Do not allow yourself to envy others
Everything that happens in our lives has a reason. You can't compare your life to other people's lives and be envious of the kind of life they have. Think that you are unique in every way and so is your life. As they say, we should not pattern our lives after the kind of life that other people have. That's why they say "keeping up with the Joneses" is bad.
The meaning of that saying is that because you are jealous of other people's lives, you force them to be honest about what they are doing. When the people you envy buy a car, your reaction is to buy a car even though you can't really afford it. You do this because you want to let the person you're imitating know that you can afford to buy a car just like them.
It's not right and it's not good behavior either. We should be logical in our decisions and we can't let our emotions take over. Of course, we should never be jealous of our neighbor because he has nowhere to go. Eventually, we will also be the ones who will be in trouble when we are jealous of our neighbor who is obviously more capable than us.
We need to know our own abilities and base our decisions on our life based on that. Let's know our level of contentment so we also know what we want in life. When our preferences are patterned on what other people have, we never have logical decisions when it comes to our actions. We will end up losing our true identity and level of contentment in life. And the worst thing is that we become copycats, which means we are destined for failure.
That's why when you have the urge to copy or imitate your neighbor's ability, you have to ask yourself first if it's really what you want or if you're just jealous. Will you need it or are you just pressured to buy it because your neighbor has it?
That's why I want to leave a very relatable quote from Mary Schmich:
"Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind."