Don't Resent Someone In Their Winning Season
Have you ever found yourself resenting someone because they have the life you want? It might seem like they just win, win, win, but there’s more to the story. Don't resent someone in their winning season.
I’ve recently read a few really interesting articles that discussed how many women tend to feel about each other and how it’s so easy to compare ourselves with these “perfect” women.
A lot of times this leads to two not-so-great outcomes—1. We feel really poorly about ourselves, and 2. We resent others because we assume they’re doing so much better than we are.
I’ve been stewing on my thoughts for this blog for a while now, really thinking about what I wanted to say, and praying it would make an impact on those who read it.
So here goes.
I’ve written about my lifetime of insecurity about my body before. But to be really honest, I’ve also fallen prey to insecurity about much more than my appearance.
It seems that I’ve picked apart just about every area of my life and judged it against whoever I happened to be paying attention to at the time, and wondering why I couldn’t be more like her. (Usually this happens when scrolling social media, both with people I know and total strangers).
My house. My car. My job. My relationships. My money. My mothering style. And so on, and so on.
Not only did this make me feel incredibly down on myself, I realized that I was actually feeling judgy about someone I probably didn’t even know! I’m not proud to admit that, but it’s true.
I wound up resenting someone just because she was in a winning season in her life.
A winning season?
The only time I’d heard this term was from my husband in regards to sports.
But it has another meaning, too. We all go through seasons in life—ups and downs, wins and losses. Times when we’re killing it, and times when it feels like it’s killing us.
It’s SO EASY to only focus on our own losses and the negative stuff we go through. And it’s just as easy to highlight all the good things that happen to other people, which then makes us feel worse about our own stuff. Talk about a vicious cycle.
So, going back to sports just for a sec…
When a team is in a winning season, things are so exciting! Everything seems to be going right and you can just feel this “high” in the air. Even as a fan, you feel untouchable.
But, what did it take to get to that winning season? What did the losing seasons look like?
From a sports fan’s wife’s perspective, IT’S NOT PRETTY. There are failures, bad decisions, changes in personnel, harsh criticism from the outside, frustration, sleepless nights, and just a lot of junk.
For many, many people who are in their winning season, their losing seasons probably looked a lot like that. They likely had a lot of low points and maybe couldn’t see their way out of the darkness.
Pretty much no one broadcasts the bad stuff they go through on their way to “success.” We live in such a highlight-reel world that we’ve forgotten that the people who seem to have it all together probably don’t. We’re only seeing a tiny portion of their lives—the part they choose to let the world see.
I truly think we’re all more alike than we think. We may not even want to admit it, but I believe it very much.
We all have our winning and losing seasons. Sometimes, the losing seasons seem to drag on forever and it’s so easy to resent people who are in a better place. Keep in mind that they’ve struggled, too. And one day, you’ll be on the other side, and you’ll know everything you went through to get there. Don’t resent someone in their winning season.
