Finding Role-Models and Avoiding Envy
Photo by Matt Lamers on Unsplash
Over the past few months as I have been considering my major, career aspirations, and life goals, I have received a recurring piece of advice. Find people that you admire and can model your life after. Find role-models to help you see the steps that you must take to achieve your goals.
This has been great advice and has helped me to make informed decisions about my future. Still, I consistently wonder if I am crossing the line and becoming envious of the wealth, status, and opportunities of my role-models. Becoming envious would blur my vision and cause me to be resentful of my role-models, particularly when things do not go my way. This would have devastating effects on my pursuit of excellence.
I have found three points to focus on to avoid envy:
Focus on characteristics not possessions
Focus on actions not results
Focus on the way they treat people not the way people treat them
Focus on Characteristics
When looking for a role-model, it is easy to gravitate towards people who exhibit the signs of material success. We all love fancy cars, sprawling estates, and extravagant vacations. Naturally, we will want to model our lives after people who have these things. Although this may be what initially draws us to a role-model, we must almost immediately shift our attention to the characteristics the role-model embodies.
No good comes from focusing on the superiority of someone else's wealth. This causes no action. However, if we can examine the characteristics of a role-model and how our own characteristics can be found lacking, this can propel us to ask relevant questions and begin to form the characteristics of our role-models.
Developing character in the mold of a worthy exemplar will benefit us much more than focusing on how much we want a new sports car.
Both of these are a response to a dissatisfaction with our own life, but one leads to fulfillment, and the other leads to envy and unhappiness.
Focus on Actions
First, I would like to clarify that I do believe that data and results matter. We cannot effectively pursue excellence if we do not know what works and what does not.
That being said, I think we too often focus on the spectacular results that our role-models achieve. We see the highlights of their lives and not the countless times that they took a similar action without the incredible result.
If we believe that our role-models are taking reasoned and appropriate actions, we cannot fixate on the results they achieve and assume if we do not achieve the same result that we have done something wrong.
It takes a good work ethic and repeated trials to achieve success. If we focus on the actions our role-models take and their approach to deciding upon actions, we will begin to find that our own actions lead to success. On the other hand, if we focus on the results that they have achieved, we will become discouraged, envious, and believe that we have been slighted by the universe when we fail to immediately achieve the same success.
Focus on the Way They Treat People
Another reason that people are drawn to role-models is the honor that they command. It is captivating to be in the presence of someone whom everyone respects. When the senior executive of a company speaks, all the employees pay attention. When LeBron is a free agent, every team prepares its offer. When a pastor preaches, the congregation attentively listens.
We desire to be treated with honor and respect. We want people around us who admire us. However, if we try to demand this honor while we still do not deserve it, people will consider us fools. Our envy of our role-models will have made us vain.
To avoid this embarrassment, we should focus on the way they treat people and the way they treated people in the past. Often times, our role-models are successful because of their ability to properly respect those around them. They know how to build meaningful connections through wit, a servant's heart, and a can-do attitude.
Observe your particular role-models and figure out the ways that they respect people in their particular field. Model your behavior after theirs keeping in mind that some of their mannerisms or actions might only be appropriate given their status.
Final Thoughts
This post was written assuming that we have found people that are worthy of our respect and admiration. If the people we look up to do not have a noble character, we should obviously stop trying to be like them.
In addition to avoiding envy, by focusing on the character, the actions, and the way our role-models treat people, we should be able to determine if they are actually the type of people we want to model our lives after.
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