Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about

how to trade jealousy for

genuine joy for others happiness.

So you've probably experienced how

painful jealousy can be and how much

it affects your mental wellbeing.

And your feelings of envy

don't necessarily diminish

the happiness of those you're

jealous of, but they certainly do

diminish our own peace of mind.

And I think, you know, what makes

jealousy even harder is it's one

of those experiences, it's one of

those emotions that we don't really

like to admit that we're having,

we don't like to talk about it.

So it's often a really private experience.

And sometimes quite frankly, we don't

even want to admit it to ourselves, right?

So jealousy takes many different forms.

Competitiveness, resentment, envy,

insecurity, feelings of unworthiness,

or just ill-will towards another person.

So I think what we often don't realize

about jealousy is that a lot of it does

flow from believing that we and our

lives are not good enough just as we are.

So it's a kind of feeling of less than.

So, for example, I've noticed that a bit

of jealousy and insecurity rears up in

me when I see social media and sometimes

these achievements of people in my field

who are doing really big talks or, you

know, they've already written their

books and I'm still working on mine.

And in those moments, when I feel

jealous, I use a tool that I learned

from Buddhism called sympathetic joy.

First, I actually just lean into the

feeling of the emotion in my body.

This allows me to stay present with

my direct experience of the emotion

instead of getting caught up in

my head and in all the thoughts

that keep fueling the jealousy.

So this leaning into what I'm

feeling also pulls me out of

pretending I'm not feeling jealous.

And makes a space for the calm

and compassion of mindfulness to

kind of surround the jealousy.

Then I switch my focus from the

jealousy to deliberately cultivating

happiness and appreciation for

this person's good fortune.

Mentally, I wish them really well.

And I connect to the fact that deep down,

I really do want others to be happy.

So I take a moment to delight

in the fact that they are,

I don't want them to be sad.

I want them to do well.

And then finally, I just take a

moment to notice all the good fortune

I already have in my own life.

And I feel gratitude for it.

So after doing this practice, I

find myself filled with a sense of

abundance and happiness for both of us.

So instead of feeling

lack, I feel abundance.

Instead of feeling less than or

separation, I feel connection and joy.

So in today's meditation, I'm going

to guide you through a practice of

sympathetic joy so you can really have

a longer practice of this for yourself.

But also just the next time you find

yourself caught up in jealousy, see if

you can lean into it, let yourself feel

it, and then switch your focus to being

happy for the abundance and beauty, not

only in their life, but in your life too.

So as always thank you for your

practice and your presence here with us.

And now let's settle in

for today's meditation.