JEALOUSY DESTROYS US

IN THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTICES CATEGORY… One of the most painful experiences of my professional life happened when I allowed comparison and jealousy to tear down my self-worth. Many of us have lost someone we loved when they left us for someone else. We’ve seen others get the promotion we were hoping for. For me, it happened on the day one of my favorite clients moved his business to my competitor. It might not sound terrible compared to other betrayals, but for me, one of my best clients calling to say he was leaving felt like A KNIFE IN MY HEART. I asked if I had let him down in any way. “No, never,” he said. “We love you.” Completely confused, I asked if the competition was offering better protection for the organization? Was it less expensive? Were they geographically closer? The answer was no to all of those questions. I hesitated— I genuinely did not know what to say. Finally, I asked if there was anything I could do to persuade him to stay with me and my team. That’s when he told me how my competitor had successfully won my him over (and was planning to win many more). He told me that Anthony, a competitor who had only recently entered the foster care risk management space that I had devoted my life to, had written a book. “A book about what?” I asked, trying to understand how that had anything to do with my client leaving me for the competition. I assumed that he had written some clever risk management strategies specifically for foster care organizations. If that were the case, I thought, why didn’t I think of that? But no. My client explained that Anthony had written about his childhood. My head started spinning. Did he have a more sympathetic story than I did? Was I supposed to be telling my own story to gain sympathy from others? I hated pity. Was pity the thing costing me this account? Then my client explained that Anthony had written about growing up in a middle-class family and not having what the other kids had. He wrote about how his family hadn’t been able to afford sports uniforms. I could literally feel heat rising up in me as I listened. The people I lived with couldn’t afford food (somehow they always had cigarettes and alcohol and the occasional baggie of pot or pills). As I listened, I felt my face getting red, and I thought that my hair might spontaneously combust. I had chosen to protect and defend foster care organizations because I had been one of those kids—NOT because it was an “untapped market segment that had profit potential.” I had experienced abandonment, neglect, abuse, homelessness at 8 years old, and poverty before I emancipated from the foster care system at 16. Because of what I experienced, I dedicated myself to creating the first risk management organization in the United States dedicated solely to protecting organizations that cared for abused and neglected children. I had an intimate understanding of the ways to prevent tragedy in foster care because I had been one of those children. And now my client was leaving because my competitor had written a book about not having sports uniforms? Seriously?? I was overcome with what felt like a hurricane of disappointment, anger, envy and, yes, self-pity. I had worked hard for this client. I had negotiated the best coverage and premiums, and had provided risk management strategies that came from my personal understanding of why children get injured or killed in foster care. I knew intuitively about actions child welfare professionals could take to begin to heal the hearts of the children in their care to influence them to want to behave and appreciate the safe haven they’d been provided. But I wasn’t able to say any of that in the moment. My client thanked me for everything I had done for his organization, wished me well, and was gone. Before I could process what had happened, I learned from other clients that my former favorite client had purchased copies of Anthony’s book and was sharing them with his friends, many of whom were also my clients. He was promoting the competition! I could not sleep. I would like to say I couldn’t eat either, but that isn’t true. I sat on the floor of my kitchen that night crying so hard I could barely breathe while somehow managing to eat two entire packages of cookies. While I was on the floor with mascara running down my face and cookie crumbs all over me, all I could think of was my competitor who had parachuted in out of nowhere to the national child welfare scene wearing custom-made Italian suits that probably cost more than I had paid for my first car. I compared everything about my work to his, and the comparison that lead to full blown jealousy was stealing my joy, obliterating my peace, and destroying my confidence. Notice who was destroying me? It wasn’t my client. And it wasn’t my competition. They were at home living their lives completely oblivious to the fact that I was on the floor covered in cookie crumbs. I was the one doing the comparing that manufactured the jealousy that was killing me. That realization taught me something that changed my life. I learned that jealousy could destroying me After I’d had a chance to process what happened, I was able to think more clearly. More strategically. I was still angry and disappointed, but fueled by those negative emotions, I developed a plan. I realized that I needed to figure out how to communicate my story and the perspective that I brought to my clients that no one else could bring. I was going to earn my client back—and many more! My book would be so much better than Anthony’s. It would be my most powerful sales tool. I WAS FIRED UP! So I sat down to write. I wrote two and a half pages before I completely ran out of things to say. I tried so hard. I even went to Barnes & Noble and bought a book about how to write a book. It did not help. I had written the chronological facts of my life, but I had no idea how to tell the story that turned my pain into my purpose and how my purpose could help others. Since then I’ve written 15 books, including books featured on the “Today” show, “Ellen,” and other television and radio shows, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. What changed? I learned that I cannot write for the wrong reasons. I cannot write while driven by negative emotions. And, most importantly, I learned that comparison and jealousy are poison. I realized that there will always be people with a bigger house, a better car, the promotion we wanted, the beautiful relationship that appears flawless, or the life that seems easier than ours. If we spend our lives focused on what others have, we will completely miss the blessings we already have. And we can miss the good things that we are capable of doing in our future. Had I remained jealous, I would never have written the books that have positively contributed to the lives of others. Comparison and jealousy torture us because those negative emotions cause us to focus on what is missing instead of what is present. And the moment gratitude disappears, joy goes with it. Instead of obsessing over what somebody else has (or appears to have), let’s look around at the blessings we already possess that millions of people around the world would give anything to have. (The most precious of those blessings have heartbeats.) There is no finish line where comparison and jealousy finally stop. If you allow yourself to live that way, you will spend your entire life chasing a moving target called “enough.” And you will never arrive. Peace, joy, and purpose begin when jealousy is replaced with gratitude. What destructive emotion will you replace? This is a public episode. 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