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"  I was sitting at dinner with a girlfriend the other day (admittedly) gabbing about a mutual acquaintance who vacillates between acting like the most supportive friend in the world and also the most thoughtless. &amp;quot;She can be a real shine blocker,&amp;quot; my friend said as she poked at her seitan salad. &amp;quot;Huh?&amp;quot; I replied. &amp;quot;You know, she blocks your shine,&amp;quot; she replied. Cue Big Boi&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Shine Blockas.&amp;quot; If my friend had had a shot of Maker&amp;#039;s with her salad, I have no doubt she would have stepped up on that cafeteria table and broken it down with the chorus: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m on my grind shawty, don&amp;#039;t block my shine shawty,&amp;quot; and so on.      Big Boi Ft. Gucci Mane - Shine Blockas from zachwolfe.com/live on Vimeo. And then it clicked. A shine blocker is that person who just can&amp;#039;t be happy for you in your best moments. The girlfriend who&amp;#039;s more likely to make a face than offer a high five when you tell her you&amp;#039;re launching a new business, getting married or having a baby. Shine blocker. There couldn&amp;#039;t have been a better description. Truthfully, I&amp;#039;ve been on both ends of the shine-blocking equation. So it&amp;#039;s not without empathy that I&amp;#039;ve experienced being subject to a shine blocker. I cried when my older sister called to tell me she&amp;#039;d gotten engaged eight months after she started dating her Jewish doctor boyfriend. And not even happy tears. I wasn&amp;#039;t ready for her to get married and start her own family. A year and a half later when she called to announce that she was pregnant, I felt incredibly excited for her and her husband and even myself, but that same wave of anxiety washed over me as I realized I was now TWO life steps behind her. At least this time I kept my nerves to myself. And as her belly grew, my  feelings of, well, jealousy, faded, replaced by purely happy anticipation. But for the most part, I&amp;#039;ve been too wrapped up in my own moment to let the shine blocker ruin it. I had a friend who was so frustrated with her relationship drought that she couldn&amp;#039;t be happy I&amp;#039;d met a nice guy. Rather than deal with a grimace every time his name came up, I stopped talking about my relationship with her altogether, which didn&amp;#039;t exactly bring us closer together.  I&amp;#039;ve never ended a friendship because of a shine block, but it has certainly shaped the information I share with different people and how I choose to share it. It&amp;#039;s just as important to celebrate victories in life as it is to support each other in times of need, right? If you still don&amp;#039;t know what I&amp;#039;m talking about, take a lesson from Big Boi. And if you can relate, consider these three tips I&amp;#039;ve told myself: 1. It&amp;#039;s kind of like smiling when you feel like crap. Fake it til you actually feel it. Celebrate their success, and eventually that positive energy will feel genuine. 2. Embrace their success as your own (while giving them the room to soak up the spotlight) by becoming a part of the celebration. Help throw the baby shower. Offer to shop for office d\u00E9cor for her new job. Bonus: That friend will want to offer to return the favor when your moment comes around. 3. And perhaps most importantly, learn from your jealousy. Understand why you&amp;#039;re jealous so you can channel it into positive energy. If you&amp;#039;re envious of your friend for starting a new organic food business, maybe that&amp;#039;s because you&amp;#039;ve been wanting to start your own business, too. Take that energy you&amp;#039;re expending on jealousy to figure out how you can start something inspiring in your life, too. Want more from Jessica? Follow her on Twitter. Credit: Getty Images/Cultura "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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