Written by: Myles Morgan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The trance of constantly comparing yourself to others and feeling envious of their success is such a mental, emotional, and spiritual drain! It’s time to finally break free from this common trap. In this article, you'll learn why covetousness was dubbed a spiritual “sin” and discover 3 powerful reflection exercises to help you overcome covetousness and find more gratitude and abundance in your journey.
We have all been there — scrolling social media, seeing people’s “best life” posts, and being lulled into this funk of anxiety, jealousy, and self-doubt. I call this “funk” the trance of comparison. Before you’re even aware of it, it’s eating away at your focus, energy, motivation, and inner peace. It’s uncanny how much a harmless scroll can ruin our mood. Worse, we don’t even need social media to fall into this trance. It can happen anywhere and at any time. In fact, despite being a trained therapist and coach, my own unconscious habit of comparing and coveting sabotaged nearly all of my goals and performance.
Why can’t I have that?
Here’s a quick story to illustrate the above point. One of my closest friends had founded company, built a team, and was growing her annual profits year over year. People admired and lauded her for her charisma, intelligence, and sharpness. Meanwhile, even though I was helping her grow, I felt like I was just scraping by trying to grow my own business. I knew I had something to give as well, and I wanted to be just as celebrated as she was.
For the life of me, I couldn’t help but compare myself to her. This manifested most often as repeatedly asking myself a very painful and destructive question: Why can’t I be like that? Why can’t I have what she has? What am I missing?
That simple desire — wanting what she had — represented covetousness, which is one of the sins listed in the “thou shalt not” Ten Commandments. For the most part in our current times, we just label this “sin” as comparison.
I have long wondered why something like covetousness is considered a sin. And over time, I have come to understand some of the answer. Put most simply: covetousness causes harm to ourselves and others. It puts us in a trance of fear, scarcity, doubt, and bitterness. It makes us focus on and lament what we don’t have.
One of the rules I have distilled for all “sins” is that they cause disconnection from love. Covetousness causes us to miss all of the love, abundance, and support that we have around us, all the blessings that we actually have. It prevents us from being content and enjoying where we are on our journeys. It robs us of the capacity for deep gratitude. It contributes to a destructive loop on an emotional, spiritual, and material level: To those who do NOT have, even what they have will be taken away. And in the worst-case scenario, for those with wicked hearts, it can lead to greed, theft, and murder.
In understanding this, I realized that disrupting covetousness and moving into contentment was one of the most important skills and success conditions I needed to cultivate to enjoy the life I wanted. As a result, I now have a handful of reflections that help me break out of the trance of covetousness whenever I find myself comparing or coveting someone else’s life and/or results. Here they are:
Reflection 1: What did they have to go through or give to get there?
I noticed that when I’m coveting what someone has or where they are, I tend to be missing a part of the full picture. I’m only focused on their blessings and results, and I tend to be missing the hurt, pain, or sacrifice that they might have endured on their journeys.
This could stretch back to some trauma that they endured in their childhood that served as the seed of their drive or excellence. It could be the fact that they wouldn’t be where they are without a series of very painful events such as getting fired from a job or losing someone or something that they loved dearly. It could be the fact that they had to be willing to go months without income so that they could focus on what really matters.
Whatever it is, I have found that when I widen my perspective to consider things like this, it then leads to another question: Would I be willing to go through what they went through in order to get where they are? Oftentimes, the answer is no. This helps me begin to see my blessings and relative privilege in higher resolution. I begin to feel grateful that I haven’t had many of the same trials as they have had.
Sometimes, something else happens. I realize that I actually haven’t been willing to put myself in the same types of (calculated) risky situations as them or I haven’t been willing to make the sacrifices or trade-offs that they have. This leads me to question why not? Sometimes the result of this inquiry is the realization that I need to be willing to give or let go of something that I have been unwilling to. The willingness to do then give what I have been unwilling to give or let go of what I have been unwilling to let go of can be a powerful catalyst for the next leg of my life journey.
Reflection 2: What makes me different?
I have another quick story. When I was first starting my journey toward becoming a coach, I had just earned my Masters and had quit my job in educational leadership to strike out on my own. This put me in a very tight spot financially. At the same time, I was dating someone who had just got hired into a new corporate position, with a signing bonus that he used to buy his mom a house. I couldn’t help but think: How can I be the one who’s the life coach but other people are much more financially well off than me?
This line of thinking launched me into self-doubt and insecurity and robbed me of the confidence that I needed to take bold actions and grow.
But what I was missing at that time was the ability to acknowledge and distinguish what made my path different from the people I was comparing myself to. The truth was that I was doing something far riskier—and potentially far more rewarding—than him. The truth is that my path required more education and a complex set of skills that allowed me to impact people’s lives on a deeper level, which meant a longer learning curve towards prosperity. The list of differences goes on.
The point here is that when I was finally able to see what makes me, my path, and my journey different, then I was more able to accept the trade-offs inherent in the decisions I had made up until that point. And in doing so, I realized that I was comparing apples and oranges. This simply made it easier to stop comparing and return my focus to doing my best on my distinct journey.
Reflection 3: What do I already have that I can be grateful for?
This last reflection represents a principle that has become a core tenet of my effectiveness, progress, and success: start with what you already have.
I have learned that when you start by focusing on what you already have instead of focusing on what you don’t have — especially when you can express and embody gratitude for it — it contributes to a positive reinforcing loop. Listing what you have helps you identify all the resources, both internal and external, that you have at your disposal to get what or where you want.
Expressing and feeling gratitude stimulates the release of dopamine and serotonin, two happiness chemicals that support joy, motivation, pride, and confidence. Not only does all of this contribute to a way of being that is more resourceful, creative, resilient, and joyous. But it also helps you see and act on new and different perspectives and ideas to move in the direction that you want faster than you would have if you were still in a trance of comparison and covetousness. As a result, you begin experiencing small wins, which then represent more “things you have”. Can you see how this might create a virtuous cycle of gratitude and growth?
Conclusion
At the end of the day, these are three questions that I sit down and journal about when I’m feeling triggered by comparison, covetousness, and even scarcity and urgency.
I know for certain that I’m not the only one who struggles with this. Given that comparison is often triggered by the simple daily act of scrolling social media, now more than ever we need tools to combat it so that we can maintain a sense of well-being as we walk on our own distinct paths toward creating the life, results, and impact that we want in the world.
I hope helps you develop and refine your own mental habits for recognizing and breaking out of the trance of comparison and covetousness.
Wishing you all the best!
Myles Morgan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Myles Morgan is a trained therapist who chose a path of leadership and entrepreneurship rather than working in a clinical setting. Over the last seven years, he has co-founded and managed three education-based startups while slowly building his own life coaching practice. Now in his fifth year of practice, his signature coaching program, The Fulfillment Accelerator, specializes in helping founders, leaders, and creatives clear the deepest mental and emotional blocks that are preventing them from enjoying fulfillment as they actualize their dreams. As a writer, speaker, and teacher, much of the perspective he has to offer lives at the intersection between positive psychology, deep healing, and creative practice.
