Emily Brooks

I experienced social-media-based envy for the first time recently. It wasn’t because I saw too many pictures of beautiful people doing incredible things. It wasn’t because yet another person got published or reached a milestone that I haven’t reached yet.

It was because millions of people (I’m making up numbers here) saw the Northern Lights in Tennessee—and I missed it.

I’ve gotten over this feeling of jealousy, but it did make me realize that I’ve never seen myself as a jealous person before. Yes, it happens on occasion, but I’m more quick to celebrate with another person than wish I was in their place or feel that I deserve to be in their place.

But recently I realized that I do experience envy, it just presents itself as a different emotion: Guilt.

I don’t look at others’ successes and think it’s unfair that they achieved something that I haven’t. I celebrate their success, but then I think, “Of course I haven’t achieved that. I’m too lazy” (or incompetent, or selfish, or any other self-deprecating label).

To me, their success is perfectly fair because they did something that I wasn’t capable of. But this guilt is, in it’s own way, a type of jealousy. I’m still wishing I was like that person and beating myself up for not being good enough.

Other times, the guilt doesn’t come from desiring to be good enough but from not wanting something that is expected of me. For instance, I’ve felt guilty before that I don’t want a full-time job. Others might feel guilty that they do.

So we (or is it just me?) feel guilty for the things we want and haven’t achieved, but also the things we never wanted to begin with.

So, for the first time in my life, I’m realizing that I actually do measure myself up against others, but rather than elevating them, I’m devaluing myself and my desires.

After some discussions with friends and my therapist, I’ve been reminded of some truths that help me whenever I start comparing myself to others.

1. We all have different needs and abilities

I messaged a friend recently and told her how I felt overwhelmed but also that I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed because other people do much harder things.

She reminded me that everyone is different. We can’t compare our thresholds to someone else’s.

Some women have the strength and energy and extroversion to lead in an office all day every day. I am not one of those people, as I learned when I tried teaching four classes one semester. Even though those classes were only three days a week, I struggled with stress, anxiety, and overwhelm.

I’m not trying to be self-deprecating by saying this: it’s simply a fact. I don’t have the energy or mental capacity for that kind of work.

My therapist clarified this even more by saying we all have different “windows of tolerance,” and it’s important to protect those so that we don’t get burned out.

Because of our productivity and success-based culture, we may feel guilty for not having wide windows of tolerance. But it’s important that we acknowledge and respect our personal needs by taking breaks, setting limits, and taking care of ourselves.

Of course, I’m not saying that any of this is an excuse for laziness, procrastination, or quitting when things get hard. But if we feel overwhelmed, we should maybe inspect that feeling and locate where it’s coming from.

We can’t and shouldn’t remove every stressor from our lives, but if the stress is coming from disorganization, poor boundaries, over-committing, or trying to be like someone else, we can do something about that.

I think this comes down to our philosophy of life and, more specifically, work. What or who are we doing all of this for? How does over-working or doing a job we aren’t physically or mentally equipped for benefit us or anyone else?

I can and should push myself to do hard things. This makes me stronger. But why I’m doing it is just as important. If I realize I’m doing it because everyone else is doing it, or because I feel like I have to prove myself to others, that’s just not worth it to me anymore.

2. We all have different desires

If I really wanted to, I could maybe work on building my stamina to teach four classes again. In fact, I had to at the time, because I couldn’t just quit. This made me a stronger person, and now I know that I can do it. But in addition to our different physical thresholds, we also have different desires. I didn’t have the desire to maintain that kind of lifestyle, and so I left it behind for something else.

I understand that not everyone has that ability. Sometimes we have to do hard things out of necessity. One of my core beliefs is that it’s intrinsically valuable to do hard things. But when we have the choice, let’s do hard things that we also desire to do.

I’m often around very ambitious people, but that doesn’t mean I have to be ambitious about the same things or even feel I need to be ambitious for the sake of being ambitious.

I think this is difficult at times for women because of the feminist “ideal” that women must be “more than” in every capacity. I genuinely worry that, in seeking to prove ourselves, we might chase things that we don’t actually want.

I have a friend who said once that she doesn’t have any big ambitions, and that actually helps her love her day-to-day life. She is a godly woman who loves her family and friends and works well in her job. She’s not trying to change the world or do anything “spectacular,” but her life is beautiful.

I had never considered before how immensely peaceful it would be to not feel like your life was always leading up to something else.

Maybe it’s because I’m an artist, but it feels like I’ve been chasing after an “end goal” for most of my life. I’m having to learn again and again to think of my writing time as an end in itself.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up my ambitious or saying you should, too. But we should never feel obligated to want “more” or to do something spectacular. Living a day-to-day life in the presence of God is already spectacular enough.

Women, especially, should take the pressure off themselves to pursue anything they don’t desire.

We have to consider not what others expect of us but how we genuinely want to live our lives.

I want to add one caveat to this, though, which is God’s desires. Sometimes God calls us to things that are uncomfortable and that may even cause us suffering. I don’t want to suggest that fulfilling our desires is the point of our lives. But I do think we should listen to the desires God places on our hearts. We may be pursuing ambitions we don’t want because we think it’s “important” when God is calling us to something much simpler.

3. How you live today is what matters most

Because I want to be published one day, it can feel like every day is just leading to that goal.

But there are few differences between the traditionally “successful” person and the person working towards their goal, as long as they are both living how they want to live today.

For example, many famous authors struggled for years to be accepted by publishers. The difference between them and a writer who is still seeking that acceptance is mostly time, luck, or other things outside of that writers’ control. Day to day, their lives might look very much the same.

Instead of comparing ourselves to others based on their success, maybe we should look more at how they live today and if that’s even what we want in the first place.

If it is, then what if I turned my guilt or envy into inspiration to learn from that person?

Again, that doesn’t mean we have to have the same thresholds, desires, or abilities, but we can still learn from others who do hard things. If we approach these people with curiosity about what we can learn, we might even find out that they struggled, too.

Sometimes we have to push ourselves through harder seasons to get where we want to be. But most of the time we can still choose what our daily lives look like. I don’t want to spend so much time waiting on the future or comparing my current state to where I want to be that I miss what my life looks like today.

I can work towards future goals while still living a beautiful, meaningful life in the moment. This is why I’ve written so much about prioritizing what really matters. If my priorities are all about the future or productivity or success, I’ll personally struggle to appreciate and enjoy my day-to-day life unless the way I go about those things is already aligned with how I want to live.

Am I waiting for some unknown future date to start reading more, or gardening, or sleeping well, or having meaningful conversations, or praying, or journaling, etc?

When I reach that date, will I actually start doing those things, or will I be busier than ever trying to pursue the next thing?

What if I started doing what I love now?

4. Gratitude is the gateway to contentment

An essential part of finding present satisfaction is gratitude. Envy and guilt make us think about what we’re lacking, but gratitude points us to what we already have.

Some of you may be in work or other life situations that you hate, and I want to be sensitive especially to those who feel trapped. In many ways, I know that I’m revealing how fortunate I am to even be able to consider some of these things.

I can’t pretend to have the answers for every situation and need. But I do believe gratitude is a powerful way to find satisfaction even in bleak situations.

I’ve shared this before, but it makes me think of Betsy and Corrie Ten Boom, who, when detained in a concentration camp, decided to thank God for the fleas in their beds. Later, those fleas kept the guards away so that they could read scripture and pray in secret.

I’m sure we all have more to be grateful for than fleas (or cicadas, in our case). Gratitude doesn’t always end in a miracle, but it is always powerful.

Gratitude helps us live day-to-day with contentment even when we hope for something better.

My hope today is that we can recognize the beauty of our own desires, our own strengths, and our own day-to-day lives.