I know, I know the title already sounds somewhat wrong. Allow me to elaborate on that: I'm not talking about the being in a relationship type of jealousy here, what I'm saying is that jealousy and envy can sometimes lead you even further away on the chase of your dreams. In my own experience, I was never really interested in learning foreign languages, except for like English. And even then, I was okay with my average English pronunciation, you know, I was okay with having that mild accent that pretty much every foreigner has when they speak in English. Me having very little interest in language learning totally changed when I felt a very intense envy towards some guys who were able to speak several languages, and they would use them all to communicate. If I only felt admiration, I would just be like "Oh, they're polyglots. That's cool." and move on. But, it was this feeling that I had of wanting to be like them (or even better) that gave me this strong desire of starting to study foreign languages.
That's what I mean with "jealousy and envy can be good sometimes", at least, they can be good to motivate asshole-ish people like me.
Now, that feeling has gotten to me again; while watching a YouTube creator whose name is Quackity, I realized that my English pronunciation is not good enough. Once again, I feel a very strong envy seeing someone who is also Mexican, who also speaks Spanish as his first language, and also learned English through the Internet, being so good at it, and connecting so well with native speakers as if he was a native speaker as well.
And yeah, you will hear this advice everywhere on the language learning community: don't compare yourself to others, but honestly, I don't feel like comparing yourself to others is what's wrong here, that is just normal human behavior. What is wrong, is that people always compare themselves to others and only end up feeling worse about themselves, instead of using those comparisons to see one's areas of improvement, like I do.
Thank you guys for reading, I'll be waiting for your feedback and also your own opinions on this topic.
I totally agree with you. The desire to achieve the same thing others have achieved has definitely been a big motivating factor for me. I see others who can speak and understand a language at really high levels and it makes me want to achieve that too. I feel like there must be another word to describe wanting to do something, or have something that someone else has without disliking them for having it, but I can't think of one. Who knows.
I agree with you fully. My best friend speaks at least 4 different languages fluently. It is what made me strive to continue learning Spanish in school. Inspiration to be better is what motivates people to push their limits to get better at the things they love. I have found that the best way for me to learn Spanish is to join a group in discord that only has one bilingual person of the language you want to learn, but has everyone else only speak the language you are learning. It might require a translater at first, but eventually, it will allow you to learn the language. And if you mess up anything the bilingual person can clarify for you what you meant to say. Have a nice day.