Jealousy: How To Tame The Green-Eyed Monster

Thank you to @wandrnrose7 for suggesting today's topic. She is a blogger and creative writer so make sure you go give her page a peak. If you enjoy reading poetry and other creative writing you will not be disappointed!

The Monster On Steem

Jealousy is something we all deal with from time to time. It can run rampant if not held in check and will destroy even the most time-tested relationships. With steem websites showing the estimated dollar amount for each post it is easy to get consumed by the green-eyed monster. Jealousy can take form in more than one way as you will read soon. We are a community on Steem and need to always keep that in mind when engaging with others. Doing any of the actions listed does not mean you are jealous but make sure you are not before doing any of these.

Downvoting

Jealously downvoting is immature and if you are doing this, it needs to stop. Using your Steem power to hurt other's reputation because you are upset that they are doing better than you will only come back to hurt you.

Downvoting (or flagging) should be used only in certain situations. It can be powerful in a negative way if you have a lot of steem power. When you downvote or flag something you are telling the network, "this is a bad post". If you are not putting in the effort to make original content you risk being flagged for copyright infringement. Don't think all downvoting is done out of jealousy. This is a good feature so we can keep the steem community growing with quality content.

Commenting Without Upvoting

This is lame to be honest. You are showing the person you just want a curation reward and don't care enough about their work to even pass along an upvote. This tells me that a person is jealous of my work and is looking to gain off me instead of helping my post reach others. The goal of these are to help people be better bloggers by imparting what I have learned over the past decade of blogging.

No one has to upvote anything anyone creates and I would rather you not upvote my work if it is not a good post. However, if you will not upvote don't comment either. It is better to stay silent than to put off a greedy and jealous vibe that will only put a bad taste in people's mouths.

Dis-Posting

This I could never wrap my mind around. It seems so counterproductive and a fast way to make a lot of enemies rather quick. I have only seen this once or twice on steem so far but that might just be due to keeping most of my time in the technology tag's 'new' section.

It is one thing to spread the word about a shady character that has shown up on steem but a total issue when writing about someone with a history of making good content. Bad-mouthing someone who puts in the time and effort to create original is just going to make you look bad. You can think a person is scum and even have proof to share and it is still not a good idea.

Understanding Jealousy

Definition:

feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages.

Thanks Internet! I'm sure everyone reading this post already knew what jealousy was before reading that. I still included that because it is a good reminder. As bloggers our jealousy creeps up when seeing other people do better than us. We are writing content just as good if not better and yet they seem to always be getting the attention we deserve. Or at least we think we do...

It is easy to fall into this trap when we spend hours on a blog post and maybe get three upvotes. Then we turn around and someone publishes a weak post and ends up on the trending page. This is why I don't do a travel or daily blog about my life. For one, I do nothing worth blogging about and also I would put a lot of effort into each post and get drowned out by all the famous Steemians. All that would put me into a position to be jealous and I do all I can to keep the green-eyed monster away.

Taming The Monster Within

When I did daily video game live streams, I would get people coming into my streams and tell me I was a great streamer and all kinds of nice words. But through all those kind words I saw little growth that was all wiped away over a month. I spent a lot of time and effort to make the streams their absolute best. I would even get big name streamers showing up in my show and tell me how good the production was, and that I had the skill to pull it off.

So, when I saw other people who I felt did not try as hard or were starting out doing better than I it made me jealous. I could not understand why everyone was doing better. I spent so much time and people I respected were telling me I had talent. This only caused issues for my emotional health. Not to mention it painted my streamer friends into a bad light

This was not good.

So here is what I did. Instead of looking at all my friends doing better than I in viewership and gaining resentment for my lack of success. All that was needed was to spend time each day giving thanks for all the blessings in my life and in my streams. I had dedicated viewers that came to 99% of my streams and a roof over my head. If you become jealous on steem and wanting to do the actions we talked about in the first section try to be thankful for what you already have. Spend time each day and write three things you are thankful for, it will change your life.

Hey! Thanks!

I am honored that you took the time to read this post and hope you gained value from something I said here. All comments are welcome and if you would like to suggest a topic idea, please let me know. Every Tuesday and Thursday I write a post to help the content creators of Steem learn from my decade of blogging experience.

<< J. R. >>

Some Other Steem Exclusive Posts:

Forgiveness: The Crucial Virtue
Criticism & Opinions: How to conquer your emotional dragons
Without Compassion You Will Never Succeed
Rocket Yourself To Genuine Growth
You Need More Patience

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