Welcome to episode 39 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Lindsay (yes, that Lindsay) about online jealousy.

Last week, Bjork went over 7 strategies to grow traffic to your food blog. These actionable tips aren’t the run-of-the-mill traffic tips. Instead, they’re a little more unique and require a bit of effort, but when practiced consistently definitely have the potential to pay off (big time). To go back and listen to that episode, click here!

12 Ways to Overcome Online Jealousy

There’s a big green monster in the room and no one really wants to talk about it. That monster is Jealousy, and it’s something every one of us experiences from time to time.

Jealousy can be difficult to overcome, and it can even ruin you day if not controlled. Lindsay recently experienced this when she saw someone had made a video similar to one she was in the process of making. Once she realized what was going on, she took a step back and decided to think about some techniques she could use to overcome this jealousy. She took those thoughts and put them into words in a blog post on Pinch of Yum.

Because this is such an important topic, Bjork asked if Lindsay could come on the podcast to talk a little more in-depth about the 12 different techniques you can use to overcome online (or offline) jealousy.

In this episode, Lindsay talks about:

• Why unfollowing people isn’t being harsh
• How Bjork wishes he was like Taylor Swift
• How to truly find inspiration – as opposed to trying to copycat
• How much time you should be dedicating to creating content vs. consuming content
• How to use abundance mindset to combat feeling inadequate
• Why having non-blogger friends can be like a drink of fresh water
• How to turn a jealous feeling into a team feeling
• How gratitude can help

Listen to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast below or check it out on iTunes:

Resources:

• POY Post on Jealousy
• Facebook News Feed Eradicator for Chrome
• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Be sure to review us on iTunes!

If you’d like to jump to the comments section, click here.

Transcript:

Bjork Ostrom: Welcome to episode number 39 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Hey, everybody. This is Bjork Ostrom. This is episode number 39, and today I am joined by the one and only Lindsay Ostrom from Pinch of Yum. I’m guessing that you know her. I know her well, because I’m married to her, and we’re going to be talking about this idea of jealousy on the internet. A couple weeks ago, Lindsay published a post called, “12 Ways to Stop Feeling Jealous on the Internet,” and I think it’s a really important concept to understand, because a lot of times, we can focus in on the really, really tangible things of building a business, or working on a blog, and it’s the tips, it’s the tricks, it’s the strategies, but a huge part of it is this emotional side.

It’s, how do we feel? How do we process through different decisions? How do we internalize and move through difficult feelings, like jealous? That’s something that we all feel, and especially as you start to work on your own thing, it’s going to be really easy to compare yourself to other people. How do you work through that emotion of jealousy? We’re going to be talking about that, and it’s going to be all over the map in a beautiful way, and I’m excited to share this conversation that Lindsay and I had with you. I hope that it helps you along on your journey.

All right. Here we are. We are starting The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. The second edition of the around the table mode, or what do you call it? Not mode.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, like coffee chats, or tea latte chats.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s coffee chats. Yeah. We each have a tea latte, and we are chatting around our old school kitchen table. This is actually a kitchen table that’s a hand-me-down, right?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It was your parents’.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s a table I grew up eating dinner at. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh. Good tie-in there.

Lindsay Ostrom: As a little one.

Bjork Ostrom: We watch old home videos, and we see it show up, and we say, “That looks very familiar,” and that’s because it’s the table we eat at every night.

Lindsay Ostrom: If we keep it long enough, it’s kind of coming back in, actually.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s coming back in. Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I seriously have seen a table just like this on-

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, it is.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I saw one on All Modern when I was looking. No.

Bjork Ostrom: On social media?

Lindsay Ostrom: When I was looking for a table. I was like, “We have that table.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but you can kind of see the seam for a little bit, what it is. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have Lindsay here on the podcast today, and I’m going to be interviewing her about a post that she recently published on Pinch of Yum. Maybe you came across it, and if you didn’t, you can check it out. It’s actually going to be the same exact structure for the podcast that we do today, but it was important enough that I felt like I wanted to really dive into it, and have a conversation around this idea of online jealousy, or this feeling of competition, I think, could also tie into it.

The reason that I wanted to talk about it, and the reason that I think it’s so important is because with anything that we do, it’s not just things online, but that’s a huge part of it, whether it’s building a business, or building a nonprofit, or raising a family, or raising a dog. Maybe not so much for that.

Lindsay Ostrom: My gosh.

Bjork Ostrom: We have a dog that we’re raising. Sage. You can check her out if you Google “Sage Pinch of Yum.” There’ll be lots of posts that you can see that Lindsay’s done. With any of those things that we do in life, a huge component of it is the emotional side, and our ability to be successful, whatever that looks like for those given categories, has a lot to do with how we manage or emotions. One of the emotions that I know is common, and it’s common for me, and I would assume that it’s common for you, Lindsay, is this idea of feeling jealous of multiple different things. It could be jealous of somebody else’s success, or jealous of something that somebody else has that you don’t have. It’s online, especially, social media especially.

These things are so prevalent, and I think one of the reasons is, or one of the reasons why is because we see all of this information, right? We see how many follows, or retweets, or you can see all of these hard numbers. I think a lot of times what that can result in is this feeling of jealousy, and I think it’s important to understand that and really dig into that, and have a conversation around it. Thanks for coming on today and talking about it, Linds.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’ll be interesting. I think this post, it was helpful for me to read through, and I think that it’ll be helpful for people to kind of hear an audio version of it. If you’re okay with it, I think what we can do is we can go through each one of these. There’s 12 different ways of dealing with this idea of jealousy, specifically on the internet. We talked before about this universal jealousy, but we’re going to kind of hone in a little bit, and we’re going to talk about the internet, because we talk about blogging, and so it makes sense to transition that into this little niche of jealousy on the internet, and how we can deal with that so we can get to a place where we feel like our mind, we have a zen mind as we approach content creation and working on the things that we’re working on. Let’s go ahead and dive in.

Lindsay Ostrom: Cool.

Bjork Ostrom: Does that sound all right?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Would there be anything that you would want to add to that very long intro that I had?

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh, maybe just, when you said, “So that we can have a zen mind,” I just would throw in that I feel like that’s, for me, an ever-elusive thing. I wrote this post not from a place of, “These are the things I do because I never feel jealous anymore,” but these are just the … I do feel jealous sometimes, and these are the things that I am currently doing to keep that jealousy channeled or at bay, or to keep the zen mind ahead of the jealous mind, or whatever it would be. It’s not by any means, I’ve arrived, or have all the answers, or don’t struggle with this anymore.

Bjork Ostrom: Right, yeah. That’s good context. Great. Okay. Let’s dive in. The first one that you talk about here is unfollowing people. What does that mean? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I think it sounds harsh a little bit, just especially when you just read it like that. Number one, unfollow people. The concept behind it is kind of the opposite of harsh, I think. The concept behind it is just being kind to yourself, and gentle to yourself, and it’s not maybe something that you need to know what everyone else is doing all the time. Maybe there’s someone in particular that, for whatever reason if what they’re doing is close enough to what you’re wanting to do, or I don’t know, whatever the reason might be that you feel these negative emotions of jealousy and that comparison trap with certain people in particular, I just really would support the unfollow in that case.

It’s not like, “Hey, we’re not nice to these people. We don’t like these people. They’re not our friends, so therefore, we unfollow.” It’s like, we are kind to ourselves, and we know that seeing this person talk about their successes, or even just talk about their life, which therefore reflects their successes, which therefore makes me feel jealous, that that’s not necessarily being kind to myself. I think this is kind of a flawed strategy, because in the long run, you would want to be able to have anything come at you, even if it is other people saying, “Look. I had this successful thing,” and for you to be able to respond positively to that, rather than needing to cut those people off. It’s a little bit of a flawed strategy in that way. We cannot operate our whole lives just cutting people off whenever they’re successful because it makes us feel jealous.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I would say it’s not necessarily flawed, but I would say it’s maybe not a singular strategy. It’s not the only solution.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. Right, and that’s what I was going to say. For me, it’s a starting point. It’s an unfollow for a time even, while I kind of get my own thoughts sorted out, and get myself back in sure footing, and then when I’m coming to the table from a place of confidence, or as Brene … I’m reading a Brene Brown book right now, so Brene Brown says, wholeheartedness. Then being able to say, “Hey. I do want to follow this person, and keep up with what they’re doing, and that might include some of their successes, and I’m okay. I’m in an okay place to be able to process that.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. No. That’s great. I think that this is maybe a little bit of a stretch, as it’s not an exact overlap, but this morning I saw an article. It was highlighting Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris’s recent vacation, and it was all these …

Lindsay Ostrom: Vacation goals.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right. Right, exactly. I found myself, it wasn’t jealous, like, “Ah, I wish that I had that,” but it was kind of this idea of, “Well, ah, man. Geez. I sit on my computer a lot and do a lot of work, and for the most part, I just kind of stay in St. Paul.” We travel a lot for work and stuff like that, and we just got back from the Philippines, so we do trips like that, but I think from the outside, you can look at somebody else’s life and be like, “Oh, that would be so cool.” I had this very distinct moment of, “I need to I think cut myself off from stuff like that a little bit, in terms of just surface-y level news stuff,” because a lot of that can present this image of somebody’s life, and you can be like, compare … The comparison trap you talked about, and it can leave you in a place feeling ungrateful or, and we’re going to talk about that in a little bit, but this place of a little bit twisted up.

It’s not a good feeling to feel that, and so I feel like that was an example for me right away, where I thought, “Ah.” It wasn’t an unfollow necessarily, but it was removing that.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and limiting what messages come into your mind, and what is in front of you, and what even enters your conscience.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. For sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Number two. Follow inspiring people in other niches. Do you have, I think people probably understand this, so a high-level explanation of what this is, and maybe some examples of people that you find inspiring, or areas that, niches that you look to?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I think one example of this for me … I’m coming to this conversation as a “food blogger.” Sometimes, other people who are literally doing the exact same thing that I’m doing, sometimes that can feel a little too close for me to be able to look at them and actually drum inspiration and not just the scramble of, “Oh, they’re doing that. I should be doing that, too.” If I can separate, go one tier removed from my own niche of food blogging into another space, oftentimes what I can take from those people in terms of inspiration is more truly inspirational, because I’m taking it and applying it through my own filter. It’s like I’m removed enough that it’s not a comparison trap, it’s not a scramble, it’s not me having this scarcity mindset of, “Ah, they’re doing this. I need to do this,” but it’s seeing something cool that’s happening in another space, and thinking about how I could replicate that, or improve on that, or build on that within my niche of food blogging.

An example, it’s going to be a very specific example, is authors. I really like to follow along with authors that when I read a book that I like, and if there’s an auth … If the voice and whatever else about the book I liked, then I’ll try to go and find those authors, so literally just writers, and writing, and find their blogs, and find their social media, and just follow along with how they write. They’re not writing about food, and they’re not doing anything about food, really. They’re just writing in whatever category or genre that they publish content in, but I can follow them, and they can have tons of interaction on their posts, tons of likes and tons of shares. It doesn’t make me feel weird. I look at it, and I can look at it pretty objectively, and say, “Wow, this makes me feel this way. Here’s why, and how can I … What does that mean for me as a food blogger?”

It’s kind of like a borrow a nugget of inspiration or an idea, and then shift the thinking, and applying that to my own situation, but it’s not apples to apples. Therefore, I feel like it removes some of the potential for comparative feelings.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I think that it’s a content consumption strategy, which is a little bit of a lead-in to the next question, but it’s saying, where are you consuming your content? If the only place that you’re consuming your content is within the very small niche and for us, I’m guessing the majority of the people that listen to this podcast have some involvement in food, and if the only place that you consume your content is in the food space, I think that opens you up or makes you more vulnerable to feeling this idea, or to … It’s not an idea, to feeling jealous, because it’s so close to the things that you’re doing.

The example that I can think of is, I have some friends that were really into acting, and some that still are. We were having a conversation once, and I said, “Is it ever difficult for you to go to some type of theater, like a Broadway play, or if you’re in the twin cities, if you go to the Guthrie Theater? Is that ever difficult for you because you’re seeing essentially peers that are being successful.” They said, “I almost never go to professional theater performances, because it’s so difficult for me to consume that.” Yet this same individual loved to have conversations with me about the things that we were doing with our blog, and the different businesses we have. That was separate for him, because it’s not like he saw me necessarily as a career peer. I think that allowing to remove yourself from the niche lets you be inspired as opposed to feeling like, “Oh, this idea of jealousy, or this idea of … ”

I keep kind of going back to this idea of feeling a little bit twisted inside, and I think that’s maybe a form of jealousy, but that was an example that I think about a lot, that I think applies to this situation. I talked about content consumption, and that ties into number three, practice the 90/10 rule. What is the 90/10 rule? I’ve heard of the 80/20 rule. Are they related?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I don’t know. I just made it up. I don’t know if it’s a real thing. It is a real thing, because I just made it a real thing.

Bjork Ostrom: It is now.

Lindsay Ostrom: It might be an idea that’s been out there for a long time, and I’ve picked it up and holding onto it, and thinking it’s my own idea when actually it came from someone else. I don’t know. The 90/10 rule as I see it in my mind is that 90% of the time, you’re creating. As a food blogger, 90% of the time, this is the goal, 90% of the time, I am cooking. I am taking photos. I’m writing. I’m attending workshops. I’m doing networking events, or connecting with peers, or whatever. I’m in the doing mode, and then that last 10% is where I’m consuming, and following up on what’s happening within my niche, or my specific industry, or even following some of those other people that I was saying before, that might be in other niches, but just reserving that 10% time for my actual consumption.

I feel like as I’ve developed Pinch of Yum, and as I’ve become … The blog has grown, and this has become actually my job, the amount of time I spend reading other blogs, food blogs or otherwise, has just gone down dramatically. When I first started, I wanted to know what everyone was doing, and what everybody was posting, and now it’s like, “Man, I just really don’t feel like I have a ton of time,” and/or it’s not always the best for me to just constantly be checking up on other people’s blogs. I think that, it’s both a time struggle and also then an intentional decision to say, “I want most of my time to be creating my own thing.”

I feel like I have enough inspiration. I have enough things already floating around in my mind. My issue isn’t that I need to know more what people are doing. I already know plenty of what people are doing, and what’s working for other people, what’s popular, what people are up to. I’m pretty covered on that front, so that’s just, the 90/10 rule is just me putting numbers to saying 90% of my time, I would like to find myself creating versus that other 10% of the time, where I’m actually consuming content.

Bjork Ostrom: I think this number four ties into that, and because part of it is, I think with consuming content, we don’t realize how much we do it. It happens a lot, because it’s so easy to do on the internet, and that’s what we’re talking about, right? We work on the internet, and there’s content everywhere. This next one, number four, I think really helps to put in … It’s a little hack, but I think it really helps because it’s a little mental roadblock, a good one. It’s logging out of all social media accounts. Wow. Talk about that a little bit.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I don’t actually do that.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh. You don’t.

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I do. I do a lot. I log a lot.

Bjork Ostrom: You log?

Lindsay Ostrom: I do log out of a lot of things. It’s kind of funny as you read these, because I don’t remember them.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: I remember when you say them, but I don’t know them in order, and you have the computer …

Bjork Ostrom: You’re kind of excited to see what’s next.

Lindsay Ostrom: It is kind of like a little surprise every time. It’s like, “Oh, yeah. That. Okay.” I just have to talk about it, shoot off the cuff.

Bjork Ostrom: On the spot.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yup. No. I feel like that’s an idea that actually for me came from you, and from being around you, and living with you, and being how disciplined you are about social media, and productivity and everything.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you think it’s a good idea?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think it’s a real good idea, babe. It’s really good. Good job.

Bjork Ostrom: Thanks.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. Yeah. Just logging out. Just logging out of apps. We went through a phase, both of us did, I think, and then I dropped this habit, and I think maybe you still do it. Of logging out of Facebook, even on my computer. Not just on my phone, but also on my computer, and so when I sit down to work and I type in, literally type in, “facebook.com,” and it pulls up the login page. It’s not that hard to log in. It would take me two seconds to log in, but somehow that’s a stop for me. It’s a little mind trick, where I go, “Ah, am I really wanting to go to Facebook so bad that I’m gonna intentionally type in my name and password?” It kind of makes you be … You’re confronted with your own habits. It’s like, “Oh, dang. I do have to enter that password if I am really on Facebook again. I shouldn’t be on Facebook again.”

It’s just a built-in barrier, and maybe you, I don’t know, have more to say about it, since this is kind of, I feel like it’s something that you inspired me on.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’re self-aware of your actions throughout the day, it’s insane how many little triggers there are of doing something like opening a new tab and then typing in Facebook, and then pressing return, and then scrolling through. That quick check-in turns into maybe five, ten, 15 minutes. I think I started to realize that about myself, and so as an experiment, tried to put in some of these roadblocks. Some of the things that I do, so I sign out of social media, but then I also … You can use a Chrome extension that’s called Newsfeed Eradicator, and this was actually something that I learned from [inaudible 00:20:30], from Simple Green Smoothies, so she told me about this.

If you need to use Facebook to do things like create content, or publish new things, or manage ads, this is a Chrome extension where it blocks the news feed, and so you can only see the things that you need to see in order to get stuff done. I’ve also used extensions that block specific sites, but only on my preferred browser. Chrome is the browser that I use, and it blocks those sites, but that’s enough. It’s a similar hack where it’s enough where I have to open Safari, or Firefox, and then type in the website, then sign in again. It’s a small amount of work, but it’s usually enough to remind me that, “Oh, yeah. I actually don’t need to check Facebook right now, or I don’t need to check Mashable, and scroll through, and find the video of the dog and the pig that become friends, and GIFs of them.”

Lindsay Ostrom: Then send them to me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Not that that’s ever happened. I think the basic takeaway for this, which is interesting because it’s kind of gotten into …

Lindsay Ostrom: Productivity.

Bjork Ostrom: Productivity and time management, but I think it also applies to the jealousy piece in that you are not engaging in social media in a passive consumption way, which a lot of times is the place where we see those different things that people are doing, or they post about their awesome vacation, or they talk about their awesome life, which in and of itself isn’t bad. It’s only bad when it’s consumed by somebody that then processes it, and then feels worse about themselves, which I feel like is usually how I end up processing that stuff, is not necessarily where it motivates me, or puts me in a better position. That’s all of that to say, those intentional extra steps to make that harder to do I think is beneficial, because it keeps you from engaging in that passive content consumption.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and it just has the potential to just derail your day, and your thought process.

Bjork Ostrom: Right. For sure, for sure. Let’s talk about number five, name the root. What is the root?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think the root is the reason why you’re jealous. When you see Taylor Swift’s vacation pictures, or whatever that was. Is that what you said? Vacation?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Taylor Swift. It was Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris.

Lindsay Ostrom: Calvin Harris.

Bjork Ostrom: You know Calvin Harris?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, I do.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: Of course I do.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re with it.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m with it. I’m hip. It’s like, why do you feel jealous of that? It’s because they have this awesome vacation, and I don’t know. This is going to be a weird example, because …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. No, I feel like it’s peeling back the layers on something.

Lindsay Ostrom: Just peeling back the layers. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think for that example, to dig into that, I think part of it has to do with, in a previous life … Not in a previous life. That’s a weird term, but in college, the way that I paid the bills was singer-songwriter. I recorded a little EP, and that was something that I did, and really enjoyed, and I don’t do as much now. I think one of the things specific with that situation is it’s two people that are very successful with music, and doing it at a really, really high level. It’s not even necessarily the vacation.

Lindsay Ostrom: Vacation. It’s just their lifestyle, and …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s this lifestyle of people that have had a ton of success and are really, really good at what they do, in a niche that, or an area that I’m not necessarily super involved with right now, at least not with a user facing involvement. It’s like, “Ah.” I think for me, if I’m being honest about what that was like as I consumed that, and then it twisted me a little bit, I think it goes back to that, and this idea of these people having a lot of success in that area, and then not knowing or in that moment, what I didn’t do is this. I didn’t really peel back the layers on that, and get to the root of why that was, so I could understand it, so anyways.

Lindsay Ostrom: Now you are on a live podcast, with just a psychology. It’s like this counseling session right now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. This is good for me, because it helps me process through stuff.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. Here’s a good example, maybe a good example. I named this example in the post, but I … There was a video that I saw. It was either Tasty, or Buzzfeed, or something. One of those popular viral-type Facebook videos, and I was laying in bed one morning, just postponing actually getting up and getting ready for the day, just scrolling. I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just scroll through Facebook.” Terrible idea, and I obviously wasn’t logged out, and I didn’t … That little roadblock didn’t work, and so I was scrolling through Facebook, and I came across this video, and those videos, they auto play in your feed, so you don’t even have to click play. You do not have to go find it. You just have enough people share it that you’re friends with, and it just auto plays.

It was a video for a recipe that was really similar to a recipe that I had. It was a chicken wild rice soup, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This is just like the recipe that I have on Pinch of Yum,” and I had already recorded a video for it because I thought, “This recipe would do really well on a Facebook video.” I literally had the footage for the video sitting on my desktop, and just waiting to be edited, and published. For me in that, I’m jealous because they did they video. I’m jealous because they have all of this engagement, and why am I jealous about that? Because I didn’t get to the video first, because I feel like I wish I would have had or would currently have that much engagement on Facebook.

It’s like, “Well, why?” Because then people would think I’m better at Facebook, really getting to the core of what it is. It’s like, why do I wish people thought I was better at Facebook? Because I want people to like me, and really, really getting down to the level that it comes from, and then when it’s like, “Well, because I want people to like me.” I have people that like me.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: All the people that matter to me like me, and so just being able to really address it straight on … I think it requires a lot of vulnerability to use another Brene Brown word, to really say why something makes you jealous. Jealous is almost an easy emotion compared to getting down to the root of why does this make me feel insecure and bad? It’s usually these core things, like, because I want to be loved, or I want people to think I did a good job, or it’s these core vulnerable things that it forces you to address. I think it’s important in order to be able to move past that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and sometimes just seeing it for what it is helps, seeing the root helps us deal with the trunk and the branches, right? If the root is something like, if you get down to it, and then you feel like you’re not going to be loved because you’re not being successful in a certain way, shape, or form, I think that helps you deal with this idea of jealousy because you see it for what it is. As opposed to the top layer, not the root, the trunk or the branches. It’s harder to deal with that, because oftentimes, it’s things that are out of our control, or things that we feel like we can control, but when we try and fix them, it’s not actually dealing with the root. Would you agree?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: What percent?

Lindsay Ostrom: 100.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Okay. Should I read this Brene Brown quote about scarcity?

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh, yes. I love that quote.

Bjork Ostrom: All right, so it’s a perfect example of a scarcity mindset.

Lindsay Ostrom: I love it. Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: This is what you say. This is Brene Brown from her book, Daring Greatly. “For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is, ’I get enough sleep. Next one is, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. Before we even sit up in our bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something, and by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with the litany of what we didn’t get or didn’t get done that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that lack … ” What is this word? Rev … R-E-V-E-R.

Lindsay Ostrom: Reverie?

Bjork Ostrom: “Reverie.” Ah, geez. [inaudible 00:29:42] butt in. Vulnerability. I tried to jump over it, but then I was like, “I can’t compose anything.”

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh my gosh.

Bjork Ostrom: “To that reverie of lack.” What does reverie mean?

Lindsay Ostrom: I don’t know.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: Vulnerable.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be vulnerable [crosstalk 00:30:01] the podcast. You can leave a comment and explain to us what reverie means. I got to go back. “We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack.” Okay. It makes sense in context. “This internal condition of scarcity, this mindset of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudices, and our arguments with life.” That’s great.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and that ties in just with identifying the root or naming the root, in that a lot of times it comes from this scarcity mindset. For me, a lot of times it does. I see someone else being really successful, and I say, “I want that.” It’s like, why? Because I feel like if they’re successful, I can’t be, or they’re going to take all the likes that are ever possible on Facebook for a wild rice soup video, and I’m never going to get that many likes. It comes from a place of scarcity so, again, getting to the root and saying, “This is a scarcity mindset, and I need to examine that, and kind of turn it on its head, and see this for what it really is,” is a helpful step in the process.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m interested to talk about this a little bit, specific to that. Scarcity mindset. I feel like the opposite of that is abundance mindset, which I kind of think of like … When I hear the idea of abundance mindset, it makes me feel a little bit like … I don’t know. It’s a weird term to me, but maybe I don’t know why that is, where that comes from. Do you think it’s similar or it ties into that, in terms of this idea of, it’s not scarce, so there’s an abundancy mindset? I guess when I think of abundancy mindset, I think of this idea of … If you think it, it will become …

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, that. That’s weird, because when you were describing it, to people listening, I feel like they wouldn’t know, but I knew what you were thinking, but that’s because we know each other. We’re married to each other. It almost like …

Bjork Ostrom: Prosperity.

Lindsay Ostrom: Prosperity. Yeah. We would call it prosperity gospel, in a weird sort of way, church context. No. It surprises me to hear you say that, because I feel like what we’re doing with Pinch of Yum leans heavily towards abundance, what I would consider abundance mindset, in that we say, “We’re gonna put all of our strategies out on the table, because we believe there is more than enough for everyone.”

Bjork Ostrom: Eight billion people in the world. Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: There’s enough people to sustain businesses for everyone, or that our success or someone else’s success isn’t going to necessarily be stealing.

Bjork Ostrom: The only one.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, stealing fans and followers from someone else, but that there’s enough for everyone, and kind of the rising tide lifts all ships kind of mentality. That’s what I associate with abundance mindset.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. Yeah. Anyways, I was just thinking about that, so I wanted to bring it up. How about this, on a lighter note. Hang out with non-bloggers.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Lindsay Ostrom: It is great, and I’m so, so thankful for my normal friends who will never, ever hear me say this, because they don’t listen to this podcast, which is so amazing. I just love my friends, and it’s so refreshing to be friends with people who just don’t care about the blog, or to just not even … Whether it’s be friends, or just spend time with, or just acknowledge the people in your life that really don’t know anything about what you’re doing, and/or don’t care. Not in they’re not nice they don’t care kind of way, just in a, they are going to ask you, “How’s it going with your blog?” After 30 seconds of you talking, they’ve checked out.

That is something kind of refreshing about that, just because when what we do is online, it can start to feel like everyone’s thinking about this all the time, because of who we surround ourselves with and the conversations that we’re immersed in. When I go and talk to my non-blogging friends, it’s like they have no idea. Even sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh, good. I had this hard thing with the blog. I’m really excited to be with my friends tonight, and talk it out with them.” Even I say it, and in my mind, it’s this really big story. “Oh, I was gonna tell you about this thing that happened,” and for them, they’re like, “Oh. Okay. Wow. Well, anyways you guys,” and they talk about something else.

It’s just a drink of fresh water. That’s not the right … A breath of fresh air. Do people say drink of fresh water?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think it is more of the reverie of the refreshing beverage.

Lindsay Ostrom: Oh, my gosh. Oh. It’s just good. It’s just healthy and good, I think to be with friends in general, bloggers or otherwise, but for me personally, I just find it so restoring, and refreshing, and grounding to spend time with people who just could care less about what’s happening online.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. For sure. Also this. I feel like that potentially makes it seem, when you’re having those conversations that people aren’t necessarily listening very well, and I think that people listen well and they’re present to it. It’s that it’s not as big of a deal.

Lindsay Ostrom: Right. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think our friends, our close friends, are supportive, and aware, and encouraging, and also, they don’t necessarily think it’s the coolest thing in the universe.

Lindsay Ostrom: Or they don’t necessarily read posts, so I tell them things and it’s not like they’re like, “Oh, I already read that on your blog.” It’s actually news to them.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Which is nice.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. There’s just something nice about that.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: Refreshing.

Bjork Ostrom: Reverie means “a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts, or a daydream.” I didn’t know that word.

Lindsay Ostrom: All right. Now we know. Daydream.

Bjork Ostrom: If you don’t get anything else from this podcast, know that reverie means a daydream, or being lost in one’s thoughts.

Lindsay Ostrom: All right. Very educational.

Bjork Ostrom: Number seven. Pep talk to yourself from another perspective.

Lindsay Ostrom: Uh-oh. This gets into the weird zone, a little bit. Did you read this?

Bjork Ostrom: As if we’re not-

Lindsay Ostrom: Did you read this?

Bjork Ostrom: As if we’re not already there yet.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay, we’re going deep down into the crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Good.

Lindsay Ostrom: Crazy town. One thing I heard at a conference, it was actually the Storyline Conference last year, or two years ago, or something. I went to this writing seminar, and the leader of it … I don’t remember honestly now who it was. It was a professor, a writing professor from a university somewhere, but she just talked about this concept of your inner critic, and how to address your inner critic. The example she gave was if you’re in a situation, and your inner critic is telling you things along the lines of jealousy, but where you’re saying, for me, “Oh, that Buzzfeed or Tasty chicken wild rice soup video was so popular. Yours will never be that popular.” That’s what my inner critic is saying.

To literally personify that a little bit, and to … For me, I think of it as a child and an adult. I used to be a teacher, so I’m used to having these kinds of conversations, and imagining that the inner critic is a child, and my …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. How old?

Lindsay Ostrom: Probably like-

Bjork Ostrom: Preteen?

Lindsay Ostrom: Seven.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, seven. Okay.

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s pretty young. Ten.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: Ten to 15, let’s say.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lindsay Ostrom: I don’t know, 15. I’m not very good with the teenagers.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Okay, so ten.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay, so ten. That’s how old fourth graders were. I used to teach fourth grade. We’ll stick with that. Ten.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lindsay Ostrom: That it’s someone from a child’s perspective saying, “You’ll never get as many likes as that. They’re gonna take over Facebook, and your Facebook will never amount to anything.”

Bjork Ostrom: Real quick, just as you’re doing the child voice, could you do it in a child voice?

Lindsay Ostrom: In a child voice. No. We could role play it.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. We’re not doing that.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay, so the child … No. Don’t even. I see you preparing to say something. Don’t. Don’t do it. Okay. Don’t, Bjork. Oh, my gosh. This podcast. Okay, so the child, the inner critic says something, brings its criticism to the table, and then you kind of approach that conversation as if you were the adult, the teacher, the parent, the responsible one. I hear my inner critic voice saying, “You’ll never get that many likes,” and then my adult, parent, teacher voice says, “Well, why do you feel like you need to get that many likes?” The critic is crabby and says something in response, and essentially this is just me telling you to have these imaginary conversations in your mind, which somehow doesn’t seem super healthy.

Just literally personifying that, and trying to recognize that for what it is, which is a voice of fear, and it’s not your responsible true self voice. That’s a fear voice. I don’t know. What would be another word for that? I was thinking “lizard brain.”

Bjork Ostrom: Insecurity?

Lindsay Ostrom: Insecurity. It’s the amygdala part of your brain.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m calling out brain things as if I know brain science-

Bjork Ostrom: Protective. Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: … right now, but I read Brene Brown, so I pretty much know.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. Just approaching it from a place of, no, that’s not the real truth, and there’s a part of my brain that knows the real truth, and can bring the real truth to light in this situation. Trying to just mentally tackle that from that perspective.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and to have a conversation with yourself. I think this maybe ties into the root piece a little bit as well. It’s maybe another way to get to the root of what the issue is, and one of the ways you can do that is by having a conversation, in this case, with a ten-year-old. It doesn’t have to be ten. It could be 11, 12. It could be nine. It could be eight. It could be any age.

Lindsay Ostrom: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It could be.

Bjork Ostrom: The idea being that you’re processing through a feeling, and in this case, jealousy, in order to get to the root of what it is. At least that’s how I would imagine it.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and I think it just helps you get outside of your own brain.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Lindsay Ostrom: If one of the things for me that’s really helpful, honestly, is being married to you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, because of how similar I am.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. To a ten-year-old.

Bjork Ostrom: To a little guy.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. That’s weird. Little guy. No, but just having someone to talk to who gets it, and so sometimes if I’m really stuck in my own mind, and it’s like, you’re not with me all the time and sometimes I just need to be able to coach myself out of it, but I’ll think, literally, what would Bjork tell me right now? If you have someone in your life that you’re able to talk to about these things, who can bring you a fresh perspective, like when you get stuck in that moment, and you don’t have anyone else, and you just need to work yourself out of it, ask yourself, “What would that person tell me right now?” What would my mom tell me right now, if I was telling her, “Mom, I’m just feeling really bad about myself, because I don’t … I’m not getting as many likes as Tasty on my videos on Facebook.” She’d be like, “Lindsay, look at all you’ve done. I’m so proud of you. This is so great.”

Just being able to get outside your own perspective sometimes is helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Number eight. Become a team. Become a team of what? Who? How many people? What does that mean?

Lindsay Ostrom: No specifics. What number is that?

Bjork Ostrom: Eight.

Lindsay Ostrom: Number eight? Become a team. My number eight. Become a team just means rechanneling some of that jealousy into a feeling of camaraderie. If you have someone that you’re feeling like, “Ah, this person … I don’t know. They’re making me jealous. Therefore, I need to be friends with them.” That’s kind of a weird way to approach it, but sending them an email, or getting involved in a project with them. It’s just amazing how quickly you can shift your perspective by seeing a person as someone who is on your team, versus someone who you’re against. For me, the switch happens so quickly. When I’m looking at someone from the outside and seeing, “Oh, my gosh. They’re always successful, with all this stuff, and ugh. How am I … I’m never gonna be able to have that, whatever thing they have.”

If I send them an email, and start a genuine conversation with them, a lot of times it switches from this feeling of, “I want what they have,” to, “They’re my friend, and I want the best for them,” and/or, “We are in this together,” versus, “It’s you versus me.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and specific to this space, it’s interesting because I’m in it, but not into it as you are, right? I’m in it because you have Pinch of Yum, and that’s your thing, and I help with that. We also do Food Blogger Pro, but I personally don’t have a food blog, which is my gift to the world, because if I did, it wouldn’t be very good, at least the recipes wouldn’t. I would commission you to do the photography.

Lindsay Ostrom: All right.

Bjork Ostrom: I would do probably marshmallow recipes [crosstalk 00:43:13]. Marshmallow recipes.

Lindsay Ostrom: Is Pinch of Yuck still on the table?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. When I worked for a nonprofit, we would go into schools, and we contemplated doing a Pinch of Yuck addition for highlighting the worst recipes that we ran into, the number one of which was at a small private school that I think was not well funded, or didn’t have much of a budget, it was bread, cheese, and then bread.

Lindsay Ostrom: All right.

Bjork Ostrom: It was literally a cheese sandwich.

Lindsay Ostrom: A cheese sandwich. Good old cheese sandwich.

Bjork Ostrom: Rewinding, going back very far, idea being specific to this concept, that okay, let’s say we’re talking about food blogging. If somebody does something really cool that you look at, and initially, you’d be like, “Ah, I feel jealous about that.” Another path that you could potentially take is, I’m glad that this person is working in this niche, because they are doing cool things that are helping to make it easier for us to find out ways to connect with people, for instance, or to advance photography, or to engage people in a way that we didn’t think about engaging them before. To not view it as them versus me, necessarily, but as us as a industry and raising the bar. I kind of hear you saying that a little bit with this, is become a team.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yup. It’s just a mental shift, instead of thinking of it as us versus them. It’s us collectively.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. We’re getting to the end here. We have a few left, kind of the back four. Number nine. Honor and celebrate. What is that all about?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think if I remember right, it just ties into number eight of this mental shift that happens, but I think number eight was … The tip is a little more tangible in, reach out to people. Actually form some kind of a partnership with them, and then number nine is more of a, change your thinking. For me, it’s helpful to have a visual cue, so one of the things I’ll imagine, I’ll try to imagine open palms, okay? Again, diving a little bit deeper into the weirdo space.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s good. Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m scrolling through my Instagram, and I start to feel jealous, a lot of times that scarcity mindset is at the core of that, and I imagine scarcity … My visual trigger for scarcity is closed fists, holding really tightly onto something. Even if I just mentally imagine opening up my hands, and releasing that, and going back to number eight, thinking of it as us as a collective versus me versus them, that allows me to … It gives me the freedom to look at what someone else is doing, and when it’s successful, to honor that, and to celebrate that.

Another thing, this crosses over into the church realm a little bit, which I don’t know if that’s okay, but one thing that I always think about from church that our pastor Greg Boyd, he talked about, he said that when you’re really struggling with something, pray for that person. Pray for good things to come to that person, and whether that’s pray for that person, or think about, even just envision them being successful, and envision yourself celebrating that. It’s mindset things. It’s just mindfulness related to jealousy, I think, and actually envisioning, what does it look like for me to really, truly, in my heart wish someone else well? To imagine them being super successful and me standing next to them, and giving them a hug, and congratulating them on a job well done, and being their supporter in that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s cool.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, so it’s a little vague, and it’s a little up in your brain, versus a tangible thing, but if you do want to make the jump from the tangible up into your brain space, I think having some kind of a visual trigger is helpful. For me, it’s the closed hands and the scarcity, the tight gripping to things versus the open hands, and being free to celebrate other people.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. No, I think that’s great. Again, difference being, previous one we talked about was more of the tangible, reaching out, interacting with them. Number ten, knowing that it’s not always possible to interact with that person, because there might be a … They might not be somebody that you can connect with, or it just doesn’t make sense. To have this type of spiritual, if that applies to you, where you’re at, or more of the just mental trigger, if the spiritual element maybe doesn’t apply to you, knowing that there’s a variety of people that listen to this from all different backgrounds. Point being that you have some type of process that internally, you process through, and you say, “Instead of feeling like there’s limited resources around this, or that there’s scarcity around this, or that this person is taking something from me, I’m going to try and authentically and genuinely celebrate and appreciate what this person, or this company, or this individual has done.”

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and in a weird backwards … This is going to be kind of like mind warp backwardness, but I sometimes think about if the root of a lot of this is comparison, a competitive nature for me. I’m naturally competitive with some things, all things, everything, every day. No, I’m just kidding. Bjork laughs and says, “Not really just kidding.” Be competitive, or make the competition about yourself, and how open you can be, and how true you can be in your mind, and how wholehearted you can be. It’s like flipping the switch from, “I need to win over this person by having more Facebook likes than them,” to, “I’m gonna be the most open hands person that I can possibly be.” I think that’s how you can channel some of that, that competitive nature for a person like me, into something positive that detaches you from your jealousy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. There’s all different types of things that you can be competitive about, and I think to think of being competitive or intentional around something that’s a little less tangible, but is potentially more rewarding and in some ways, easier to control, is kind of cool to think about, and that idea of being the most open handed person is inspiring.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. I’m definitely, just to circle back to my beginning comment, I’m definitely not … I’m still competing with myself in that arena. I’m definitely not there, but …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think it’s a good thought to be aware of, and a good tool in the mental tool belt as we talk about these different strategies, and concepts, and ideas. Number eleven. Give yourself a break.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Ugh. I feel my shoulders relax a little bit when I hear this.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. Take a deep breath. The concept behind this is just that everybody feels jealous, and so don’t be so hard on yourself for feeling jealous. That’s really all it is. Give yourself permission to be human, and to say, “Ugh, I’m looking at these pictures of Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris’s vacation, and I feel jealous.” It’s like, don’t let the jealousy be a stress trigger as much as possible. Just acknowledge it for what it is. Look at it from the outside. Name the root, but don’t say, “I’m such a bad person because I always feel jealous when I look at this, and why do I struggle with this? Gah, every time I open Instagram, I have these feelings, and I’m such a terrible person.” It’s not true. Everybody has this, to a certain degree at least, and give yourself a break. It’s a normal thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, and one thing that helps me deal with emotions like this, like jealousy, for instance, is the universal-ness of humans, meaning that it’s, like you said, everybody in some way, shape, or form deals with this. That concept helps me in a lot of ways. One of the things I fear is losing loved ones, and I have this deep, not deep fear of it, but every once in a while I think of it, and it’s like it has the potential to be overwhelming. I think that when I think about all the people that exist in the world, and that have existed in the world, it’s like we’re all going through this process of living life, and along the way, we will lose people that we love. People have dealt with that and continue to live successful and … Successful is not necessarily a good word, but continued to thrive.

I think that applies to jealousy as well. We experience things in life, like jealousy, and it’s a universal thing. To not feel alone in that struggle, I think, is a good thing to understand, so you can give yourself a break.

Lindsay Ostrom: Cool. All right.

Bjork Ostrom: Number 12. Gratitude. What a great one to end on.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What is gratitude all about?

Lindsay Ostrom: I should start by saying that you’re a gratitude champ.

Bjork Ostrom: Got a gratitude attitude?

Lindsay Ostrom: You do, and that’s really helped me and inspired me, because I think my knee jerk reaction is, scramble to the top, scramble my way to getting rid of the jealous feelings. I think gratitude goes in line with this open palm, or open hand visual that I have in my mind. It also goes in line with the coming at the conversation, or addressing your thoughts from another perspective. What would my mom say if I told her I felt vulnerable about, or felt jealous of all of the … I keep using Facebook likes. It’s not like Facebook is my only thing. It’s just become my token example. [crosstalk 00:53:24]

Bjork Ostrom: … which is kind of ironic.

Lindsay Ostrom: It works well. It works. It’s a real example, but if I said, “Mom, I’m just … Ugh, I’m so jealous. I don’t have as many Facebook likes as this other thing.” That she would come at it and say, “Well, Lindsay, look what you do have. You have this. You have this. You have this.” All of these pieces kind of tie together into the one big bow on the top, which in my mind is gratitude. There’s always something, there’s always something that you can look at it and say, “I’m jealous. I wish I had this.” Turn that around on its head, like, “Wow, well I’m so glad that even in this situation, to have this feeling, because that means this.”

I put some examples in the post, and I can’t remember what they are off the top of my head. Do you? Are there any worth repeating?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, so you said, for example, if you have this feeling of jealousy, like, “Ah, I wish my house was as stylish as theirs,” to flip that and say, “Oh, man. My bed is the most comfortable, happy place I could’ve ever imagined. So thankful for that.” For example, “How does she always look so good?” To stop, and then flip that and say, “I’m so thankful that I have a strong and healthy body, that can take me for walks with Sage, because I love Sage,” and then you go for a walk with Sage. Sage is our dog.

Yeah. I think that this idea of gratitude, and I think it can be gratitude in the big things, and it can be gratitude in the small things. Big things like, “I’m so thankful that there are people in my life that love me, and if everything fell apart, and I didn’t have anything else, and I … Things crash and burn,” whether it’s your online stuff, or whether it’s your real life stuff, there’s still going to be these people that I know, that are going to love me, and that are going to surround me, and to be so grateful for that.

I think it can also be in the small things, like, “I am so grateful … ” I think about this every once in a while, when I’m driving. “I’m so grateful that I can sit in … ” I could go off on a lot of these. [crosstalk 00:55:36]

Lindsay Ostrom: I told you. He’s a gratitude champ.

Bjork Ostrom: It could potentially be weird. It’s like gratitude, but also there’s a weird technology tie-in with it. I’m so grateful that I can go somewhere in my car, and I can listen to the radio. Literally, I can turn a button on my car, and it tunes in a hundred different people talking about different things, and it’s … I don’t even have to think about it, and it just does it, and how cool is that? Maybe it’s a podcast. Maybe you’re listening to this in your car, and think about the fact that Lindsay and I are sitting here in St. Paul, and we’re recording this, and you’re driving in your car, which in and of itself is totally awesome, that you have this car that zips you around different places. You’re hearing a podcast that we record, and then package up, and then send to you, and wow. I’m so grateful that we can be doing stuff like that.

I think when I start to recognize both the macro and the micro things that I can be grateful for, it’s almost like … It’s like I find this little secret … I’m making this analogy up on the spot, but this little secret room in the house, and it’s like there’s all of these cool things in it. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, and look at this. There’s this widget or doodad.” I feel like I want everybody to come around and be like, “And then look at this. You can flip this switch, and then light shows up. Isn’t that the coolest thing?” I can pick up this little, tiny little brick, which is an iPhone I’m holding right now, and I can press two buttons, and then it calls 100 miles, and I can talk to my friend, and we can have a conversation. I’m going to stop there.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. One thing-

Bjork Ostrom: The idea is this micro-gratitude for things not even related to your business, or a blog, or things like that. It’s just daily life things that you can be really, really grateful for, that help to combat the jealousy side of, “I don’t have that. I wish I had that. I want more of that.” I think when you recognize all of the things that you do have, even if they’re small, micro things, that it helps the teeter totter even out a little bit, or to go more towards gratitude. The gratitude is heavier than the jealousy.

Lindsay Ostrom: Right. One thing, two things I was going to say. An author that I follow, her name is Rachel Held Evans, and she recently … I think she wrote a post about this, but talked about how one of the most powerful tools that she’s found for combating cynicism … She wasn’t talking about jealousy specifically, but cynicism, and just a cynical mindset, and attitude, and heart, and whatever. It was wonder, and that really reminds me a lot of what you’re saying. I feel like it’s the line between gratitude, because you’re saying, “I’m thankful for this radio in my car,” but it’s also just practicing wonder at things, at the world, and at the relationships in your life, and the people in the macro to the micro, to everywhere in between.

Gratitude and wonder, and I think sometimes wonder is easier to practice than gratitude, which leads into my second thing I wanted to say, which … I mentioned this in the post, but I definitely know what it’s like to be in a place where you cannot feel gratitude well, and deeply. Yeah. I just know what that’s like, and I know that in those moments, you hear people say, “Well, just practice gratitude,” and it’s like, “Okay. Kind of. I get it. I’m there, but like, I can’t.”

Bjork Ostrom: Things are really hard.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, and things are really hard, and it’s hard. It’s really hard to practice gratitude. It’s a lot easier to practice gratitude when things are …

Bjork Ostrom: Going well.

Lindsay Ostrom: Going well, and so I just want to acknowledge that, just the difficulty that that is, and I don’t have any magic solution for that. I will say that I feel like, having been in a place where it was really hard for me to practice gratitude even though I knew that I wanted to, and that I needed to in order to improve my mindset, and my mentality, and all of that, I couldn’t. Now being in a place where I feel like I can do that better, hopefully that’s an encouragement to anybody who is in a place of feeling like, “Bleh,” about gratitude, and just that it’s too hard.

Honestly, it’s pretty vague. That’s why in this post, hopefully there are some tangible things, that it’s like, literally start by just unfollowing, okay? You don’t have to feel. You just press the button. You just unfollow. Gratitude is like, you can’t press a button for that. That’s a heart and mind thing that you have to cultivate, and I think hopefully some of the things in this post act as the steps on the bridge, to get to the point where ultimately, what you can do is feel and practice gratitude. It’s not easy, and there are definitely times when it is not easier than others, if that makes sense.

Bjork Ostrom: No. I think that’s good, and I think it’s good perspective, because I know that there’s going to be people listening all across the board. People that feel like, “Oh, yeah. I can get that. That totally applies,” and then there will be other people that listen, and they’ll feel tension in mentally being grateful for things, because things are so difficult.

Lindsay Ostrom: You can even know it. You can know that that’s going to help you, and still, it’s really hard to actually feel that. Tuck that one in your back pocket, and just keep it back there. Just let it simmer on the back burner for a while.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s great. All right. Here we go. Wrapping up.

Lindsay Ostrom: I know. That was a long one. This is what happens when you invite me on to talk about feelings.

Bjork Ostrom: No. It was good, and I think that, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, that so much of this world isn’t necessarily the tips, and the tricks, and the do this. All you have to do is change this, and then this happens. It’s the internal stuff that we deal with, and it’s the emotional things, and that crosses over into the business side, which I think we usually think of as very left brain. I think a lot of it has to do with the emotional side of how we process through decisions, and relationships, and our emotions, and things like that. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks. It was fun as always, and I enjoyed the tea latte-

Lindsay Ostrom: Tea latte.

Bjork Ostrom: … that you had made.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yes. You’re welcome.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s almost done now. We’re going to wrap it up. That is a wrap for episode number … I don’t know what episode number it is. 39, I think, but I’ll have officially given an intro when I’m recording it. If you want to check out this post, you could just Google “Jealousy Pinch of Yum,” and that will take you there, but that’s a wrap. Thanks so much for checking it out, and we will talk to you guys again next week, same time, same place.

Lindsay Ostrom: See you later.

Bjork Ostrom: See you.