Why You’re Envious of Other Moms (And What To Do About It)

We can hang out today, but you cannot, under any circumstances, judge the dirtiness of my house. Welcome to our home. My children just left with my beloved husband to go to the park. Oh, they left the front door open. We have a front door problem. Gets left open and then flies come. Where am I supposed to look right now? There are four circles. Okay, so happy to see you. We have a friend coming over tonight, which is a really great way to motivate yourself to clean your own house. I had a coaching call with a mom because she's feeling jealous. You know when someone shares a story with you or a problem that they're facing and it's the exact same thing you've been struggling with? Hold on. Where... I swear I've made a video before, but I just can't remember how to do it. I want to put you somewhere while I clean. And peach shot, I did go workout today and it was the funnest workout here. It's an Australian gym, club music, and you move from one activity to the next, to the next, to the next. You think it's called training, mate? You know, like... G'day, mate. Oh, g'day. I did it last week and I loved it so much. I'm going to do this every single day. And then I woke up the next day and for the life of me, I could barely walk. I was so sore. It was as if I had never worked out before. But it was also satisfying because, you know, the workout worked out. Okay, precious little booty. I put you on a tripod so I can clean. And I even wrote notes about what I want to share today, because I'm so excited to see you. The reason why I like coaching is because part of what makes me feel high is you, like you talking back or you telling me what your situation is and us just vibing off each other. If there's anything I say that you're like, oh, that makes me have a thought. You know what you should do with the thought? You should write it in the comments. And then that could give me a little taste of the feeling I love where we're hanging out and I actually know you. I also joined Very Good Mother's Club. I lead coaching calls every Tuesday. Today, I coached a beautiful mother, radiant angel. What could she possibly be struggling with? Jealousy, envy. Renee Brown separates the two. Envy tends to be I want what they have. And jealousy is more like, here's somebody I love and now someone's spending time with them and it's making me feel jealous. Does that make sense? Doing an absolutely crazy job with this video. But you know what? The universe, God, life doesn't reward potential. It rewards audacity. And what is audacity? The internet told me when I Googled it before this video, it's taking bold risks. If I want to be someone who makes videos that entertains people and also helps them, I must practice. You're here watching me practice, which is so scary. I would much prefer to do something and show you the awesome part than show you the process of me learning how to do something. But you are very much witnessing me learning in real time. Also, this section of the counter is so annoying. Things just get dropped. We're new to this house and we don't know where certain stuff should go. Our old place, the top of the fridge was that, which I think Sean is putting things at the top of that fridge. I'm just not tall enough to see it. So he's not getting in trouble for it yet. Let's work on our posture while I tell you this. I'm going to this woman today. She says that her BFF is getting plastic surgery and she doesn't have to pay for it. The plastic surgery she's getting is the same plastic surgery that this beautiful mother wants. So now we're talking like first world, first world problems to the maximum. Okay. Now that you know, we're not talking about anything of a lot of depth. I'm going to be a storyteller. I need to learn how to tell stories shorter. I feel like I'm on a timer and the kids are going to be home soon. And I'm afraid the camera is going to die or be full, or the microphone is going to die. It's fine. All is fine. I'm just practicing. What I like to do when I clean, I start with the room that you see when you first walk in, because I feel like it makes a big difference. And the living room is that room for me, the kitchen too, but my eyes go to the living room. So I'm going to start with the living room. The psycho thing I've been doing to get rid of flies is vacuuming them with a little handheld vacuum, which is not easy. And I can let them back outside. And then I feel a bit like mother nature. Sometimes I just want them gone and I don't want to be mother nature. I just want them gone. So then I just, and hope that I can send that fly straight to heaven. A recap of this story. We've got beautiful woman calling me. We're going to name her Edna. Edna calls me up on this emergency coaching call. And she's like, Hey, I'm super jealous of my best friend, Francesca. Francesca has a plastic surgery scheduled that she doesn't have to pay for. And that's a whole lot of money. And now she's pausing her plastic surgery to go on an extravagant vacation over the ocean. Are you following? There's a lot to be jealous of in this story. There's a lot of money. There's some plastic surgery, which is going to equate to beauty. We get a lot of value from our appearance in this part of the world and kind of all over. She's a mom, but she has the resources to go on a vacation on a whim on a vacation across an ocean. Yeah. There's a lot there. Edna, we named her. She is feeling how do I regulate myself? What happens with envy or jealousy? How do I make you taller? Speaking of plastic surgery, how do I make you taller? I'm just kidding. There was a guy though, I saw online who made himself taller through surgery. They like break the bones and stretch them absurd. Don't do that. I think it's Brene Brown who originator of these thoughts, jealousy or envy can be benign. Meaning it's just a feeling you don't wish bad things on a person. It's just a feeling. Uh, for example, the other day I was talking to my really good friend, Brit, who I love. You've probably seen her on my Instagram. She's so beautiful. I told her that our mutual really good friend, Becca just signed a lease to live two streets away from me and walk outside right now and yell, and she would be able to hear me. Brit said, Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous of you guys in the complimentary kind of way. It's pure. I wish I could have that, but like, I don't want you to not have that. I just wish I could have it. And then there's the malicious kind where it's like, Oh no, this person over there has what I wish I could have. And I wish they didn't. I wish their career success would be taken away or I wish their amazing marriage would fall to crap because I'm so jealous because I wish I could have that relationship. What this woman Edna was saying is like my real posture towards my friends is the one that is so happy for them. But for some reason, I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so stressed by life. I'm so stressed by my own personal financial situation that when I see these people have these financial wins, it makes me feel so yucky inside that my instinctual feeling is like, I wish they didn't have that. If I can't have it, I wish they didn't have it. The cool, very self-aware, very mature, respectable quality in this woman is that she recognizes that that's not her and she doesn't want to act on that in any way, which is why she booked a call with me. Different things trigger this feeling really depends on what it is that you crave in this season of life. But I can tell you that some of the ones that I felt it in, obviously money is like super common. Also felt it when people have more career success than me, or if I've worked really hard at something and then I see someone else have a win and the feeling in me is like, but they didn't work as hard as me. Or according to my measurement, my justification, they don't deserve it the way I do, which I feel bad even saying, because it's such a yucky thing to admit that I felt that. I've seen it in friends who really want to be married and then they keep seeing other people get married or friends who really want to have a baby. And then it's hard for them to celebrate someone else growing their family when inside they're feeling a sense of like, Oh, I just wanted that to be me. Why isn't it me? The first thing I should say is it's very human, natural and normal. And you're not crazy. And you're not mean when you feel this, you have a decision because the feeling will rise up in you just as feelings do. And then you get to decide how you're going to respond to the feeling that comes and to act according to your actual values and not according to the ugly feelings you might be having unchecked. Jealousy makes us mean it makes us rude. It makes us cold. It makes us disconnect. And also this, this room over here is where's the laundry right here. I'm with that sign or toss room. I it's a lot of stuff. I don't know where to put yet. And it is on my to do list talk about jealousy. Did you guys watch our girl Billy Eilish be one less lonely girl. I was so excited for her common theme among everyone was like, I want to be her what I did in my journal later, wait down. If it can happen for Billy, it can happen for me. And I don't mean like Justin Bieber is going to call me on stage and sing over me though. How sweet if he wanted to do that. Of course that this was such an example of someone's dream coming true in front of all of us. And we could just be like, I'm so jealous. Why isn't my dream coming true? Why isn't the thing that I want happening for me when it's happening for someone else. And I wonder if we could instead take the energy, what's the version of a dream that you're hoping will come true. And how can we channel our jealousy into more of an intentional encouraging positive perspective that could really take us from being a whiny passive B word. Who's not very nice. And you don't want to tell that person things because you know, she's not going to be happy for you. She's going to be jealous and make it about herself, which you probably have friends like that. Let me add this disclaimer. You can have boundaries. Here's a good example. If you're really trying to grow your family and it's not happening and it is breaking your heart every single month. And then you have a friend who is posting on Instagram every single day, her pregnancy updates or her new baby updates. And it is too much for you. You are allowed to mute their account. It does not need to come from a malicious place. It can come from a place of I'm responsible for my own wellbeing. I, at this point, I'm not capable of watching your everyday life and feeling the appropriate feelings that I actually have for you because the actual deep down sentiment from me to you is I'm happy for you. But the day-to-day pain that I'm experiencing is causing me to not cope very well. And I don't want to do that to you or to me. And so then you mute them and someone could be like, well, that's rude. Why are you muting your friend? But I actually think you're responsible for you and you got to do whatever you need to do to maintain a loving disposition, a peaceful disposition. Look, Joel is growing something. I don't know what she's growing, but that looks like a bag of mud. I don't know if we're growing anything there. It's fine. We are parenting. Other people are allowed to win. It's such a weird mentality to be like, I'm not succeeding in the area that I want to succeed. And so therefore you shouldn't either. No, that's so weird. That makes everybody smaller and we don't want to be smaller. We want everyone to live big, full, vibrant lives. Other area that I've really felt it in is, is beauty. And, uh, I wish I didn't. I wish that I was more confident in my appearance. I think over the years I've gotten better at this. There was a time like early twenties for sure. I thought if you are a beautiful woman, it will solve all of your life's problems. I think I just equated, like maybe it had to do with something like the messaging we got and movies and media or something. I don't know. I bought it. I bought that. I was like, yes, if you are a beautiful woman, life will go well for you. And I think working backstage at fashion week, uh, though it might've made some of those feelings more intense, what it really did for me was help me understand that there is nothing external that guarantees happiness. Like I worked with some of the, speaking of Haley Bieber, like some of the most famous, beautiful, like the world's most beautiful women were right there next to me. I was helping them get ready for fashion shows and these women weren't happy. I mean, that's a thing about whatever it is we're desiring, right? That thing alone, whether it's beauty, family, money, career travel, I was going to say sleep, but sleep might really be good for you. Um, just whatever it is. If there's something that we are like longing for to the point of jealousy, that thing alone, obtaining that is not going to guarantee our happiness. There is perhaps a high that might come with like, I wanted it and now I have it. Oh, amazing. But you probably in your own life know a lot of rich people who are not happy. A lot of beautiful people who have something to complain about just because you have obtained the thing that you think equates to your own happiness. It's just, it's a lie. I'm not saying that having a mommy makeover won't make you feel confident in your body. Sure. That like, that's not my point. My point is that alone is not going to solve our happiness issues, our contentment issues, our peace issues. If we want peace of mind, if we want day-to-day contentment, these are things we practice regardless of what we have obtained. Now I've been very stressed financially, not like, am I going to be able to afford the gym class I took today? But like, am I going to be able to afford rent or food? Yeah. Having enough money to pay your bills when you've been that stressed, that is definitely going to change your happiness level at least for a time. But it is amazing how fast we get used to the thing that we long for, how fast we start taking it for granted and then no longer feel the high that we feel in the very beginning, right? I actually, on the topic of plastic surgery, I know a lot of people who have had plastic surgery and they still feel insecure. I just think that's worth saying. And maybe one day I'll have plastic surgery and I'll let you know if I still feel insecure. I know people who have the things that I've wanted. It's not like they're happily ever after, right? I have Invisalign and I have Legos. And I was staring at the bathroom counter, like which one goes in the bathroom? My child, the one who was planting plants dumped a bunch of dirt in the sink and clogged our sink. See guys, we have more than one sink in the bathroom and that just does not equate to happiness. No, I'm just kidding. I'm very happy about our sinks. Are you dizzy? Are you dizzy watching this? You might be. This video might be absolute garbage. When I told this mom today that I was speaking to Edna about her financial situation, she has had financial stress. She's had debt she's been trying to take care of and she hasn't made her finances the priority that they need to be. And so I think the kind of cheap, easy reaction is, I'm envious of this person. I'm envious of that person. I wish I had that. Take from that feeling and then have power and learn from it and actually change our own lives would be to go, okay, I feel envy. It's highlighting a need to me and I'm going to use that to now do whatever I need to do. Meet with a financial, somebody meet with a call the bank, call my smartest friend and be like, can I show you my finances? And can we try and get this in order or schedule a therapy session or join a coaching call with a bunch of moms? Or like for me, if I'm jealous of somebody, Oh my gosh, this has happened in real life. Like I'm jealous of somebody's career success. The thing is I'm jealous of the outcome of a bunch of hard work. So if I want to be a powerful person, I got to do hard work. And sometimes we're jealous of the outcome that someone's experiencing, but we wouldn't want the process. We wouldn't want the downside. Like, do we want the hate that Billy and Healy and Justin experience on a day-to-day basis? Maybe not. So we could think like, Oh, if only I had their life, but like, really, do you want their life? Maybe you do. And that's beautiful. And you might be called to that life, but, um, I'm just saying for myself, Oh, like even the beauty thing. Oh, I envy this person. They look so amazing in their yoga outfit, like girl, then do some yoga, go for a walk, be a powerful person. Don't be a little victim. Who's like life is hard for me. And there's nothing I can do about it. There's so much we can do about Common one is someone else's house. Like, Oh, their house is so beautiful. Their house is so nice or they're always renovating their house. And I felt that too. I felt that too. We lived in our last place for eight years. It was the lower level of someone's house. We didn't have a real kitchen. Uh, I mean, I loved living there. We have so many happy memories there. Truly. I'm not just trying to sound like I'm trying to make the most of something. Sorry. Where am I even going? Oh, I loved living there, but then now living in this house where we have a real kitchen and our own space. And, um, Oh, and living in that last house, there were, am I allowed to say this on camera? I might cut this out, but there were rules like you can't drink. You can't drink. God doesn't want you to drink in this house. And, um, I don't know. Jesus made water turn into wine. So, uh, anyway, all I'm saying is, is I really like our new house and I'm really thankful to be here, but I'm also thankful that I didn't wait to enjoy my life until I got a nicer house because I would have waited eight freaking years. We lived in Spain for two years. So we moved into that house, lived there for a year, moved to Spain at this beautiful apartment. Um, really close to the beach. It was so cute and so affordable compared to here. And then we moved back into that house and we loved it. We love the landlord, love the place. Um, but I am excited about my new home and I am excited about my new life here. I should be careful. There are alcoholics in my family, but praise be I'm not one of them. And so I'm excited to be able to drink in my own home. Do what you can with what you have right now. That's something I tell myself a lot because the grass isn't always greener on the other side. It's green where you water it. If I'm starting to feel envious or jealous or yucky of anyone else for the life that they have that I wish I could have, then I got to water my own grass, don't I? I don't know what stage of life you're in, but the stage of life totally determines how susceptible you are to feeling envious. Like, you know, there's postpartum anxiety, PPA. There's postpartum depression, PPD. And then I think there's postpartum fragility, PPS, just like being fragile after having kids. And this could last for years. It could last for decades. Like crying when you watch the news, walking her in a stroller to a coffee shop that is not very far away coffee shop that I've walked to a million times, but crying partway there while my baby's sleeping, being like, Oh my gosh, what if she wakes up? How am I going to take care of her? I don't know what I'm going to do. No, I didn't have a diagnosis for postpartum anxiety. Did not have a diagnosis for postpartum depression. But looking back, I diagnosed myself with postpartum fragility. I was a fragile lady. Oh man, my phone just told me that it's full. So I deleted a few things, but I'm going to wrap up this video. You might be postpartum fragile. Your kid could be 10 like mine. I have a 10 year old, six year old and five girls, and you still might be postpartum fragile. I also think we're just like period fragile, you know, like right around your period. Sometimes things don't bother me at all in another time of the month, but then right before my period, I am so emotional, which by the way, I don't have a real period because I had cervical cancer. And so I had a partial hysterectomy, but I still have my ovaries. So I still have the feelings inside of a period, which just means I'm crazy, but I don't bleed. And Oh, sorry guys. I'm so sorry. The filming of this is hectic. I need to shave. It's fine. I got to see if this smells bad. Is this an ad? Actually, I don't even know if we make those anymore. We make a similar one though. Okay. Well, it doesn't smell super fresh, so we're going to wash it. You're so nice. You're hanging out with me for this whole video, which means you're really kind. I did. I did get some cleaning done while we were together. So thank you so much. And I think now I just need to do like the vacuuming and the wiping things down, which be hard to do if you're here. Thank you so much for being here. It is always a pleasure to spend time with you. If you're a mom looking for more support, know that every Tuesday I lead coaching calls inside a very good mother's club. If I don't lead it, then a good friend of mine leads them and she's amazing. And she coaches me, which, you know, I need coaching. So she's really good. Otherwise, if you just need support, maybe you're not a mom. If you're not a mom, I don't know what you thought of this video. I think it still applies to other people, but anyway, I do coach other people, coach dads. I coach grandmas and grandpas. So if you ever need more support, you know where to find me, send me an email and we will set up a time to hang out. And once you have access to me, feel free to reach out to me urgently and be like, I need an emergency coaching call. I am about to freak out on the people I care about because I'm experiencing ugly feelings and I need to be talked down. And if my life allows like it did today, I'd be happy to respond and help you to come back from it. And I promise I don't make videos about everyone I coach, but this one, um, she let me, so here I am. Thank you so much for hanging out with me in my home. Thank you for being such a good friend and watching my video. You're so sweet. And I look forward to seeing you very soon. If you have anything you want me to talk about, let me know in the comments and I can't wait to hear from you. Okay. Bye.