I remember my first brush with obsession. There was a girl in my high school who I thought was the absolute SHIT. She was pretty, athletic, in honors classes, she had a job, a car + rich parents as a cherry on top. She introduced me to a level of excellence that I didn’t know could exist in one person and she inspired me tremendously. Her life seemed perfect and I wanted to experience what I thought her life felt like.
Have you ever come across the kind of person who lives rent-free in your mind simply because they seem to exist in their own essence freely? Have you ever studied, obsessed or hated on the person whose existence made your life feel smaller + tighter next to theirs? Good.
That’s data.
Most people are taught to treat the feelings of envy, jealousy and longing as a failure. An ugly, embarrassing, immature thing to overcome immediately. But what happens if you don’t rush to deny or avoid the feeling?
The People Who Haunt Us
The uncomfortable truth is that many of us spend our lives circling the edges of our desires without ever touching them. We watch other people embody qualities we secretly crave. We admire them. Judge them. Resent them. Study them. Compete with them. We do almost everything except ask the obvious question:
Why does this matter so much to me?
In this episode of Pretty Brilliant, we explore the hidden relationship between desire, envy, projection, and personal freedom. Using the song Girl Crush as a starting point, we examine why the people we obsess over are often reflecting something important back to us, and how longing can become a powerful source of self-knowledge when we stop treating it like a problem to solve and start treating it like information worth understanding.
Stop Thinking. Start Becoming
If you’re ready to stop studying the life you want and start building it, check out The Desire Dares my guided nervous system training that helps you uncover what you really want and break the patterns that keep you settling for less.
-Britnei 🤘🏽
