Praising Success, Acknowledging Awesomeness and NOT BEING JELLY!

A brilliant South Park Episode of our Hero Wendy Testaburger in “The Hobbit” getting “Jelly” of other peoples success. Sometimes it’s not easy, but it’s critical to praise those that achieve where praise is due! (Thank you to Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Comedy Central for the image use!).

I am a massive South Park fan.  Yes, I think it’s one of my most favourite Cartoons out there along with Family Guy, American Dad and King of the Hill (every now and then).

During one of their latest Episodes titled “The Hobbit” – it takes a rather rude (but funny) stab at the media’s use of photo-shop in making what they say “Ugly People look beautiful”.  It ends up going down a very mean (but sorry very funny path) of saying Kim Kardashian is a “Hobbit” who was turned into a “Beautiful Person” by the use of photoshop.

The hero of this episode is actually Wendy Testaburger – one of the main protagonists “Stan Marsh’s” girlfriend. She is intelligent, a feminist and quite against photoshop being used in a way of making the common girl insecure and contributing to body image problems today.

Where the episode goes on a very funny path is that in trying to prove a point, she takes one of the schools “Ugly Girls” and does a photoshop photo of her. Once she circulates this across the school, everyone now assumes the “Ugly” girl is “Beautiful” showing a microcosm as to how photoshop has obviously been used this way for celebrities worldwide.

This ends up infuriating Wendy, who created the direct opposite result of what she set out to do and she gets frustrated and starts trying to convince people at her school why they are wrong thinking that.

She loses control of the situation and ends up attacking the “Ugly” girl she originally protected by trying to convince everyone she actually is ugly and they have fallen for photoshop. Wendy ends up becoming public enemy #1 with the school counselor and everyone saying she’s “Jelly” and she should stop being “Jel” (which is slang younger term for “Jealousy”).    As the amusing story unfolded it became less about photoshop and more about Wendy “being Jel and a Hater” and just jealous of other peoples success.

I was personally quite upset yesterday, I found out two people that I considered friends have actually been backstabbing me.  I know as I get more public and successful this is only going to get worse and I know the motive is coming out of people being jealous of me.  Please don’t think I am being arrogant or egotistical or anything – I still feel I am miles off the true success I am after, but despite the best work I do to improve myself – personal attacks against me are on the rise.  Especially my female friends & clients who are more wealthy and successful than myself in a business sense – they only tell me that the personal attacks increase in number and get progressively louder as you achieve more.  This makes sense as  people get more Jelly, the harder they will go after me – so time for me to get used to it which I am!

Going back to the episode, it’s one of my favourite and it’s got me thinking about my own life and especially what I have seen happen to my friends and me personally:

– As we get more successful, more people get “Jelly” of us and often do mean things to us to make themselves feel better.

In Australia (if you are not from here), we have a great culture of mate ship, support, ethics and hardwork.  Unfortunately, we have a small negative to all this “Tall Poppy Syndrome”.  When people succeed, it’s very cultural to assume they are “Shonky” and get negative to a person based on this.

Unfortunately this tends to happen to women more than men – and sadly, the biggest offender is often women against women in this regard.  Please don’t think I am being sexist or anything, I am pro-women, raised by a Feminist Mother who was a Police Inspector and I think women have plenty of edges over men in business (especially in being direct, not being bound by ego and focused on relationships).

Women against other women in Australia is honestly a bit of an issue – and plenty of my female friends support this.  My mother herself based on her successful career ironically got most of her sexual discrimination from other women – and we both feel that it was more driven by “Tall Poppy Syndrome”.

I think this is quite sad and even myself personally isn’t immune to this.  One of my great friends and clients to this day from Matt Craig (from MindArc Digital Agency) started exactly the same time I did in business.  Even though I feel pride in being his Marketing Mentor, he has made so much more money than me! When I met with him the other day he has this new Tag Heuer watch and guess what I thought when I saw it:

– I felt Jelly of Him!

Yes, you got me. I looked at Matt with all his staff, more money and bigger watch – and I felt jealous. I immediately caught my negative thinking process and told myself:

– Naughty Edward! Support achievement!

Then I immediately shifted my thinking process to stop being Jelly of Awesome Matt Craig – who deserves every bit of success he has (and more I think).

The majority of my Personal Mentoring clients are female and its quite sad – they are often victims of back-stabbing, abuse, isolation and passive aggression as they get more successful – sadly from other women! I think the perpetrators of this form of bullying should remember back to people like my poor mother that spent their lives fighting for women’s rights – and these perpetrators must also be careful not to become the same men that originally were the villians that feminism had to fight against to begin with.

Talking both genders now, I think it’s important for everyone to challenge and not entertain thinking that is Jelly in nature.  Sure, nothing wrong with looking at someone who has it better than you and positively moving for it – but that is a far cry of being Jelly!

As above, please don’t think I am preaching – I am guilty too and whenever my sensitive and pathetic male ego is hurt (and this is where you win ladies, you don’t have male ego!) I get over it as quickly as possible and make sure I praise achievement where it’s due.

I hope you enjoyed this article and here is too celebrating success! And slipping this one in, if you love success make sure you check out my Awesome Marketing Vault full of Top Sales & Marketing Strategies perfect for Small Business Owners!

Thank you from Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and Person who does slightly suffer from the Jelly Monster every now and then!