#4 Artist Pep Talk - Jealousy and Creating Your Own Opportunities

I want to talk today about jealousy and creating your own opportunities. And many of us experience this, I know I’m not the only one, we see other creators and wish we were doing what they’re doing, and then realize - hey - you know Danielle, you can always go and create that thing for yourself in your own way. 

And every so often some of my creative friends, my musician friends will say to me things like, 

• I wish I had a holiday album I could share every year. 
• Or I wish I had done a music video when I released that one song
• Or I wish I could be brave and do a podcast.

And I feel so much compassion for that feeling of wishing, because I SO get it. I’ve always tried to figure out that part of me, that part of human nature that wishes we could do what other people do, because it’s fascinating when we break it down, what it is that holds people back, or what it is that makes the difference between creating your own opportunities and those of us who don’t. 

Have you ever seen someone else create something that you wish you’d created, and you’ve even thought, that was my idea, and they went and did it, and you wish you’d done it? 

The same book idea.

The same song idea.

The same something.

I hear this every so often and I’ve had the same thoughts multiple times through different stages and phases of my musical career. 

So I want to talk about it today and give you a pep talk if this is something you relate to. 

Because what can happen, if you’ve ever been jealous of another Creator, is you can start to disconnect from yourself, and your creativity, your unique brand of what you offer.

I say this often to my students, and it is always worth repeating: I believe you wouldn’t have that dream in your heart if you didn’t have everything inside of you to make it happen. 

But jealousy messes with this belief because it tells us that something in us is missing that other people have. And that’s the lie that jealousy can really try to deceive us with. 

Instead of avoiding my jealousy, I’ve developed a little framework I work with so I can stop disconnecting from myself, and instead, connect to that part of me that is feeling less than, that part of me that is feeling like she’s not enough or doesn’t have what it takes, like other people do. 

Let’s talk about step one, Listen to your jealousy and tune in: 

So what I mean here, is the opposite of tuning out. Tuning in. Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, has you complete this exercise where you draw a map with three columns on a piece of paper. In the first column, you name the people you are jealous of. I’m going to be real honest with you here and admit, that in my first column when I did this, I put down a number of names, including Jesus. And I’ll share more about that in a second. 

In the second column, you write down why. For Jesus, I put down because he was smarter than me, and good at everything, and a prodigy at everything, so of course he was successful. . . (now a side note, I’ve since learned I was wrong about  all of that) but it’s a good example of how our jealousy can lie to us. 

In the third column, you list one action you could take to move toward creating the opportunity you want and move toward taking the risk, toward daring greatly, versus hiding or playing it safe or small. 

And Cameron compares the snakebite of jealousy to being bitten by venom, which I think is a great comparison, and venom requires an immediate antidote. We don’t want to let it fester and run its course.

So another example: Let’s say in column one you write down Who you're jealous of and you write: my sister Libby. Then in column two, under the Why column, you write: she has a real art studio. And then in column three, for the Action or antidote, you write: fix spare room and make it a home studio. 

So that’s step one. Tune into your jealousy. Don’t tune out. Listen to it and make a jealousy map so you can identify the antidote, the small action you can take that will keep the venom from festering. 

Okay, step two: Give it some grace and some space. 

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on step two, because this one doesn’t take a lot of time and doesn’t have to be that big. But what I mean here is to give yourself the permission to be gentle with yourself and treat yourself with some kindness. Cameron has a mantra she repeats to herself: I treat myself like a precious object that will make me strong.” 

When I first heard that mantra, it felt a little cringy. What did she mean to treat myself like a precious object? Treat myself as fragile? As a prima donna? As a porcelain doll that needed to be handled with white gloves? 

I can’t speak for Cameron, but what I’ve learned is that we tend to think being hard on ourselves will make us strong. But it is when we cherish ourselves that we find the most inner strength. 

And so that’s what I mean by giving jealousy some grace and some space. Be kind to yourself here when you’ve been bitten by the snake. Take good care of yourself. You are human. Jealousy is a human emotion. It’s not fun, but it’s normal. And just like anger, it can be a very intelligent emotion. 

Give it some grace and some space. This is important my friend. 

Step 3: Manage the Cost. 

Here’s what I mean by this one. Many of us do this thing I call Jealousy Math in our heads, where we do the cost to benefit ratio on the fly, it can happen without our even being aware of it, I see myself do it, I’ve seen many of my students do it, and we sell ourselves short. We conclude it’s not worth it before we’ve even given it a chance. 

That’s what Jealousy Math is - when you sell yourself short by concluding it’s not worth it before you’ve even given it a chance.

When this is happening, we are telling ourselves that in order to do what others have done, we have to do it well or it isn’t worth doing. And this is a big lie. We miss the truth that in order to do something well, we need to be WILLING to do it badly for a while at first, and that the cost of the time it will take to do something badly is WORTH IT, because the alternative is where we are left with the feeling of despairing, being unfulfilled, always wondering, feeling stifled, limited, in a box, and that illusion of playing it safe, of not doing the work comes at a big cost. We pay a big price when we do this. 

In order to manage the cost, we have to let go of our egos, we have to surrender them and be willing to be terrible at it in the beginning, and make our peace with that. 

When we are managing the cost well, we will go from saying to ourselves: “I can’t because. . . . excuse, excuse, excuse…” to “I’m just going to start and I’m not going to put pressure on myself to be amazing at it.” 

Often when we are telling ourselves we can’t because… what we’re really saying is, “I’m not willing to because I can’t guarantee it will be worth it or I’ll ever be good at it.” 

If you manage the cost right from the start, then you get to decide right from the start that of course it will be worth it. You get to be decisive about what ‘worth it’ means according to you, and it won’t look like what you think: for me, ‘worth it’ means being able to say, “I’m proud of myself for doing it even though it was scary, or hard, or fill in the blank.” I’ve learned it’s really important for my self-esteem to be able to say I’m proud of myself. Being able to say I’m proud of myself is something I crave, and it’s something I work at. It’s earned feeling, and I love that feeling. And it feels so good. 

Do you know this feeling I’m talking about? Can you think of a time where you’ve been able to say that to yourself before? 

Manage the cost of not doing it. What will that cost you in terms of taking away from your ability to feel proud of yourself? 

Okay, and step number four: expect good things. 

This one is my favorite steps now. It used to not be. It used to be hard for me to do and to believe. On default, my brain likes to run on worst case scenarios. But I’ve been at this for a while now and I can say with full truth that I’m okay with expecting good things. 

It doesn’t mean I get everything I want! But if I don’t get what I want, I now believe that something even better comes in its stead. 

I want to share how I made the shift, again, using some very personal experiences to illustrate. 

I did some detective work on why my brain likes to go to worst case scenarios, and here’s what I found: 

I completed the phrases in a journal exercise, and here’s what some of them were:

1. As a kid, I missed the chance to …. And then fill in the blank, My answer: have a normal family. Well, guess what I’m jealous of my friend? People who have normal looking families. I mean, I’ve since learned there’s almost no such thing as a normal family, but yeah, this is what I answered.
2. As a kid, I lacked . . . fill in the blank. My answer: a stable childhood. And again, that’s what I’m jealous of sometimes when I hear about other people’s dreamy childhoods.
3. As a kid, I could have used…. Fill in the blank…. My answer: more support. 

And there’s seven more questions I answered that were so insightful for me. It has been so important for me to see what it was I missed in my past which has helped me create it more intentionally for myself in the present. It is never too late to self-heal and turn our jealousy around my friend. 

And so that’s what I want to invite you to do, work with your jealousy, lean into it versus avoiding it or tuning out. 

After giving yourself the grace and the space to work through the venom, you will start to see that you can create your own opportunities, and they will be unique and tailored to your readiness and to your unique purpose, and then you can start to expect good things to come to those who roll up their sleeves. 

I was thinking of Dolly Parton a little while ago, how much I admire her and how she’s still going strong. But I’m not jealous of her. I wouldn’t want her brand of success. It wouldn’t suit me. I like the fact that I chose to have children. She has said openly that she chose not to in favor of being present for her career. I don’t fault her for that, she managed the cost. And I have too in my own way. 

And so this framework will serve you well when you are noticing that sometimes, jealousy might be coming up for you.