How to stay grateful and not feel like I need to keep up with the Jones’? via /r/gratitude

I have a big group of girl friends, several of whom I’ve known for 30 years (we are 36) and others who we’ve collected along the way. We grew up in a nice area and generally people in the group have achieved a fairly high level of success. I am definitely in the lower income range and our household income is nearly 200k. There are dentists, engineers and surgeons in the group.

I am so grateful for the life I have built with my husband and really proud of where I am at (I changed careers right before Covid and have more than doubled my income), on track to be debt free and just generally in an amazing place.

When I get together with some of these friends, I find they are totally obsessed with social climbing. They are doing amazing, they have been an inspiration to me and yet they are unsatisfied. They have beautiful, aspirational lives, and still they moan about not living next to the NHL players in our city or on the elite streets.

It makes me feel bad about my own success and makes me feel like my joy is not warranted for my happy, comfortable life. It’s really disheartening and it makes me feel like I don’t have much in common with some of these people anymore.

Yesterday a friend of mine was going on about how her neighbourhood will be ruined by low income families moving in. What an awful thing to say. Do these kids and families not deserve a nice place to live?

All of this to say…how do you avoid feeling like you need to keep up with the jones’? If success is a constantly moving target, how does anyone ever feel grateful and satisfied?