 If you ever experience jealousy, I want you to watch this video, and I promise I'm not going to waste your time. I'm going to give you a new way to look at letting go of jealousy once and for all, so stay with me. Another good question here, and this one's from Maria. This is about a jealousy issue, a jealousy problem. Maria writes, when I go on social media or even meet people in person, I have a burning sense of jealousy. That's why I kind of want to answer this question, because I love the honesty of this. Thank you for honest with ourselves, we all feel jealousy. How can I let this go, which is the big issue? I don't like this aspect of myself. I want to feel happy for my friends and family that I see, but I feel I'm being fake when I try to show this. So what a great question. So the first thing I'm going to say about jealousy, pretty much all of these things that I look at, I look at it from the framework, the starting position of we have a split mind, split psyche, we have shadow persona. And notice Maria there that there's an attempt being made to stop this jealousy. I don't like that part of myself. So we know straight away that the jealous part of yourself is in the shadow. It's something that you're trying to get rid of. And what we're trying to do here is we're trying to be happy for the other person. So there we have it. There's our shadow. There's our persona. This conflict is going to arise. And this is why this problem couldn't stay for so long, because one part of your mind wants something, the other wants something completely different. We can't let it go, so it keeps coming up again and again. So the first step here, stop trying to feel happy for other people. Now, that doesn't sound very selfish. Doesn't that sound like, oh my God, that's not very advanced of me. Very egoic, right? The problem is we're already in the ego, but we don't know it in these attempts to feel happy for people. Really what's happening here is we need to end this conflict inside ourselves. Now, the jealousy that's there is real. And one of the things, again, that I love about this question is that it's an acknowledgement of the jealousy rather than pretending it's not there. Now, the shadow part, the jealousy we see other people doing things or getting things or accomplishing things or making progress in their life or moving on with their life. And we have this reaction. That's really shown as in our shadow, it's the guilt, it's the defective story, it's the unworthiness, the not good enoughness we're coming in contact with. So when we're looking at the shadow piece, really what the jealousy is saying is it's showing us that and that needs to be. There's two different approaches with the shadow and the persona. The shadow needs to be looked at, made aware, become aware of it, take it out of unconsciousness and really examine to the point where we realize it's just not true. A lot of the stuff in the shadow is not true. Some of the things in our shadow are true and I'll get to that in a moment. But these anything that is reinforcing this defective story, I'm not good enough, there's something wrong with me, needs to be questioned and we do that through inquiry maybe and then let go. Let go through positive thinking, let go because we see and understand and have insight into the fact that this is simply not true. So that's our first step with this. But there's really not a subsequent step, a simultaneous step that we make when we're doing that is we also have to challenge this idea of, okay, I'm trying to get rid of this jealousy, but really upholding on to this idea of being happy for another person. We really think that we have to feel super happy for other people. Now, again, you see the problem with that is it sounds so healthy, it sounds so loving. Problem is it isn't loving at all. These persona concepts all sound nice, which is why we're all attracted to the misery, which is why we're all trying to defend these concepts. But really there has to be a correction made. With the shadow we question it to drop it, these negative aspects in the shadow. But with the persona, what we do is we have to reinterpret it because this idea of trying to be happy for other people is phony. It's not ringing true here, certainly not for you, Maria. And for many of us, it doesn't ring true. So what we need is a different concept that you can hold onto one that actually does resonate has been true. Now, from my experience working with jealousy, this idea there's not more dangerous than trying and forcing yourself to feel happy for other people. And it's just not there. But there is an alternative and you see what you realize with this alternative and I'm going to give it to you in a second. Another way to think about this is that really when you're doing this and you're looking at these aspects of yourself, it can seem as if it's about other people. Really, this is always all about ourselves. This is about the relationship we have with ourselves. So I'm going to give you this new concept and you realize that it's much more about you than it is the other person. The true correction for the persona concept of to be happy for another person. Okay, we're going to put that down. It doesn't work if we're honest with ourselves here. We can replace that concept with to be inspired by inspired. So we start to look at other people under social media. And of course, there is also that aspect to social media is very fake because of the point that people only post. I mean, it shouldn't really be... I think the persona is really running these social media platforms. People don't post their shadow very often, right? But that's a separate point. The issue here of to be inspired by other people is actually more about you. Really what's happening here is I mentioned before that the shadow has all these negative aspects in the guilt and the defective story that we don't want to look at. As soon as we do look at it, we find out it's not true. But in addition to all that stuff, all that guilt and all that low self-esteem are also positive aspects of yourself that you've gone into denial about. So there may be lots of talents, lots of power you have in your life that we go into denial about or put into the shadow. That, just like a negative aspect, gets projected out onto other people. And this is where jealousy shows up. So we're actually, when you're finding yourself looking at other people and you're seeing these things and reacting emotionally, what's actually happening is you're projecting onto them an aspect of yourself that you're in denial about. That's as true for negative traits. We think of something like bigotry or something, right? Or something like bigotry, there's some aspect of the self we don't like projected out onto other people and we react to it. It's the same with things about ourselves that are talents or innate aspects of ourselves or maybe massive potentials that we haven't been able to cultivate. We go into denial about them because it's quite painful to look at them when they're not been actualized, but then they get projected out there. So really the correction to forget trying to be happy for other people, get inspired by them because really it's yourself. It's aspects of yourself you're seeing in these people. And we start to realize, okay, this is resonating with me when I'm seeing in this person what they're doing here. For some reason I'm having an emotional reaction and it's telling you how do you know you're projecting, whether positively or negatively, you always react with it. You have always had an emotional reaction to it. And jealousy is a very strong emotional reaction. So forget this. I need to be happy for them. And I'll tell you one thing that might convince you that there's truth in this. Imagine a friend came up to you and said, oh yeah, I saw that you posted that thing online. I'm really happy for you. Even just saying those words kind of rings hollow. But imagine a friend came up to you and said, I saw you posted that thing online. And I have to tell you, I'm massively inspired by what you just shared. Do you feel the power in that? Do you feel the difference in that too? Oh, I'm happy for you. To be inspired is what we should be doing rather than forcing ourselves or convincing ourselves that we should be really happy for other people. That's a side note. It's almost irrelevant. Get inspired by what you see. And when you're having these emotional reactions. And jealousy is just another projection and it's showing you a way back if you can bring it back in and look at it. That it's showing you an aspect of yourself that is probably lay dormant in terms of potential. So we drop that shadow and the defective story and the helplessness and I'm not good enough and you realize there is nothing stopping you from cultivating that aspect of yourself now. And this other person serves as a catalyst for that or an inspiration. So Maria, don't beat yourself up about not feeling happy for other people because it's kind of a fake persona concept. We're all deeply attached to it but when you look at it, it rings hollow. It doesn't help us all that much. So it's not really a particularly useful thing to stay attached to. So don't feel bad that you can't. Actually, you've been very honest there saying that it isn't working. So good for you on that. And try to cultivate that whole thing about inspiration rather than to be happy for. I promised at the start that this was a different video. So I hope I delivered on that. I hope that's kind of a new way for you to think about the whole issue of jealousy. Of course, don't beat yourself up about jealousy. See jealousy now as an inspiration or an opportunity to look at some aspect of yourself that maybe was laying dormant or not examined fully in the past. We were in denial and we repressed it for many reasons. But guys, I'll leave it there for today and I hope that was a thought-provoking video. And I'll see you again very soon. Take care of yourself. Bye for now.