Why You Feel Weird When Others Win

Welcome back to another episode of the Self Work podcast this is season two episode six. And in today's episode as you guys can see from the title I want to introduce an interesting topic which is jealousy being a map to your potential. You've probably never heard this before but let me explain it to you for a second. Why is that when someone tells you good news? Something in you feels weird. You can't really point a finger at it and I don't mean everyone by the way it's not like you go on the internet you see Elon Musk made $300 million in 24 hours and you're jealous. Not necessarily but when it's someone in your own world, someone at your level perhaps someone you grew up with, someone you went school with, someone you know, someone you used to play football with. You see them on the internet one random morning and the videos titled I made a hundred K last month and you click it not because you're proud of them not because you want to learn from them but if you're honest with yourself it is because there's a part of you that's quietly hoping it isn't true and then they confirm it they break it down this is what I did this is how I made my money and my life has changed and you can see they are genuinely happy but something in your chest shifts and you can't really explain it you just feel weird. I'll give you another example your best friend calls you one day and he says hey Dino I got some news I want to share with you bro I'm getting married I found my woman and bro I want to invite you to my wedding and you know you should be happy for him that's your guy that's your friend there's still a part of you that is happy because you've known him for years and it is genuinely a good thing but then there's this other part there's this quiet part that feels something else entirely and you don't say it out loud but because you can't even articulate the four why am I feeling weird that my friend's getting married or let's say your friend gets the promotion you both wanted something you both were working hard for but your best friend got the promotion and you didn't and it isn't even a hatred thing it isn't something where you sit there and you're plotting on his downfall but then there's a part of you that feels uncomfortable there's this feeling that you want to get rid of us fastest possible and that feeling is what this episode is about because I don't think it means what you think it means it doesn't mean your evil it doesn't mean you are nasty human being because at times it can feel like that so by the end of this episode you will never look at that feeling the same way again so let's get started the first thing I want to address is the shame around this feeling itself because that's what stops people from ever actually examining it we treat jealousy like it's a verdict on our character like feeling it's a proof your small or your bitter or your evil that you're not genuinely a good person so the moment it shows up in your life the moment you feel this weird shift in your chest most people do one of two things they suppress it as fast as possible they push it down they tell themselves I'm fine it's not that deep I'm just being weird all they let is sit there quickly unexamined until it eventually turns into something uglier and neither of these things does anything for you it doesn't actually teach you anything it doesn't move you forward and they just keep you stuck in a loop that you don't fully understand and I was in the same position I used to feel weird every time someone would say something good was happening in their life as I've mentioned previously I dropped out of university so anytime someone would tell me they got a graduate job or they got a really fantastic positional promotion I used to feel weird and here's the thing I want you to actually hear jealousy is not a verdict it is a signal and the reason most people never figure that out is because they were never taught to be curious about their uncomfortable emotions they were taught to manage them control them get rid of them which means that one of the most important pieces of internal information they'll ever receive keeps getting deleted before they can read it so let's actually read this because this is really going to transform your mind this is what jealousy actually is you cannot feel genuine jealousy I'm talking about the deep uncomfortable chest tightening feeling about something that is completely outside of your world think about this for a second you don't feel jealous of professional chest players if you've never cared about chest you don't feel jealous about let's say an Olympic sprinter or an Olympic swimmer if you've never been in the water on the track it just doesn't land you see it you acknowledge it you move on but when you see someone your age doing the thing you've always wanted to do very important to acknowledge this part it hits you when you see someone carrying themselves with the confidence that you've always been searching for you feel it have you noticed people on the internet will label you as arrogant or you're just ego-tistical but the reality is it is something they wish they could do when you see someone with the relationship the freedom the body the business the peace of mind the thing you've been quietly wanting but maybe haven't even admitted to yourself it stings the reason it stings is because some parts of you can see yourself there your brain in the moment is registering something important but you don't pay attention it is telling you the thing that made you feel a type of way is in your range you can actually do it that is within what is possible for you but you just for some reason cannot move towards it and that is what jealousy is it is not a flaw it is an evidence I when I found this out it blew my mind anytime I feel jealous towards something is there's a part of me deep down that feels like you know what maybe I can do this but why is it that I can't do it the evidence is basically the vision that you have enacted on and the people who understand this the people who learn to read it instead of running from it those are the people that actually change their lives because they have access to information that everyone else including yourself listening to this is deleting every single day now I want to give you all a full experiment and I want you to stay with me because it's going to land in a way that probably will blow your mind and shift something I want you to imagine a world and this something I came across recently that I found very interesting let's call it heaven let's call it paradise wherever works for you where you can have anything you want the moment you imagine it there's no competition there's no such thing as scarcity everything exists in abundance you think and it's yours instantly and in this world you look over and you see someone living everything you've ever wanted the confidence they have the relationships they have the freedom the sense of purpose peace everything is there in that world listen to this carefully in a world where you can have anything would you feel jealous the answer should be no you wouldn't feel a single drop of jealousy because you'd realize in the same moment oh I can have that too the only reason why I know I want this in the first place is because I got to see them living it first so instead of jealousy you feel grateful genuine gratefulness by the way because they showed you something you hadn't yet imagined for yourself this is jealousy in its highest most developed form pure inspiration and this is the stage I operating when I see people doing things that are amazing and sometimes I sit there thinking to myself wow how can someone even be capable of such a thing if it's within reach and I start to feel something I get inspired and I ask ask questions pick their brain so I can move in that direction your mind is basically being shown a possibility it didn't know existed and this thought experiment matters because it shows you exactly where jealousy comes from it's not the desire that's the problem the desire is actually neutral it's showing you what you want and that's okay the problem is the gap between the desire and the belief the gap between seeing what you want and actually believing you can have it and when that gap closes when you believe it's possible for you and you sincerely believe this the jealousy dissolves and it becomes inspiration does that make sense for all of you guys listen to this the gap is what you need to focus on because when it stays open when you see what you want but don't believe you can have it that is where it curdles that is where the confusion and the negative feeling comes from that is what we call resentment and if you leave resentment long enough if you keep bearing it every time it comes to surface it becomes bitterness and I need to talk about bitterness because this is where it gets really important if you look at the internet for a second right before I even discuss this most people on the internet believe it or not are bitter nasty individuals you can come on the internet as a man or woman just talk your stuff you know I do this when myself you're like you know what I feel like I'm very confident I've got a really amazing body you know I work really hard for my money and I just bought myself a car there's always going to be a rat in the common dropping something like a humble yourself bro or who does bro think he is or if you're a woman especially women I noticed women love to get egoed on the internet where someone's just gonna drop are who do she think she is or take off that makeup and what do you see my point bitterness is not a personality type it is not just how some people are bitterness is what happens when someone had a dream they stopped chasing and never grieve do you know how flipping powerful that is by the way I had this written down because I I a while back noticed I was becoming bitter and one of the things I noticed whilst researching was bitterness is quite literally what happens when you yourself listen it to this have a dream and then you just stop chasing it but you never actually grieve think about all the bitter people in your life because you've met them you know it may be in your family maybe your parents it could be your uncles it could be your aunties It could be maybe one person in your friendship group. You might even be recognized. is something in yourself right now and that's totally okay by the way. That's why you're here in the first place. And if you look past the surface or I guess even to add to this, they need to find the floor in everything. This is one of the things that bitter people do. They always love to minimize other people's wins. To always have a reason why something won't work. What you find underneath which I find extremely interesting is someone who wanted something once. You could see it, who could feel it, who maybe even started moving towards it and then something happened to them. Maybe they got rejected, maybe they failed. Someone told them they couldn't do it. All sometimes unfortunately I noticed even with some people I know in my life, life just got complicated. Maybe you have a kid, maybe your mother dies, maybe your father dies. And instead of sitting with that loss and doing something with it, they just quietly decided the game was rigged. And the reason why I'm laughing is there are so many people like this that just say yeah, the game is rigged bro. Because deciding the game is rigged is actually easier than being honest about what you want and why you haven't done anything about it. Deciding everyone else got lucky is easier than asking yourself what you're actually afraid of. It protects the ego and it keeps you safe from being vulnerable of the potential of trying again and maybe failing. But the cost, there's always a cost in life. The cost of that protection is enormous because slowly, without even realizing someone who runs that story long enough becomes a person who genuinely cannot celebrate other people. They cannot stand it. I made a video a while back and I said you could tell how fragile a man's ego is in regards to how he reacts when there's other men doing better than him. It's an easy tell. Some people cannot be in a room with someone who's winning without the energy shifting. They cannot let themselves want things anymore because wanting things means the potential of not getting them and that is the pain they decided they cannot handle. Jealousy is the seed. Ignore jealousy becomes resentment. Resentment compounded over a long period of time becomes bitterness and bitterness is one of the most destructive things a person can carry. I want you guys to pause this episode right now and just reflect on everything that I've said because I know there was too much to keep up with. The framework is jealousy is the seed. Resentment compounds over a long period of time to become bitterness and bitterness is what destroys you. Not just in your own life. It actually destroys everyone around you because bitter people don't suffer quietly. They leak it. They are negative, nasty people. They leak it to their friends, their relationships into how they treat people around them who are actually trying to grow. Think about your parents for a second and this isn't to shit on your parents. Parents are amazing. They're lovely people but there are some cases where some parents aren't great and it's the same cycle. They develop bitterness and they can't stand the fact that you're doing something good with your life. So what did they do? They tried to clip your wings and you see this with relatives as well. Auntie's uncle's people trying to control what is it that you do and on the low level I guess friendships as well. So just remember this every time you feel jealous you have a choice. You read it, you interrogate it, you use it or cowards way out. You suppress it, let it quietly compound into something that closes you off from your own life and that is not a small choice. That is one of the most important choices you'll keep making in your life. To add to this now, I want to give you something that's going to change not just how you think about jealousy but every uncomfortable emotionally experienced. I want you to think about emotions as something that sits on a spectrum. On one end you have immature expression and on the other end you have mature developed expression of the same emotion. So let's take anger as an example. In its immature state, anger looks like explosion or explosive outbursts, passive aggressiveness, punishing people with silence, you know, stone-walling people saying things you don't mean because you can't regulate what you're feeling in the moment. But let's look at the other end. Anger in its matured state, same emotion just develops. It becomes assertiveness, clarity, the ability to say that this is not okay without losing control. It is the same energy but just completely different expressions and jealousy works the exact same way. In its immature state, which is what most people experience and stay stuck in, it shows up as a weird feeling when someone shares good news. The subtle need to poke holes in someone else's success, the comparing, the ranking and to even make this or say this out loud, quietly hoping that someone fails with the bitterness and the resentment. But jealousy in its mature state on the other end of the spectrum, when you fully developed relationship or a relationship with the emotion and learned to actually read it, jealousy becomes one of the most powerful navigation tools you have. It becomes the thing that points you directly at what you want and then asks you what is stopping you. The emotion itself doesn't change, what changes is what you do with it. And this is why emotional intelligence is not soft. It's not just therapy talk. This is the literal difference between someone who spends their life being moved by their emotions without understanding them, aka being very reactionary, stuck and confused versus someone who understands what they're in a world is trying to communicate and can use that information to build something. And I promise you most people will never talk this. People charge thousands of dollars to relay this information to you. Never talk to manage your emotions. You will just talk to suppress them, control them or get rid of them, not to read them. Wherever your body tells you, anytime you have a feeling towards something, anytime you have an inclination towards something, your body is trying to signal something to you. And you've been throwing away some of the most valuable data sets you had access to your whole entire life. But at least now this can change. Now to move past this and add another layer, I want to make a distinction that's going to open something up. When you feel jealous of someone, your brain immediately attaches it to something specific, whether it's their relationship, their career, their body, their confidence, their lifestyle, and you think I want that, I want that specific thing. But that almost never tells the full truth if you think about it. What you actually want is what you associate with what they have. Listen to that carefully. You don't want the specific thing they have. You want what you associate with what they have. And these are very different things because the specific thing, the relationship, the career, the body, that's just the container. What's actually pulling at you and annoying you is the feeling you've attached to the container. So someone sees, let's say a person who's built something successful and you feel that jealousy. But if you actually sit down and interrogate it, if you pull the thread as they say, what is it that you're really after? Because here's what that tells you. If what you actually want is freedom, there are multiple paths to freedom. If what you actually want is to feel proud of yourself, there are multiple things you can do today to build something that would give you that. If you actually want to feel like what you do matters, that's not locked to a specific outcome. Or let's say someone sees a couple just came to my mind right now. You see a couple who are clearly in love, happy and solid. And then there's that feeling and you think I want what they have. But do you want their specific relationship or do you want to feel chosen to feel genuinely seen? The moment you separate the feeling from the object, the moment you stop chasing the specific container and start getting honest about what's actually inside it that you want everything changed. You stop comparing your path to someone else. This is how you stay in your own lane. You stop feeling like you're behind because someone got their first. You start asking completely different questions. Your dream life and I want you to sit with this and think about it for a second. Your dream life does not already exist out there to be copied. What you see in other people, the things that make your chest tighten or make you feel anxious, they're just signposts. They're pointing you in a direction but the road itself, the destination that's actually yours is something only you can build. It is your life, your journey, no one can be you. No one has the genetic makeup of you. No one has the perspective that you have. And if you put that all together and you amalgamate it, you end up understanding that the journey that you're on is purely just yours. And the jealousy that you're feeling shows you the direction, you yourself have to build the road. And here's where I want to go a bit deeper because this is the part most people skip, which I believe is the most important part. Once you've identified what the jealousy is pointing at, the next question that unlocks everything is what is actually stopping you. And I know at this point in the podcast episode, you're probably thinking damn you know what is stopping me. Tell me Dino. And when you sit with that question honestly, what comes up because it is almost never practical. It's rarely about resources or time or circumstance. What you get underneath all of that is a story, a narrative you've been running about yourself and what's possible for you. And it sounds like this. I'm not good enough for that. It's too late for me. I think I'm cooked. People like me don't get to have that one thing I hate, by the way. Oh, where I'm from people like shush, just shut up. Another one could be what if I go for it and it doesn't work? What does that say about me? Or simple one, I don't even deserve it. And these beliefs don't feel like beliefs. To you, it feels like facts. They feel like reality because they've been in you for so long. It's been running quietly in the background and you've never actually stopped to question it. They just became part of how you see the world. Think about when most of these things formed. The stories we carry about what we're capable of, what we deserve, and what's possible for people like us. Most of them were formed when we were young, under the guardianship of our parents in schools, from people that were dealing with their own stuff. And all of those messages that you got from everyone around you during that time, they got absorbed and they became the lens through which you see everything, the relationships, your ambition, even your sense of self-worth. And because they formed so early and you ran with it, you never actually examined it, you don't even challenge it anymore. They just became a part of your operating system. And this is why ShadowWork is so important. I've spoken about this across podcasts before. And I keep pointing back at it because it keeps coming up as the answer. The shadow is the part of you that formed in the dark. The part that contains all your beliefs, your patterns, the emotional responses, you never got to consciously choose. And it runs the show. It makes decisions. It closes doors. Not because there's something wrong with you or because you're broken, but because it formed in response to real experiences and it's trying to protect you from feeling those things again. But the problem is if you can't tell the difference between a genuine threat and an opportunity and your brain treats it as the same, it just pulls you back. And this is why jealousy is such a powerful entry point for me personally. It just shows up and shows exactly what is it that you want and exactly what you're falling short of before any of your defense systems can even get to this. You can lie to yourself about what you want, but you can never fake what makes you jealous. To build on this now, one thing I want to address is the most universal experience of jealousy. And that is jealousy in friendships because we spoke about jealousy in the context of strangers online. But I want to talk about friendships, the one that really damages most people. If you think about a friend, a real one, someone you've known for years, you've been through things with them, you actually care about. And then one of you starts moving. And this happens to everyone. This is such a universal experience. Someone in your friendship group starts to get their life together, find a great relationship, build something, start to grow in a visible way. And then something shifts. And if you're honest, there's something in you that becomes uncomfortable in their presence. And that isn't because you don't love them. I just wish people understood that you're not evil for feeling like this is because their growth is holding up a mirror to your own stagnation. And that's uncomfortable. That's genuinely uncomfortable. And rather sitting with that discomfort and letting it move you, most people do the opposite. They make jokes that maybe sometimes I don't know they're out to hurt the person. They become less available to that person. They don't check up on that person anymore. And by the way, this is from first time the experience. As someone who grew up in a certain area in London, when I started publicly putting myself out there, I noticed barely people check up on me or people rarely check up on me, I should say. There's this slightly awkward energy. It may sound like I'm exaggerating it, but you only know or you only understand this when you're on the other side. You'll never know if you've never become that person or you've never become that guy or that girl when it comes to self development and real growth. And sometimes people go as far as trying to pick apart the thing that other person's building. They would say things like, Oh, how's your little TikToks going? Little TikToks. What is little about a TikTok video, bro? Although, be like, Oh, how's your little fancy business going? Pay attention to words. People use words intentionally, by the way. They're not evil, but there's this bitterness that we've spoken about that's within them. And this is one of the most common and most painful ways jealousy shows up in real life. And it destroys more relationships than people can ever imagine. And if you get honest with yourself, the truth is, if you're able to own this and say, You know, I love this person and I love what they're doing, but it's making me uncomfortable. You can actually grow out of it because the moment you own something that you feel within, it no longer has control over you. That's when friendships become deeper. This requires a certain level of honesty with yourself that most people were never taught, let alone with someone else. Think about this. How many relationships in your life have quietly lost something because no one was honest enough to name what was actually happening? And then to add to this as well, let's talk about romantic relationships. A lot of what people call jealousy in relationships, i.e. the possessiveness, the suspicion, the constant need for reassurance is not about the other person at all. Matter of fact, it is rarely about them. It's about what the person represents to you. The fear of not being enough, the fear of being seen fully and then left, or maybe rebates by someone better. I've seen this and a lot of men experienced this where I had an episode and I've even made videos on this in the past where I said, A lot of men insecure men are intimidated by secure established women. So they will try to frame it as an educated woman would destroy your life. But the reality is they don't want someone to gain autonomy because it will kind of expose their own inadequacy. You see how it always points inwards? You're trying to control your part. Oh no, don't start that business. But I want to start posting online to promote my business. Bear in the mind, I didn't say anything immoral. I'm just promoting myself online to promote this clothing brand that I started or this product based business that I started or I've got a coaching program where I help other women to better themselves. Believe it or not, there's always going to be a man out there that's going to say, No, no, it's not good to put yourself out there. It's not worth it. What are you really scared of? And that distinction matters more than most people can ever imagine because insecurity can be worked on the stories underneath that you tell yourself can be examined. The wound that I guess created this whole thing that you stand for can be addressed. But if you never separate the two, if you just label it as jealousy and you try to manage their behaviour without ever going to the root, you carry it from relationship to relationship and you wonder why the pattern keeps repeating. Women do the same thing to men whenever a woman's with a man that is established and he's confident unless he's constantly leveling up and you know, every woman has to acknowledge this. If you're with a man that is in the public, I doing great things. Women are going to throw themselves at him. But how do you deal with it? Do you own that feeling and say, Hey, you know, I don't know why sometimes I just feel like this. If you do some self-exploration, you'll probably end up realizing is a fear of you being exposed as inadequate the fear of being replaced. If people were not open about these things, I don't think people realize just how amazing relationships will become. The man will give you reassurance and at least you got that out of your system so it no longer has leverage over. But instead what happens, the woman's going to try to undermine the man. She's not really going to be fully supportive of what he does. And it kind of manifests in many ways. Just keep that in your mind. So now to bring this all together, I want to leave this episode with something that you can actually use. I want to give you guys an insight into what a healthy relationship with jealousy looks like. And I want this to be clear, this isn't about eliminating the feeling. It's about developing a relationship with it and as we discussed, moving it from an immature expression to a mature one. Every time jealousy shows up in your life and it will continue to show up. It happens to me. It happens to everyone. I want you to actually sit with it and ask yourself the following things. Get a pen and paper out. What specifically triggered this be very precise. Not the oh, I'm jealous of their life. I'm jealous of how they look. I'm way to break it down. Is it their confidence? Is it their relationship? Is it their freedom? Is it the way they carried themselves? The fact they've built something they're proud of. What is it? The more information you give, the more data you can extract from it. The second question you need to ask yourself is what is this feeling actually telling me I want? Not about the person what you want. Learn to separate the feeling from the object. The third question is what story am I running about myself as to why I can't have it? Write it down. Because when you see it on paper, you can question it. You can actually ask yourself is this actually true? Is there any evidence for this? Or has it been something that I've just been quietly running in the background that I failed to challenge? And the last thing is what is one thing, just one thing that moves me forward or moves me towards what is it that I want? Because that's how you get into the state of motion. That is how you move forward. Instead of staying stagnant and letting this jealous feeling eat you up, you can actually use it as a direction. So to now close this off, I hope you've been enjoying this episode. I want to summarize everything that I've said. The first thing is jealousy is not your enemy. It is not proof that you are disgusting, bitter or broken. And it's not something to be ashamed of. Remove the shame aspect of jealousy. The people who stay stuck and it could be you right now listening to this are not weaker than the people who grow. There's not much differences between you and that person. You were just never taught how to read the signals. You were never given permission to take your inner world seriously. And you were never taught how to lean into the uncomfortable feeling that you have. Because everything in life happens for a reason. I'm a true believer of that. The feeling that you have every time you see someone doing something well is because there's an internal vision within you have the capacity, you have the ability to go out there and do the things you want. And that is your starting point. And as per usual, if you've really enjoyed this episode, I want you to share it with someone. Especially this episode, I believe this one will really change a lot of people's minds. And if you've benefited from this and you want to give me my flowers, because you know, at this point, I am greedy. I want my flowers. You can send me a message. Maybe we can have a discussion. Otherwise, I love you all and I'll see you in the next episode.