Two Attitudes That Steal Our Success and Kill Our Joy
When I was a newspaper reporter, I frequently had to work on weekends. My friends, who only worked five days a week and earned more money than I did, lounged by the pool at our apartment on Saturdays and Sundays.
They wanted me to hang out with them, but I usually had a news event to cover or a person to interview. I loved newspaper work, and I didn’t enjoy laying out in the sun because I burned and freckled. But I still felt sorry for myself.
Why didn’t I earn more money, since I had to work when I was supposed to be enjoying days off? Why couldn’t I lounge around the pool? I was missing all the fun!
I remember one time when I dragged myself back to our apartment after an especially grueling week. A dozen news stories had flown at me from every direction, making it impossible to get them all written by press time.
“I’ll stay single the rest of my life because I never have time to meet anybody. In this job, there’s no chance for a social life,” I complained.
My best friend said, “I think it’s time for a pity party.”
“A what?”
“A pity party. We’ll feel very sorry for ourselves for ten minutes, but after that, time’s up. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves anymore.”
I’ve thought about our pity party a lot since that day. If we could all relegate an attitude of self-pity to ten minutes, then get on with our lives, we might be a lot better off. My reasons for feeling sorry for myself seem trivial now compared to circumstances I’ve been through since then. And they seem even more trivial compared to the devastating trials some people have endured.
Self-pity stems from our erroneous expectation that life will be fair. But life doesn’t have to be fair for us to find opportunity and hope. By refusing to give in to self-pity, we’re able to forge ahead, making strides toward our goals and experiencing joy even when life throws us a curve ball.
One problem with self-pity is that it goes hand in hand with its debilitating cousin, envy. When we start believing life isn’t treating us fairly, we start envying those we perceive as having more, being better, or getting the break we somehow think we deserve.
I had the hardest time not being envious of my sister-in-law when she was named Woman of the Year. She was featured in a magazine and came all the way to Atlanta to receive her reward at a big, elegant banquet at the Ritz Carlton. Naturally, since I lived in Atlanta, I was expected to attend the awards ceremony.
But her award wasn’t the only thing that roused my envy. She was beautiful, she earned a lot of money, and she had published a book. Book publishing was supposed to be my domain! She had never even aspired to be a writer!
I had worked years and years to write, only to have my submissions repeatedly rejected. I was so disappointed at receiving daily rejection notices that I rented a post office box, giving me more control over when I saw the negative news.
At the time of my sister-in-law’s awards ceremony, my life consisted of ferrying kids to and from soccer practice, changing diapers, scraping pizza off the carpet and dealing with a mounting pile of rejection letters. It took a monumental effort for me to attend the ceremony and watch my sister-in-law, beautiful, successful and poised, glide across the stage to receive her award.
But self-pity and envy were repudiations of everything I believed in. Indulging those emotions was like complaining, “I don’t have enough of my own blessings and abilities. I deserve more, so I’ll envy yours.”
Proverbs 14:30 says “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” That’s a good description of envy, hidden from the world but causing decay that makes it impossible for us to be healthy and whole. The rot might remain hidden for a while, but it’s bound to emerge, damaging relationships and robbing us of joy.
Gratitude is one antidote to self-pity and envy. It’s hard to be envious of another person’s achievements when you feel incredibly blessed and grateful. The two emotions are incompatible. When I put things in perspective, I realized there was no reason to feel either self-pity or envy. My sister-in-law had struggled as a single mother, been laid off from her job, suffered numerous financial setbacks and worked hard to get where she was. She deserved the award!
Nobody forced me to be a stay-at-home mom with three kids. It was a choice. And I’m glad now I made that choice. Despite feeling overwhelmed by motherhood and disappointed over writing failures, I view those years as a valuable and treasured part of my journey; a time that enriched and deepened me.
There’s really no reason to be envious of anyone because we’re all on different journeys. We don’t know what other people have been through to get where they are. We aren’t privy to the struggles they’ve endured or the things they’ve given up. Achieving what they achieved or acquiring what they possess might not be the key to our own happiness.
Happiness seems to spring from our own inner resources and attitudes rather than from a single moment of accomplishment. I’ve discovered over the years that I derive more joy from the journey than from the destination. When I reach a goal I’ve worked for, there’s a fleeting sense of accomplishment. Then it’s on to the next goal. But when a morning sky is a cloudless canvas and a family of bluebirds flocks round my feeder, there’s a surge of joy that energizes and sustains without the struggle for something more.
Living our journey with gratitude rather than comparing ourselves to others frees us to be our own best self.
Because we’re human, we can’t always control our emotions and make ourselves feel grateful. But there’s a solution. The way to counter negative emotions that threaten to derail our best intentions is to accept them, acknowledge them, and refuse to act on them. We might not be able to control our emotions, but we can control our actions.
By going to my sister-in-law’s awards ceremony and cheering her on, I was refusing to act on envy. I could have stayed home and pouted, or made up an excuse, but I decided to outwardly support her victory. And the funny thing is, when I outwardly supported her, I began to feel happy and truly supportive!
I started thinking about the positives. Her banquet gave me an opportunity to get out of the house and have a dinner at the Ritz Carlton. And I didn’t even have to do anything to earn it! At the end of the day, I was glad to return to my three kids instead of to my sister-in-law’s career. How could I envy her life if I didn’t want all the other stuff that went along with it?
Now when I’m tempted to give in to self-pity or envy, I give myself a five-minute pity part. Then I count my blessings and get on with my journey. When I view each day with wide-eyed wonder and expectation, there’s no room to think about what anybody else is doing. There are too many joys and opportunities to explore along my own path.
Two Attitudes That Steal Our Success and Kill Our Joy
Research & References of Two Attitudes That Steal Our Success and Kill Our Joy|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
Source
0 Comments