That GREEN little monster.

So I happened upon this AMAZING article on Pinterest. A friend I met at BYU pinned it and I was blown away by how much I could relate. It was an amazing self reflection moment for me. I read the points and thought how I wish I would have known these things when I was younger. I will be forever grateful to the girl who pinned this article because it has changed my perspective FOREVER.

"How to Turn Envy into Joy"

What is envy?

That is a great question. I don't think it is jealousy. I also don't think it is hatred.

Envy is the inability to see the good in your own life and ONLY see the good in others' lives. This causes a sort of pain. The green kind. The kind that makes you act and say things that you don't actually mean.

"In a 2013 study of Facebook users, researchers found one in three people felt worse after visiting Facebook because of envy. The biggest trigger was holiday photographs; second was social interaction on the site as users compared their own popularity on the platform to that of other friends."

Luckily, the author gave me some tips that I think ARE THE BEST THINGS EVER!! (and sooooooo true!)

1. Understand your desires
- what does your envy tell you about your own desires?
- what if we transformed the very thing that pained us into becoming our source of inspiration?
2. Reframe your thinking
- change your perspective
- TRANSFORM your envy of someone into INSPIRATION or MOTIVATION.
- make it ACTIVE
3. Practice Gratitude
- see the good in your own life
- rejoice in the happiness of others
- "We will likely never know the pains a person took to be able to achieve whatever it is that we envy."
4. Cultivate Happiness
- MUDITA: finding joy in the happiness of others
- The Dalai Lama said, "If we derive happiness from the happiness of others, we have several billion more opportunities to be happy."
5. Have Self-Compassion
- LOVE YOURSELF
- address yourself with kindness


These are just the KEY points that I got from the article by Helen Avery. READ the whole article for yourself here. LIFE-CHANGING.

Imagine the increase in happiness, the improvement of relationships, the self-respect that we would have if we paid more attention to these points in our life.

EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE, is going to have BIG, GLORIOUS, SUCCESSFUL moments in their life.
So love them anyway. Be happy for them. Understand your own goals. Then, go out and get your moment of happiness.