I tell readers to seek joy to be happy, because it doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have in relation to other people. Stop giving others the power to dictate how you feel about yourself.

Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” You have the control over what you think about yourself and others.

I interact with intelligent, socially savvy women. They seem to have charmed lives yet I don’t resent them. I’m only impressed that they seem to have a great time of it. I want only the best for others. I wouldn’t wish a mental illness to strike anyone. Instead, I’d rather cheer on people to do what they do.

Jealousy serves no purpose in a person’s recovery. I urge readers to elevate yourselves by making others look good and succeed. I have been writing about how jealousy serves no purpose for years and years in the various incarnations of my blog.

Attacking others who are happy, who seem to live charmed lives, is not the way to go.

I’m happy–yes I am– for people who don’t have mental illnesses. It’s better that they were spared this fate. You and I are not mind readers. More apt, we’re not supposed to be privy to other people’s struggles. So they don’t have to wear their own version of hell on their sleeves.

I also recommend that readers don’t shout our illnesses from the rooftops either.

Travel to Boston. Save up money to buy your own apartment. Browse a museum. Be a good friend to yourself, because you and your life matter.

The more a person with a diagnosis can have a normal life, the less it matters that we didn’t get what others have or that we got an illness.

Jealousy is a negative energy. You and I might not be able to do or to have certain things that other people have. We need to accept this, and move forward. We need to embrace the good things in our lives. We need to find the things we can have and do the things we can do.

Without comparing ourselves to others. Without judging others or being resentful of them.

That’s the ticket to health: self-acceptance.