Celebrate the Success of Others

One of the fundamental ideas of The Secret – again, not something that they discuss but it’s buried deep into the approach – is that to be in alignment with The Law of Attraction (LOA), you must transform from a competitor to a creator. That is, you must accept abundance as your distribution source; and that means that your success doesn’t impede or block another’s, and vice versa: someone else’s success doesn’t somehow “threaten” yours.

However…this is, for some of us, easier said than done.

When we see someone – perhaps someone we know and don’t like a lot! – achieve success in some areas of their life (usually financially), we can sometimes feel envious and jealous; we can resent that person’s success, and even start dwelling on all of the bad things that they MUST be doing in order to get success. We can even start wishing bad things to happen to them.

Why are we doing this?

Really, think about it. Why? Because – and only because – deep down inside, we feel that someone else’s success is coming at the cost of our own. This seems ESPECIALLY TRUE when someone close to us becomes very successful in their job or in some other part of their life. Yeah, sure, we’re happy for them…but deep inside, the wheel of envy churns and spews out negative feelings that we’d like to pretend don’t exist!

The way “out” of this kind of hell – and it is a kind of hell, really – is to appreciate and admire success WHEREVER YOU SEE IT. Don’t link that success to a person – because success is NOT personal. Success is like sunlight. You can have a home with windows in the roof and you can, in superficial terms, “capture the sunlight in your house” – but really, what could be more insane than thinking that you can capture sunlight? Sunlight is given to all of us as a gift – we didn’t earn it, we don’t help it, we simply (if we’re in tune with reality) appreciate, admire, and feel grateful for it. And if we can somehow put windows in our roofs that will allow in some sunlight, that’s great! But to think that you OWN the sunlight – or worse, to be jealous of someone who “has sunlight” is…well, yeah, it’s kind of insane.

So the next time you see success – maybe someone you don’t like (or don’t even know) has a car that you simply could NOT afford at this point in your life, instead of feeling jealous or reflecting miserably on your own life (“oh, if I could only get a car like that…if only…”), appreciate the success that has engaged that person. Admire the SUCCESS – as you would admire the sunlight. You don’t have to admire the person; you can if you want, but you don’t have to. Simply notice, appreciate, and admire the success.

And then start to admire success in other ways, too. Admire success in EVERYTHING that you see, and in everyone that you meet. Even things that you love complaining about – politicians, social systems, lack of this or that – start to see it from a different perspective. The very fact that you and I can communicate through a blog, over the Internet, is a remarkable success. I’m old enough to remember a time when, hey, even a phone without a cord was considered revolutionary technology. And now total strangers can meet in a blog and share a kind of intimate, personal growth and development experience. If that’s not a success story, I don’t know what is!

So today’s advice: please stop feeling jealous or envious – and instead, celebrate success. And as a bonus, remember: the more success you notice, the more you will ATTRACT. That’s how it works.

Until next week!