Jealousy can be defined as a feeling of resentment against someone because of that person’s success, rivalry or advantage.
Jealousy is destructive to both the person harbouring the feeling and the one at the receiving end.
As human beings, we are surrounded by jealous people of which some are even our ‘good friends’ or family members.
Spotting jealous friends or people around you is not that difficult. Even though a jealous person will never come to you and say in plain words that, I am jealous of you (small minority of the very evil ones do), it is very easily to spot them.
As you begin to fight for your desires, wants and comfort in life, success and other advantages will come your way. These good deeds you work hard (or luckily land on) trigger most of the jealousy in friends and sometimes family.
Common traces of jealous people which you can rely on to spot the jealous friends around you so to be able to deal with them are; they exhibit their jealous in a form of resentment, hatred and wild gossip.
The above are occasionally accompanied by rudeness, disrespect, non constructive criticisms and mini sabotage of your activities.
Jealous friends also pay less attention to your success and major attention to your failure or misfortune.
How To Deal With Jealous Friends…
Now that you have clearly spotted the jealous friends around you, what can you do? Getting rid of them as friends is not an option for me. Personally, I value friendship and until something is extremely agonizing, I never get rid it or run from it.
Also, some friends may be jealous of you but then, they may be good in other things which you appreciate. In this case, it is not advisable to simple get rid of them, after all, they are good in other departments of your friendship.
I have categorized the ways by which you can deal with jealous friends into two main headings the ‘Strong Approach’ and the ‘Mild Approach’.
Depending on how extensive the jealousy goes and your own personal value of the friendship (as well as your personality), you can adopt one of the approaches that you see fit for your circumstance….
Remember, my personality and friends are different from yours.
Strong Approach
1. Kill them with their own jealousy: If your friend is jealous of you and cannot simply accommodate your success or celebrate your achievements with you, throw to him or her more good news about your life. Whenever you achieve something, call or tell her first.
Let her kill herself with more jealousy as you continue to freely accomplish the great things you set your mind to achieve. Do not be bothered by the person’s jealousy, continue with your success and make sure you slap it on her/his face anytime you make a good jump.
2. Confront Him Or Her: One big problem about jealous people is their super ego…Despite their plain acts of jealousy; they will never accept that they are jealous of you or of your achievements. Therefore, confronting such people can be dangerous and you must do it with diplomacy and humility.
To do this, nicely confront the person and firmly point him or her to the fact that, you are aware of all the gossip he/she is carrying about you. You also noticed the last time that, he/she gave your success which you shared with him/her a little attention but when it was your failure, it got all the undeserving attention in the world.
Let the person know that, his/her resentment towards you would slowly kill your friendship and since you have noticed it, it must stop.
He/she will never accept this and would offer several thousands of rebuttals…Just listen and leave things as they are. He or she will give this a deep thinking.
Mild Approach
3. Try Helping The Jealous Friend: Most friends get jealous because of their own insecurity, inability to achieve their goals or basic lack of direction. When they see you attaining all that they are failing at, it breeds jealousy.
Therefore if you appreciate your friendship with this person, try to help him or her with his/her goals. Bring the person on board on your next success trip and share your success with him or her.
If you can help him or her achieve her success, do so. If you are the only one getting all the smiles whiles he/she gets the sorrow, it will definitely grow into jealousy.
4. Be Positive & Confident: What jealous friends hate most is positivity and confidence. Because they are full of negative energy, your positive energy and confidence will over time quench the bad energy they bear…
When you continue to exhibit positivity and confidence when with jealous friends, they begin to see and accept that, their jealous cannot tear you down. They will realize that they have no power over your success and happiness.
And that you are confident of yourself and have no negative energy towards them even though they have plenty of such energy for you.
5. Place Yourself In Your Friends Shoes: For you to better deal with a situation, it is always good to put yourself in that situation. Standing afar can make things seem easy or negative, when in fact it is difficult and positive.
So if you think your friend is jealous of you or your accomplishments, take a step back and place yourself in his/her shoes, then you will be able to truly realize what is going on.
It might be that this friend is poor in presenting constructive criticisms which come up to you all the time as non constructive or pure hatred.
The important part of being in someone shoes is that, you can easily spot what is going on. Whiles in the person’s shoes, if you realize that you have not been a good friend by helping (which is steadily growing into jealous), offer to help him or her.
Even though it is beautiful to smile…It is far better if you share the smile with your friends and family. So do not become a lone ranger, take your friends with you when you go chasing the success, desires and wants.
When people feel left out, they become negative to whatever they feel they are not part of…
If you do not mind, share with me and other readers how you deal with jealous friends…
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