Over the course of the last six months or so, I've become reacquainted with covetousness or envy through my work. Specifically, people ignoring their gifts, their capabilities, and thus, completely missing the market's view of those gifts.
There are plenty of ways to mess up your career, and envy is one of the saddest. It's like eating food that's bad for you (say, sugar) because it's doubly bad since you're replacing food that moves you in a positive direction with food that moves you in the opposite way!
How do you identify if you are falling victim to envy? These thoughts might be a marker:
- Why did Joe get the promotion over me? I've been here much longer...
- Look at Marg, over in Marketing, just made Director. I should be a Director. How did HR miss that?
- Phil's ideas always seem to get traction with Angel investors, and mine are technically much better.
If you have these thoughts, how can you be focusing on the work you need to do, or on improving yourself? Or servicing your customers? You can't because these negative thoughts consume your mental cycles. Drop the thoughts, move on. You'll be better off if you step away from negative thoughts and move on to thinking about how to achieve your goals, your dreams.
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