How Being Jealous Of My Friend Changed My Goals

One of my friends recently landed her dream job, which is amazing – and I sent her all of the emojis that adequately expressed my joy and happiness for her (because bloody hell does she deserve it!) but for some odd reason I then proceeded to climb into my car, drive to the supermarket and purchase a large bottle of Rosé.

Does anybody else relate to this feeling of inadequacy when your friends hit their goals? As happy as I was for her, it also made me feel a bit scared and jealous because I definitely do not have my life together.

Does this make me a bad friend?

The majority of my friends now have pretty good jobs and a decent salary, they are mature adults with real grown-up work to do who definitely don’t have the time to stay up drinking wine and eating chocolate until the early hours (unlike me!). Part-time work has its perks but really who am I kidding? I want to be an adult too. I actually want a 9-5 and there’s nothing like feeling left out to help get you out of that rut.

So when my friend managed to land her dream job I had to start re-evaluating my own goals. These things don’t happen overnight, dream jobs don’t just fall from the sky and land in front of you when you’re walking the dog, they take time and they take hard work. Read our article on becoming a go-getter and landing your dream job here.

After some soul searching and a bottle of Rosé, I realized that it’s okay if my life hasn’t quite come together as I’d hoped by now. Even if everyone else around me is succeeding and living the dream it’s not entirely awful that I haven’t yet got there too, because as long as I believe it will happen, it will.

I really do think friend envy is more common than we like to admit but rather than drowning our sorrows and comparing ourselves to them, we should try using that envy to fuel our own passion. We’ve even written an article about dealing with friend envy before, so I know it’s something lots of us go through. Instead of feeling like a rubbish person, just figure out the good things that have come from this envy. I guess this was all a bit of a wake-up call. If I’m not happy in my current job with my current lifestyle then why am I not making those changes? Only you can take control and although its not easy, if your friend’s success helps kick your own butt into gear then perhaps its not such a bad thing after all. A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, even if you are the only one playing along!

FYI: I just text my friend asking her if I can take her out for cocktails to celebrate because, even though I feel a frantic need to update my CV right now, I love her and she totally deserves it!

Has friend envy changed your relationships and goals? Let us know in the comments below – we love hearing your stories!

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