The 'Well Wishing' Principle

“Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own." - Harold Coffin

Living in London I get to travel on public transport A LOT, and for someone in my line of work that provides a fabulous opportunity to observe the quirkiness of human nature in action. It is never my intention to deliberately earwig on other people’s conversations, but sometimes when you’re on a packed tube (with a stray armpit in your face) it is pretty hard not to!

One such conversation that fascinated me recently was between two female twenty-something office workers who were off-loading their end-of-day grievances to each other. One of them was venting about a guy she works with who had obviously experienced a fortunate end to a tricky situation. This is what she said (and I’ll quote verbatim, so apologies for the language):

“You know it’s so frustrating! No matter what kind of crap he gets himself into he always comes up smelling of roses. He’s so jammy. I hate it!”

While I’ll never know the juicy details of what she was talking about, what really interested me was how her attitude towards her colleague must have been affecting the quality of her own experiences. What was it about this guy’s lucky break that caused her to feel annoyed rather than pleased? How had her annoyance with him influenced the way she had subsequently gone about her own business that day?

Isn’t it intriguing how we can sometimes feel uneasy about other people doing well? But whatever it is that causes us to harbour a bit of ill feeling towards others when they are being successful is also the thing that causes us to block the flow of our own potential to create more of what we want in our own lives. For some people that may be about money, career opportunities, better relationships, nicer stuff, etc… For others it might simply be about having greater peace of mind.

Most of the time we don’t mean to feel negativity towards the success of others and often we don’t even know that we’re doing it. It doesn’t make us bad or undeserving people, it is just what happens when the unconscious mind thinks it is missing out on something important.

By definition, in order to feel threatened, annoyed, frustrated or jealous of what others have, you must also be focusing on what you don’t have. Thinking from within the confines of a ‘lack mentality’ can only ever lead to you seeing (or making up) more and more evidence for why you are not fulfilled. If all you see is lack, then lack is all you get.

I have even had clients tell me that the more they see others prosper the more they get a feeling that there is less prosperity to go around for them. The only reason for thinking like this is if you believe that there is a cap on the amount of abundance the world has to offer. However, even if we bring it back to money there is always more than enough. If we were to split the total amount of money in the world equally amongst the current population, every man, woman and child would be a multi billionaire! So the obvious answer to the question “where is the money going to come from?” is “wherever it is now!”

But of course it is not just money that makes humans feel uneasy when some have it and others don’t. It is also a common trait to resent other people’s luck, their looks, their relationships, their popularity, their status…

So what is the answer? What needs to happen to make a shift away from dwelling on lack and towards the kind of energy that supports you in living your best life?

The answer is to think about that thing that you want for yourself and to want it more for others.

I know that seems a bit odd at first bite, but it is the most powerful way of freeing up your own potential for living out of an ‘abundance mentality’. I call this the ‘Well Wishing’ principle.

Try this out. Take a moment to reflect on the kind of peace of mind you would love to have in your life. How wonderful would it be to spend everyday completely aligned with your most natural peaceful self? When you’ve got a sense of what that must be like, look at the person nearest to you or, if you’re alone, think about someone you saw today, and genuinely wish that same peace of mind for them, only stronger.

Notice what happens to your energy when you do this. Wishing them well begins to open up a path for you to experience that peace that you are looking for. This is a nice demonstration of the notion that what you give away you get to keep. That is the nature of abundance.

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HOMEWORK
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Take some time to check in with how you are doing in your life at the moment. Are there areas that are not living up to how you want them to be?

Go through an honest assessment of how you have been feeling towards other people that you have thought to be doing better than you in a particular way. Pay close attention to your emotional responses and be sensitive to any feelings that resemble jealousy, anxiety, frustration, annoyance, injustice, etc. Sometimes these feelings can be very hard to admit to, especially if they are towards your nearest and dearest, but it is important to be as honest as you can be.

Now imagine that aspect of your life exactly as you would love it to be and step into the feeling of it, as if everything is perfect right now. Then, knowing that you live in an abundant universe, wish more of that same feeling and success to those other people.

Examples:

- If a business competitor is doing really well, wish them even more success and prosperity, knowing that there is more than enough for you too.

- If you think one of your friends is more popular than you, genuinely send them wishes for greater, stronger friendships, knowing that that kind of energy coming from you is naturally attractive to others.

- If someone you know is lucky enough to “always come up smelling of roses”, wish them the continued fortune of always being in the right place at the right time (and then notice what starts to happen to your own ‘luck’).

- When you see people with really nice stuff (flashy cars, big houses, luxury holidays, etc.), hope that they are really enjoying themselves and blissed out on deep gratitude for what they have in their lives.

I hope you enjoyed reading this week’s coaching tip even more than I loved writing it.

Take great care. Namaste.