How do you feel when people around you succeed?

Do you feel genuine joy for them, or do you experience envy?

Seeing people around you win or get ahead of you in life can be challenging, especially if you let their success define your progress.

One of the reasons you might feel as though one person’s success is a threat to your own progress is that you might be experiencing zero-sum thinking. A part of you might believe that when one person wins, another must lose.

Zero-sum thinking is defined as if one person gains, another loses. And while this kind of thinking is true in sporting events and even in some other areas of life, it’s not a helpful way to go through life.

One of the reasons you might fall into the trap of zero-sum thinking is that you might be viewing life from a short-term gain perspective. And so, you feel the urgency to win or to get what you think you deserve now, in the moment.

Zero-sum thinking can be risky because it can cause you to act in ways that might be detrimental to long-term success. But you justify your behavior because you believe that if you don’t behave a certain way, you’ll lose or lose out.

There might be times in the short term when you will lose if you don’t take the necessary steps to accomplish a task or goal. And zero-sum thinking can be helpful in those circumstances. But life is about the long game.

In the long game of life, cheering, supporting, and even helping others win is much more beneficial for you and the community as a whole. Thinking and acting for the greater good requires you to shift from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance. It requires you to realize that only in very limited circumstances is one person’s gain your loss.

So, the next time you hear of see someone that you feel as though is moving ahead in life at a faster pace than you are, cheer for them and wish them well. Remind yourself that their gain doesn’t take away your ability or opportunity to progress and that life is not a zero-sum game.

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