Jealousy
WHY JEALOUSY?
When I started creating this course, I wasn’t certain if I was going to include a segment on jealousy. The more I thought about it and the more I worked with my students on their relationships, the more I determined it was important to include a jealousy segment in The Alpha Relationships Course.
Although it isn’t as prevalent as social, approach, and performance anxiety, jealousy is something that I dealt with for a long time in my relationships and several of my students have experienced. When it comes to relationships, especially Alpha Relationships, there is simply NO ROOM for jealousy.
Furthermore, jealousy is insidious and elusive in it’s origin. It is made up of three illusions, comes on intensely, and can drive undesired actions.
Therefore, the cognitive patterns that create deserve their own segment in this course.
WHAT IS JEALOUSY?
Jealousy is a derivative of FEAR. It is different from Envy in that Envy is a derivative of SADNESS. This is what makes jealousy so intense and so powerful a feeling – the emotion behind it is fear and your brain is screaming DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!
Jealousy is actually three thoughts, all rolled into one. This is also what makes it so intense and powerful. All three thoughts are fear-based illusions and I will cover each one in the content below (as well as the video above). Since all three thoughts are based in fear, jealous feels like your brain is exploding and your body wants to get moving – there is a high-energy feeling with jealousy. As fear generally passes into anger, jealousy also easily moves into an angry form and usually projected out onto the circumstance.
Jealousy requires you to believe you have a thing. This thing can be a person (partner, family friend), a job (position in your work), or event. Of course, you never actually HAVE the thing – you just believe you do, which is a thought. This initial thought pattern will open the door for jealousy to enter.
Once you are in the illusion that you have this thing – jealousy is welcomed into the brain-space.
The first illusion that creates jealousy is the belief that this thing is what makes you happy. It can be a person, like a wife or girlfriend, or it can be a job that you really love. It can be ANYTHING that you think makes you happy. Of course, at this stage in the course, you and I both know that the only thing that creates any emotion or feeling is a thought – not some external thing (person or otherwise).
The second illusion that jealousy lives on is that this thing can be taken from you.
The final illusion that makes jealousy feel so horrible is that you believe whoever takes this thing from you is in some way better than you. This breeds shame on top of jealousy – which feels worse than jealousy, albeit less intense.
ILLUSION #1:
I NEED THIS THING TO BE HAPPY
You KNOW this isn’t true (even if a part of you still believes it to be true).
Check this out, if you’re new to The Universal Truth it can be difficult to break the conditioning around people believing that our emotions and feelings come from other people. We are told since childhood that other people have the ability to hurt our feelings and we often tie in our positive feelings with other people and events. Think about it – were you ever told or did you hear an adult say, “Now go apologize to that boy for hurting his feelings”, or if you were on the other end, did you hear, “Did that boy hurt your feelings?”
Adults do the best they can, however more of them are still living in their own Beta Condition. I continue to hear it as a man – “we need to be careful of what we say so we don’t offend anyone.” Nonsense. Garbage, perpetuating an illusion that other people have any emotional effect on us whatsoever.
The TRUTH is that we are 100% responsible for how we feel because it is ALWAYS our thoughts that create our feelings. If you’re happy, it’s because you’re thinking happy thoughts. If you’re sad, it’s because you’re thinking sad thoughts. Period. It NEVER has ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING that is happening outside of your mind and body. Your mind chooses the thought, your body feels the feeling. That’s it – nothing more.
Jealousy plays into the illusion that whatever this thing is (person, job, event, etc), it is the thing that is making you happy.
Nope.
The thing is never what makes you happy – you do. With your thoughts.
ILLUSION #2:
THIS THING CAN BE TAKEN FROM ME
(I CAN LOSE THIS THING)
The second jealousy illusion is that, whatever the thing is, it can be taken from you. This illusion is a little more elusive.
First, you have to recognize that you never OWN a person, or a job, or an event. None of it is YOURS. You are simply living through an experience with a person, or in a job, or at an event. Other people choose to share time with you, just as you choose to share time with other people. You don’t own your girlfriend any more than she owns you. You don’t own your job. In the general truth, we never own anything.
Once you get to this cognitive place, the fear of things being taken from you is transcended altogether. You can’t have things taken from you if you don’t own them. This might be a tougher thought pattern to accept. Nonetheless, this is the Universal Truth For How Life Works.
With jealousy, however, this creates FEAR. I have this person and they can be taken from me. I have this job and it can be taken from me. I am going to this event and my spot can be taken from me. This is the first hint of DANGER in the jealousy illusions. The first illusion is a violation of the Universal Truth. The second illusion triggers the DANGER signals in the brain and releases FEAR into the body. This is compounded with the first illusion – MY HAPPINESS CAN BE TAKEN FROM ME.
Substitute anything you want for ‘happiness’. It can be love, safety, or pride. It doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that it’s always an EMOTION or a FEELING. The thing itself is a neutral circumstance. The fear is always about losing a positive emotion or feeling, tied to the first illusion and believing that the source is the thing itself (rather than the true source, which is your thoughts).
ILLUSION #3:
THE PERSON I LOSE THIS THING
TO IS BETTER THAN ME
Adding the final illusion of jealousy brings in the emotion of shame, which pushes everything over the edge.
This final cognitive element of jealousy is the belief that the person that ‘takes’ this thing from you is better than you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a person who wants to spend time with someone else, a job that goes to another candidate, or an event position that someone else gets – the thought that follows with jealousy is that his other person must be ‘better’ to have this thing that 1) is the source of your happiness and 2) that you believe is yours.
This is also an illusion, to be sure. There is never anyone better or worse than anyone else. We are all the same. There might be someone who is better at a specific skill than you and someone else who you’re better at a specific skill than them – however this doesn’t mean they are better or worse than you. This thought pattern leads to SHAME and when you add fear to shame, you get a nasty cocktail.
This third component to jealousy is exceptionally insidious in that it’s a false sentence, i.e. it’s a LIE, and that it leads to blame, anger, and resentment. The thing doesn’t even have to be taken away from you and you will still have this thought pattern when you feel jealous. Remember, the thoughts create the emotions, so you are already thinking these three thoughts when you feel jealous. It could be that there is a young, smart guy who just got hired on at the firm you work for and you notice he is talking to the boss and being really friendly. All of a sudden, you feel jealous – and NOTHING HAS EVEN HAPPENED. Yet, you believe you job is what makes you happy, you are worried this new guy can take it from you, and you believe that the reason he would get your job is because he is a person person than you – BOOM – jealousy ensues.
And none of that even occured.
AN EXAMPLE AND HOW TO ELIMINATE JEALOUSY
I can you a short example in the previous paragraph. Let’s play it out a bit further and look at how to eliminate jealousy.
There is your girlfriend. She is over there doing her yoga or walking on the treadmill in the gym while you are working with the free weights.
You notice another guy walk over to her and start talking to her. You have NO IDEA what they are saying, and it looks like she is enjoying herself. In fact, it looks like she is flirting with him as he is flirting with her.
All of a sudden, you feel jealous. Why?
Illusion #1: You believe your girlfriend of the source of your happiness (or love or security or safety or manliness or whatever).
Illusion #2: You believe that your relationship is tenuous and that she can be taken from you by another guy.
Illusion #3: You think that this other guy must have something you don’t have – he must be better than you since she looks so happy talking to him.
Ok brother, slow down. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Literally, all of that is in your mind. It’s all thought patterns – and they were there BEFORE this guy started talking to her (the work begins with your self – see the segment on What Is A Relationship?)
Let’s roll this back – what is the first problem? This woman is not what makes you happy (or a man, or feel loved, or feel safe). What makes you happy is YOU – that is YOUR POWER. Don’t give anyone that power – the power of how you feel is the strongest skills you can learn and develop. When you give this power away, you step into your Beta Condition and behave like a Beta Male; needy, desperate, and, in this case, JEALOUS.
What’s the second problem? No one can take this person away from you – people decide for themselves how they want to spend their time. Your girlfriend is with you because she CHOOSES to be, not because you ‘own’ her or she’s ‘yours’. It’s not the year 10,000 B.C.E. – no one is going to walk into your tribe and ‘steal’ your woman. If she is with you, it’s because she wants to be. If she’s not, it’s because she doesn’t want to be. You have nothing to do with it, it is ALWAYS her choice. Your behavior plays into that choice (because it’s a circumstance for her), but it will always be her choice.
What’s the third problem? There is no one better or worse than you. I mentioned this in the previous content. All humans are the same in essence. Different people have different skills and all people are equal and amazing. This other guy is just another guy – no better or worse than you. Believing that people are better or worse will lead you into cognitive patterns that create shame and this emotion doesn’t serve you.
So how do you eliminate the jealousy?
First, you have to do the work on yourself. That is always step one. How do you think about yourself?
Second, observe the circumstance in a neutral way (because IT IS neutral). There are two people talking. That’s it. Just two cellular organisms, exchanging vibrations of sound. Nothing is happening there that doesn’t happen in billions of places all around the world. People talk, they have conversations. That’s all that is happening.
Next, what else could be going on here? In my experience (both personally and with my students), the thoughts that create the jealousy are never true. Not only in the Universal Truth way (which means they are illusions and all three of them can never be true), but also in the actual way as in what you think is happening really isn’t happening. Maybe he’s a friend from work or the past, maybe he’s her sisters (or friends) husband or boyfriend. Maybe she doesn’t know him and just enjoys the conversation!
Jealousy will ALWAYS put the relationship in a less than desirable place – because relationships are thoughts and the thoughts you’re having about the relationship isn’t desirable. Eliminate jealousy with these three steps and work on the relationship you have with yourself.
WORKSHEETS
