My Envy

[Lemonvariable72]

I think I have a lot of envy in my life, and I'm sick of it. I feel envy for those beautiful people, especially those with good jobs or those in university. I feel envy for those happy couples, especially beautiful ones that seem successful. People who drive around in nicer cars, while I get the bus to a 11 dollar an hour job. I have no idea why I should envious of these people, as what has happened to me is a result of my own decisions, and it hasn't turned out so bad. Maybe its because what these people have is what I so desperately crave. I want the nice house, the nice car, the pretty girlfriend. Maybe when someone feels jealousy or envy it speaks more to the person feeling it then it does the object. Just some people make it look so easy. Thankfully I have a plan this time to be successful, two actually. I hope it goes well. Does anyone else feel this way?

[vorlon13]

Some years ago, a neighbor of mine passed away. I always considered that family to have been desperately poor and struggling for decades. The daughter asked me to put some photos on a CD for her to pass out and I agreed.

There was not one picture of that man where he did not have a joyful expression on his face, no matter what he was doing.

[Aoi Magi]

Envy can be a good thing if you use it positively to improve your own life. Feelings of hate occurs to us all, but it's up to us to control and deal with it.

[TreeSapNest]

Perhaps dwell a little on what your aquisition of those things will do to others around you who are just like you.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Brother I hear you because I also struggle with envy. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that I have reached that point in my life where I now have fewer days before me than behind. Some of my former and otherwise average classmates have achieved great professional success. In other areas of my life I have put forth tremendous effort only to not have it pay off.

I deal with this by reminding myself that all I am really seeing is the public part of other people’s lives and not what’s happening to them below the surface. Career success may come at the cost of friends and family. That hot girlfriend could be a gold-digging whore. The respected leader could be pederastic drug-addict. Having known several very wealthy people, people who inherited yachts, multiple summerhouses, and a shitload of money, I can honestly say that they really are not that much happier than anyone else. Also, I recognize that at some crucial decision points I made different choices than those whom I envy. In some cases the price of success in one area seemed to be not worth sacrificing other things of value.

Even still, I must say that the greatest help I have found in overcoming envy has been my faith in the Lord. I believe that success comes from the good of the Lord that acts through each person. Thus I do not envy the person themselves but rejoice in the good things that have come into the world through them. The flip side to this is that I do not consider myself the ultimate source of the good that comes into the world through me; but rather, I am thankful to the Lord for using me in that capacity. I’m sure you can find a way to translate that idea into some secular equivalent.
Best of Luck.

[Jenny A]

I think I have a lot of envy in my life, and I'm sick of it. I feel envy for those beautiful people, especially those with good jobs or those in university. I feel envy for those happy couples, especially beautiful ones that seem successful. People who drive around in nicer cars, while I get the bus to a 11 dollar an hour job. I have no idea why I should envious of these people, as what has happened to me is a result of my own decisions, and it hasn't turned out so bad. Maybe its because what these people have is what I so desperately crave. I want the nice house, the nice car, the pretty girlfriend. Maybe when someone feels jealousy or envy it speaks more to the person feeling it then it does the object. Just some people make it look so easy. Thankfully I have a plan this time to be successful, two actually. I hope it goes well. Does anyone else feel this way?

Envy is an ugly emotion to deal with and we have all dealt with it at one time or another. I think that you are right that it speaks more to the person feeling it than it does the object of envy. There are two choices: to wish the other person down in the dirt with you; or to wish yourself better off.

It sounds to me like you have chosen the positive choice with your envy, i.e. accepting responsibility for your position and planning for a better personal future.

I understand that there are certain things in life we just can't realistically expect to achieve even though others have them and may even have been born with them. Envying that kind of good fortune is hard to deal with, because you can't expect to have it ever. That's an emotion it's better to find away to switch off. For myself, enjoying what I have with renewed attention is the only way to do that I know of to deal with that one.

[LastPoet]

I think I have a lot of envy in my life, and I'm sick of it. I feel envy for those beautiful people, especially those with good jobs or those in university. I feel envy for those happy couples, especially beautiful ones that seem successful. People who drive around in nicer cars, while I get the bus to a 11 dollar an hour job. I have no idea why I should envious of these people, as what has happened to me is a result of my own decisions, and it hasn't turned out so bad. Maybe its because what these people have is what I so desperately crave. I want the nice house, the nice car, the pretty girlfriend. Maybe when someone feels jealousy or envy it speaks more to the person feeling it then it does the object. Just some people make it look so easy. Thankfully I have a plan this time to be successful, two actually. I hope it goes well. Does anyone else feel this way?

I have those feelings too. It usually ends up reinforcing my will to make better in life. It isn't a bad thing until your envy is focused on a particular objective.

[Tonus]

Maybe when someone feels jealousy or envy it speaks more to the person feeling it then it does the object. Just some people make it look so easy. Thankfully I have a plan this time to be successful, two actually.

I think that this happens in part because we are the center of our own little universe, and everyone around us is a bit player. So when we see them doing particularly well, it seems unfair because they're not the star of the show, we are! We have a number of mechanisms for dealing with this. We may try to convince ourselves that the things they have do not make them any better (which can be quite effective, in that it can lead us to decide that we don't need those things to feel better about ourselves). Fewer people decide to figure out how they got those nice things, and see if they can apply that formula themselves. And that can be a key to realizing success. Because if we agree that hey, they probably earned those things --and therefore deserve them-- then maybe we deserve them as well.

Looks like you might be in that latter group, having hatched a couple of plans to achieve success. Just remember that successful people fail a lot more often than anyone else, because they keep failing until they succeed, whereas a lot of people will fail until they quit.

[Lemonvariable72]

Maybe when someone feels jealousy or envy it speaks more to the person feeling it then it does the object. Just some people make it look so easy. Thankfully I have a plan this time to be successful, two actually.

I think that this happens in part because we are the center of our own little universe, and everyone around us is a bit player. So when we see them doing particularly well, it seems unfair because they're not the star of the show, we are! We have a number of mechanisms for dealing with this. We may try to convince ourselves that the things they have do not make them any better (which can be quite effective, in that it can lead us to decide that we don't need those things to feel better about ourselves). Fewer people decide to figure out how they got those nice things, and see if they can apply that formula themselves. And that can be a key to realizing success. Because if we agree that hey, they probably earned those things --and therefore deserve them-- then maybe we deserve them as well.

Looks like you might be in that latter group, having hatched a couple of plans to achieve success. Just remember that successful people fail a lot more often than anyone else, because they keep failing until they succeed, whereas a lot of people will fail until they quit.

Sort of. My last plan was partially successful, but I wound up in a college program for a career that would have burned me out like a bulb. Last plan blew up in my face when I made the wrong call. So I won't couint my chickens till they hatch. I would like to hear about weather others feel this and how they feel and with it.

[bennyboy]

If you are regularly experiencing jealousy, then I recommend this: redefine success in less shallow terms. You may never find yourself in a hot tub with ten naked hoes and with your BMW's diamond-encrusted hood ornament hanging from your neck. But you CAN become a nearly-perfect moral person, the kind whom people of all walks of life can learn from and look up to. You may never land a perfect 10 soul mate, and raise beautiful babies in a luxurious home. But you CAN use philosophy and logic to examine whether that outcome really has any importance beyond your own monkey instincts.

If you define success in terms of those parts of your humanity you have control over, and succeed in using that control to its best benefit, then you are better off than 99% of the people in the world already-- no matter what car they are driving or who they are fucking.