recognize negatives. All it sees is “overeat.”
So, if you don’t want to overeat (or get published, or find a great relationship, or build a strong blog), it’s better to think of it in terms of what you want to do. “I will eat healthy nutritious foods, and leave the table when my belly is 70% full” … or “I will send my book proposal to this agent or that publisher, and keep looking for new opportunities while I wait.”
Gini, this probably isn’t new to you…but I like writing it here because it solidifies it in my mind, and I like thinking that you might read this!
See you soon,
Laurie
You’ve got it Laurie – I’m big on shifting energy patterns through law of attraction, but not just by thinking about what you want, but by being the energy of it (that is true like attracting like) and as you said, you may not get strong family ties just by focusing on it, but if you feel the wonderful feeling of acceptance and love that would result from strong family ties, as you suggested, you will add to the creation of bonds, and even if you’re family wasn’t up for it, you would feel so good you wouldn’t mind.
I had a client whose husband left and, of course, she was shocked, depressed etc. but when I asked what she wanted and why – the end result was to feel loved – so guess what – as she focused on feeling the love inside of her and let it blossom out – not only did her husband want to get back with her, but she had attracted another suitable partner so she got to choose what was best for her now that she was in this new space of loving herself.
Re the sage tidbit – my Mom used to say that – whatever I was criticizing in someone, it was something I didn’t like about myself. But I’ve seen it the other way as well – when we judge something in someone it might be something positive we are not owning in ourselves or not creating for ourselves. For example, I used to judge a friend for being so rigid about her schedule that she didn’t have time to get together with friends (like me) as often as they (or I) wanted to. But when I looked deeper I realized that her quality of setting boundaries was one I wasn’t using in my life so then I respected her more and learned to say no in areas of my life where I would always say yes (and regret later).
So judgment = envy = growth. I like it!
The idea of judging someone, and then realizing that envy may be the reason for the judgment, makes me think of this sage tidbit: when you don’t like something about someone else, it may be a quality you dislike in yourself.
Yes, I like the idea of shifting energy — it reminds me of the law of attraction!
Is this how it would work?: You can make envy work for you by focusing on how you’d feel if you attained that quality or position…and the more you focus on the good quality (eg, a calm gentle spirit), the closer you get to it?
For instance, I can’t focus on “getting” strong family ties…but I can focus on the wonderful feeling of acceptance and love. That may make me act in ways that connect me to the people I do have in my life, which will create strong bonds. Then, I’ll feel accepted and loved! It’s an upward spiral.
Very cool. Thanks, Gini! I don’t know if I got it quite right, but I sure love how it sounds.
Laurie
Another great article Laurie. I’ve been playing with turning envy around lately, but for me it started more with a judgement about someone and when I looked closer I saw was really jeaulosy of a quality she had, which then took me to envy – once I owned that I was envious (wanting the quality she had) I stopped judging her, stopped feeling so jeaulous, and moved more into the feeling of envy, which for me, feels more uplifting than jealousy. Now when I think of the quality I envy I try to emody the quality she has in myself by feeling the way I imagine it would feel to have her quality – and then I don’t envy her anymore because I have embodied that state.
This is probably a little bit trickier when it comes to envying someone who has something more tangible like the ideal house I’d like to have, or financial abundance etc. yet for me, it always starts with a feeling and by shifting the energy, and then things manifest physically from there (a little bit slow for me at times though:)