Thanks for the honest feedback! How does being honest with yourself prevent you from being envious or jealous though? In your case let's assume you were NOT making a six figure salary and you were making say $60K /yr and you had admitted to yourself (and others) that you wanted to make lots of money and then a friend of a friend who you aren't close to but familiar with (who you know also wants to make lots of money) starts something and starts making $1M/yr when just last week they were making $60K alongside you. How do you prevent yourself from being envious/ deal with being envious? It seems at best orthogonal to the issue of honesty and at worst seems like complete open honesty will make it even worse because people now expect you to be jealous (unlikely).
first, i would recommend travelling to a poor or developing country and taking a hard look around for a good solid week or more.
second, be aware of your feelings and emotions, don't try to suppress them. analyze them and use them as motivation.
third, learn what you can from successful people, either directly or by observation.
finally, when you get older, you will realize all that other stuff you find so distracting now has literally absolutely no bearing on whether or not YOU will succeed at your goals, so there's only one thing you can do, and that's work on your own shit. once you come to this realization, a lot of the stupid crap floating around in your head will just sort of disappear.
Envy is a form of flattery, when I am envious of someone I tell them so! It seems to get it off my chest. Everyone I've ever said it to takes it as a compliment.
One, because "success" often comes with more responsibility and less choice. More people depend on you, in more ways, and you can't let them down if you want to keep your "success".
You might find it annoying to unfollow your successful acquaintances, but imagine how it feels to be on the other end, with multiple investors threatening to pull funding and kill your company when your "social media presence" is waning -- and you can't even express your frustration on Twitter because that would be company suicide.
Secondly, it gets worse because your standards of comparison change. You compare upwards to people with even more success. And, since "success" metrics are exponentially distributed, so is the gap that you feel between the people more "successful" than you.
As everything in life - YOU are the one limiting yourself. If you feel pressure from society to do or avoid some decisions, then you shouldn't be in that position in the first place. Only strongest successful people can remain their autonomy despite investors and fame.
Look what people from Uber do. Steve Jobs, E-harmony folks or even GoDaddy owner. We disagree with their decisions and even sometimes boycot their companies - but they often remain unwilling to change.
