Ep #70: The Jealousy Cycle

You are listening to episode 70 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we’re going to break down the jealousy cycle. Let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello, hello my confident coaches. How’s everybody today? I’m fabulous. I’m actually doing quite amazing. I’m actually recording this before my live event, but this is coming out after my live event. So let’s just decide right now that it was the best event ever.

If you were there yesterday, thank you for being there. Wasn’t the coaching amazing? Wasn’t it awesome? Weren’t the insights astounding? Didn’t everybody have the best time? I know, I’m so excited. Of course that’s how it’s going to be because let me tell you, my friends, back in reality, I’m recording this before the event and today, I just booked my hair and makeup, so I officially have my entire crew all lined up.

The location, the event producer, my event producer Matt who is so amazing. He’s produced so many other events for other coaches, and I just love him to death. And the humans I have are some of the favorite humans I know and it occurred to me that I’ve managed to assemble a team that isn’t just a team of people that are working for me.

And I really look at this, not just even at the team that I’ve assembled for the event, but really if I look across my entire business, I love everybody who works for me. Every single one of them. They’re some of my favorite humans on Earth. And a couple of weeks ago I did an episode called barf club and this event is a barf club for me. This is something very far outside of my comfort zone, this is something very really stretching me farther than I would normally stretch myself.

And yet I am doing it with fun and with joy and excitement because I have brought people on who have that same value as I have. So it’s going to be a blast. It’s going to be an amazing time. I don’t even doubt that for a moment. And a lot of that is because of the intention that I have set forward before we even got started.

This is how you create the results that you want and your life, my friends. You decide ahead of time this is how it’s going to be. I’ve just decided that it is, so of course I can tell you the day after the event that it was that way because I’ve already decided that it was the best four hours that you could have possibly spent on a Monday.

Now, before we get into today’s topic, which I’m very excited about today’s topic. It’s a rippled right out of the headlines sort of situation. This was ripped right out of a group coaching session. I’m very excited to talk about it. But before we do, can we talk about one of my clients for a moment?

This is a shoutout to Zena, who is from my September class, which is just now wrapping up, and I want to share with you what she just shared with us this past week. She has created more income for herself as a life coach in the first two months of this year than she did in all of 2020. And I think about that.

I think about what is possible when you let go of the timeline that things need to happen that you’ve created in your head. That these are the deadlines that these things need to happen, otherwise I can’t believe anymore. When you’re willing to believe the uncomfortable and you’re willing to believe the seemingly unbelievable. This is so much of the work that Zena has done in the group and Zena, you are an example of what is possible.

I am so proud of your challenging and your questioning and your willingness to do the work that Confident Coaches offers you because this is what is possible. This is what is possible for you to create. Six months ago you believed things to be just true and factual and we dismantled those things and you have created completely different results because of it.

I could not be prouder. So shout-out. Shout-out in general to my September class who’s done fantastic and amazing things. I mean, Janet’s going in, she’s fully booked as a one-on-one coach and she’s going into groups. Melissa is fully booked as a one-on-one coach and she’s getting ready to launch her group. Zena’s made more money in two months than she did all of last year.

That’s just off the top of my head. So many amazing results came out of that and it is because of your willingness to challenge what you believe about yourself and what you believe about your clients, what you believe about the industry, and to let go of the need for things to happen in a certain time in order for you to continue to believe those things. Love it.

So now that I’ve shared all of those amazing results, let’s talk about jealousy, shall we? Now, the jealousy conversation actually came in another group. So that came out of my January group. So these are my newer coaches. These are my coaches that have just been working with me for two months now.

And let’s talk about jealousy. It’s not just a super cool line in a song by The Killers, which is one of my favorite songs, by the way. Just giving you a little personal insight there. I want to offer you this first and foremost. Jealousy is something that every single coach experiences, but so few want to talk about it because it feels so damn vulnerable to say, “Yeah, I get jealous of so-and-so, I’m feeling very jealous of this person right now.”

And a lot of that comes from our conditioning around jealousy. Jealousy just isn’t an emotion that we’re supposed to feel. Jealousy is an emotion that we’ve been taught to try to avoid. It’s not pleasant, it’s not couth, right? Good people don’t engage in jealousy. Good people aren’t jealous people. No one wants to be the jealous person, right? It is embedded in our culture that jealousy is gross and unattractive, and you don’t want to be that girl, right?

Which really is such a shame that we talk about jealousy that way because talking about jealousy that way and the fact that all humans actually do feel jealous just leads to shaming ourselves. And it doesn’t have to lead to shame. So let’s talk about it. We’re going to talk about it right here in this episode right now because me sharing those results might have stirred up some jealousy in you.

Me telling you how some of my clients are killing it and are booked and are moving forward and are moving on and these higher-level business-oriented masterminds and they’re killing it and they’re going to do amazing things in it might have you saying, “That sucks. What do they have that I don’t? And it’s never going to work for me and it’s just not fair.” All kinds of things, right?

So I want to talk about it so that we can dismantle the myths around jealousy. Let’s talk about the jealousy cycle that we all tend to indulge in and engage in so that we can actually work through it and let it go. Let’s talk about the thing that no one wants to talk about. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Coaches who are jealous of other coaches.

So first and foremost, it’s really important that y’all remember what we always forget. And that is jealousy is just a feeling. Jealousy is a human emotion. And where do feelings come from? Feelings come from our thinking. Jealousy is not a thing. It’s not a thing that you have. It’s not a thing that you are.

You are not a jealous person because your feelings don’t define who you are as a person. Jealousy is a feeling and it’s literally just something that you sometimes feel because you sometimes choose to believe thoughts that create jealousy, a vibration in your body. A natural, normal human emotion.

But we forget this. We put a whole judgment around jealousy in and of itself and it’s who we are and it’s the type of person that we are. And it’s just what we do as opposed to no, it’s just a feeling I’m feeling in this moment because of a thought I’m choosing to believe in this moment. That’s all it is.

Just like sometimes you choose to believe thoughts that create happiness or pride or excitement. This is not some big obstacle that you have to overcome. This isn’t who you are as a person and now you got to figure out how to feel better about the fact that you are a jealous person. No. You are not a jealous person. You’re a person who experiences the feeling of jealousy, which is coming from believing a thought, which is not a problem.

Jealousy is not a problem. I know, I need you to stay with me. Depending on what kind of household you grew up in, this might be a real challenge to you, right? Some of us heard from a very young age that jealousy wasn’t ladylike, and this was a problem and you should never feel jealous of others.

It’s a sign of like, really fucked up shit going on inside of your head and there’s something wrong with you if you feel jealous towards someone else. What if all of that isn’t true? What if jealousy is not a problem because jealousy is just a feeling? And feelings aren’t problems, my friends.

I know, don’t you wish someone would have told you this from a very, very young age and then repeated it ad nauseam your entire life? That’s me. That’s me for you right now. Jealousy isn’t a problem because it’s a feeling and feelings aren’t problems, my friends. They’re feelings. And you were designed to feel all of the feelings.

Sure, some of them may not feel great, and some of them may not be the most productive feeling that you’ve ever felt. Certainly there are feelings that feel better and will spur more productive action and create faster results in your life, but that doesn’t make jealousy in and of itself a problem.

It’s a feeling and you were meant to feel every single feeling. So much of our problem with jealousy is just our resistance to feeling it because you’ve been told it’s gross and we shouldn’t feel that way and there must be something wrong with you if you do feel it, and it’s just not true.

Of course you’re supposed to feel it. It’s one of the human emotions. And guess what my friends? No matter how much life coaching you’ve gotten, no matter how many certifications you keep going for, you’re still a human. So half of our struggle with jealousy is in dropping our resistance to it being there in the first place because when you resist the jealousy, two things happen.

Resisting any emotion makes it stronger. It amplified it. It blows it up and becomes something you can feel all consuming. And then it can lead to guilt or shame or embarrassment that you’ve let yourself go be this jealous person, that you’ve let yourself be jealous in the first place. It’s not the jealousy that derails you. It’s the resistance to it and the wishing and the begging for it not to be there.

Because here’s the other thing that resisting jealousy does. As long as we resist it, which is just amplifying it and then we spiral into shame and all that other fun, super fun stuff, as long as we resist it, we can’t work through it. You can’t work through jealousy when you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of shame and disgust with yourself.

You can’t work through it, meaning you won’t take the time to ask why in the first place. Why am I feeling jealous? What thoughts do I have that are creating jealousy for me right now? What am I thinking right now? What might be some of the thoughts that create jealousy for you?

It’s easier for them than me, it’s not fair that they don’t have x, y, and z going on right now. That’s one of my favorite ones, by the way, in case you’re wondering Amy’s personal ones. “Yeah, but they don’t have this.” It’s very whiny. Jealousy is very whiny, right?

They’re making more than me, they hit their goals faster than I did, they started later than I did and are making more than I am, it’s easier for them than it is for me, they have something that I don’t have, so-and-so gives them support and I don’t have that support. Do any of these things sound familiar?

I absolutely am sure that they do because hi, I coach coaches. And I coach coaches struggling with confidence, which is oftentimes something that comes from indulging in jealousy. Jealousy is such a confidence killer.

And it’s so much easier to indulge in jealousy and then go into resistance than it is to just feel it and see it and acknowledge it and become fully aware of what that jealousy is creating for you. Where becoming fully aware of where it’s coming from and then becoming fully aware of what it’s creating for you so that you can then choose to decide, is this something that I want to continue to indulge in? Because I don’t have to.

As long as you’re indulging in it and then resisting it, you never bother to even have those other sides of those conversations, right? Remember, nothing has gone wrong if you’re feeling jealousy. You’re just thinking one of these kinds of thoughts.

But that indulgence and resistance is like part of that jealousy cycle and it’s so well-practiced in our culture. And that cycle looks really, really familiar, right? Person x has it better than I do. You might even try to convince me in a coaching session that it’s true. And then you go into that thinking and saying terrible things about them in hopes of making yourself feel better.

Like I’m not going to deal with the jealousy-creating thought in the first place, I’m going to double-down on it and I’m going to start thinking and saying terrible things about them in hopes that that boosts me up a little bit and it never does. So then we start thinking and saying terrible things about ourselves because it doesn’t actually make us feel better to do that to the other person, and then we don’t actually want to be this jealous person. This person feeling this jealousy.

You don’t have to keep spinning in this cycle. There is a solution. So first, we work that cycle backwards. Start with the beating yourself up part. We can’t even start to begin to address the thoughts creating the jealousy if you are in the part of the cycle where you are in shame, you are resisting it, and it’s nothing but shame and I don’t want to be this way but I am this way, and I guess this is just who I am now.

That’s where we want to start. That part where you’re thinking and saying terrible things about yourself. When you’re experiencing jealousy and you’re beating yourself up about it, remember to acknowledge what we do so often forget. I am thinking something that is creating the feeling of jealousy.

This is not who I am, this is just a feeling I’m experiencing coming from a thought I’m believing. And when I am ready, I can take a look at those thoughts and then decide what to do with them. I’m just a human experiencing the human emotion that comes from thinking a certain way. I’m just being so very human right now.

Now, even that right there, you will feel that resistance drop. The jealousy might still be there, those thoughts you’re thinking about the other person might still be there, but that heavy weight of the shame and the guilt that you’re doing it in the first place will fall away when you just say those things to yourself and remind yourself that you’re just being so very human right now.

Now, from there we’ve taken that resistance layer off of that jealousy cycle. Now you can look at the thoughts creating the jealousy. And yes, you can go gather all the evidence in the world and prove to yourself or to me that those thoughts are true like, “But Amy, no really, she has worked for less than a year and is making five times as much as I am and that’s not fair. Something is wrong with me; she has something that I don’t have.”

Bring on the jealousy, right? But why? Why choose to focus on that? Because what are those thoughts creating for you? This is where you really want to not just think about this in your mind but take pen to paper and run the full coaching model. What is the circumstance specifically? Put the facts in that line. How much money have you made? How many clients have you signed? What have you heard that person say they have made or they have signed? Put just the facts, put just the timelines and the dollars and the clients, or the whatever in the C line.

Remember, all seven and a half billion people on the planet have to agree on your C line. And then from there, what is your thought about that? What are your specific thoughts about that? It’s easier for them than me, it’s not fair that they don’t have this going on right now, they’re making more than me, they hit their goals faster, they started later and are making more, it’s easier for them than me. What do your jealous-creating thoughts look like to you?

They might be a little bit different, but those are the general idea of the thoughts. You might find some more nuanced feelings in there when you find some more nuanced thoughts, and I really encourage you to separate each thought and each feeling specifically. If you do find multiple thoughts, really do look for putting these into different models. Don’t just group them all together.

Because you might have a mixture in there and that’s okay too. If you find that, by all means, separate it out. Because then I want you to go to the action line. Those actions, get really specific from that one thought and that one feeling, what do you do and what kind of things do you indulge and engage in and what don’t you do that you could be doing instead when you are thinking and feeling that way?

Now, you might have different thoughts and feelings and some of your actions might look very similar, but you might find some nuance. Be willing to take the time with this. Specifically, what you’re most likely going to find on the action line, it almost always happens this way is that you end up putting your energy and your time in looking at their business and what they’re doing and you’re not putting your energy and time looking at your business and what you are doing, which if course the only way that your business grows is by putting your energy into looking at your business and what you are doing, right?

Your business doesn’t grow by looking at other people’s businesses. Do y’all need me to say that again? Your business does not grow by putting your time and energy evaluating other people’s businesses. It only grows by putting your time and energy by evaluating your business.

And that’s ultimately what the jealousy cycle creates for you and why you do indulge in it so much. You don’t have to solve for your business if you’re engaged in the jealousy cycle. You can keep all your energy on theirs and on them and not have to figure out any of the small tweaks that you could be making. You don’t have to brainstorm new ideas; you don’t have to answer the tough questions.

You don’t have to say, oh, how could I make this better? You don’t have to do any of that as long as your energy is focused on them and not on you, so of course you indulge in the jealousy cycle. You don’t have to make that next best step decision and implement it and test it and see if it works and do it again and again and again.

You don’t have to do the work of figuring out what you have yet to figure out. But make no doubt about it, the jealousy cycle makes it take longer and it will make it harder for you. And only you have the power to decide, okay, I’m done with this. I’m not only done with this but I’m kind of bored of this story that other people have it easier than me.

And you can choose right now to drop it and just decide not to engage with those jealousy-creating thoughts anymore. Like a toddler begging for a cookie at bedtime, my friends. Your Helga brain will keep offering the jealousy-creating thoughts and it’s your work to see them, hear them, and with so much love and grace choose not to engage. I see you; I hear you, and it’s going to be a no from me.

And lastly, coaches, indulging in the jealousy cycle denies you what else is possible after you drop it. Because you could be celebrating those stories of other coaches that you see and hear. You could choose to feel motivated and excited for what they are showing you is possible.

Believing that if they can do it, so can you. That there’s nothing wrong with you, that they don’t have anything that you don’t have, and that this is possible for me too. Let me go figure out how. And then you can focus your time and your belief in your business and in yourself. And you can start saying how can I teach this better, faster, clearer?

How can I take last week’s post and make them simpler and more understandable? What questions do my clients have that I could answer for them that haven’t been answered yet? How could I help them get better, faster results? How can I explain what I do in a simpler way?

Because when you’re feeling motivated and excited and you take those stories of what other coaches are doing out there and you decide that it means nothing negative about you and you learn to drop the jealousy cycle, you can choose instead to feel motivated and excited and then go answer those questions for yourself and explore what it would look like to put love on that feeling line, love for you, love for them, love for your clients,  and love for your business.

And then you’re able to find the fun and the joy in figuring out what you need to believe for yourself to make it happen. Imagine putting all of your energy into that. Doesn’t that feel so much stinking better? You can choose to indulge in the jealousy cycle, or you can choose to see the thoughts creating the jealousy, not judge yourself in that space, learn not to believe the thoughts that are creating that jealousy, and focus instead on believing in you no matter what and then putting all of your focus and love and energy into your business instead of theirs.

Alright my friends, let’s go do it. I cannot wait to see what you create. Alright confident coaches, remember, until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

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