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I Used to Be Jealous of Other People’s Success
I am not anymore and here is why
I remember talking to a big shot screenwriter for one of the leading YouTube production companies in Moscow. We worked together on channels for our company’s major clients, and currently he was working on a channel for one of the big influencers (the type that has 1M+ followers). He told me something that stuck with me:
I believe in motivation and inspiration by envy. We show off expensive cars, and rich champagne lifestyle so that people watch these videos and feel motivated to go on and achieve success.
It sounds logical. But I could never bring myself to agree with this. I still can’t.
To me, envy and jealousy go straight in the ‘negative motivation’ bucket. The opposite is ‘positive motivation’ — which is inspired by feelings of gratitude, love, creativity and desire to bring value to others and the world around you.
It’s the positive motivation that makes real change. It’s the positive motivation that creates win-win situations and is a positive sum game (i.e. everybody wins and there is abundance of resources).
It’s the negative motivation that breeds zero-sum games and ‘you lose, I win’ mentality. And it’s the negative motivation that eats up so many young folks up inside.
