To the girl who feels jealous but wishes she wasn't,

It is perfectly normal to feel jealous. We all do.

Often, society ingrains in our heads that jealousy is a mortal sin, a serious evil, a one-way ticket to hell. Of course, envy is an unhealthy feeling that can manifest itself into evil if we allow it to do so. However, if everybody who ever felt jealous went straight to hell, heaven would be a pretty empty place.

We naturally feel jealous of many different types of people in our lives.

How could we not feel jealous of the girl who is dating the guy of our dreams? How could we not feel jealous of the girl who grasps chemistry so perfectly as we struggle for a passing grade? How could we not feel jealous of the girl who won the spot on the sports team or the role we wanted in the play or admission to our dream college as we received a rejection letter?

Our chests feel heavy with remorse as we envy these people. We never want to talk about these emotions--we must be so evil to feel so jealous. But how could we not want to be the girl who "has it all?"

Frequently, we can't control the presence of our jealous feelings. But just as we can quell a fire before it causes too much damage, we can calm our envious resentment.

First of all, nobody "has it all."

The idea of one person having everything is an illusion that we conceive and that social media confirms. But nobody has everything. We know that, yet part of us continues to believe that certain people have perfect lives. However, we can identify what, exactly, we envy about another girl.

Would we be willing to sacrifice our special talents, our passions, our family, or our unique qualities for the approval of a boyfriend? Would we want to leave our other passions behind and let our other talents fall to the wayside as we master the single class that gives us difficulty?

Of course not. We are unique compilations of many talents and qualities that we should not sacrifice for one thing we desire in life.

We also may not like ourselves, but we still have to learn to love ourselves.

These twinges of envy make us not like ourselves very much. And, contrary to what society tells us, that's okay. Nobody (not even someone we envy) looks in the mirror and thinks, "Wow, I really love every part of who I am." We all have physical features, personal qualities, and particular weaknesses that make us not like ourselves very much. But we have to learn to cultivate a deep-rooted love for ourselves by recognizing the full person, the entire masterpiece of who we are. When we realize that we should love our own beautiful collection of strengths and flaws, we can more easily move past the jealousy that may make us not like ourselves very much.

We can convert jealousy into something better.

While we condemn jealousy as one of the greatest evils in this world, we can still convert jealousy into good. How so? Jealousy can become our motivation as we try to become the athlete who secured the spot on the team that we wanted. Jealousy can become our mechanism to move on as we search for other potential lovers and seek out what is meant to be. Jealousy can put things into perspective as we realize that a single trait should not tempt us to want to become somebody else.

As we combat this emotion, we all can understand that we are not alone. We are not evil, we are not monsters, we are not sinners. But we are also stronger and better than this feeling and we cannot let it cripple us. Our solutions lay within self-love, self-motivation, and understanding that we may not feel like we "have it all," but we are unique and have many qualities others would dream of having.