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Have you ever wanted what someone else has? Or to be like them? What about their money, confidence, fame, business, good looks, or lifestyle? This yearning probably brought you pain and loss of focus. If the desire is really intense, it’s likely causing you to see your life through a lens of lack instead of abundance.
This is the nature of envy.
Nietzsche said that envy is “the most important emotion at work in individual and collective life.” Almost everything we do in life is tied to this emotion, but not everyone’s aware of it. Left uncontrolled, it can cause much unnecessary suffering.
Maybe you’ve had some nasty experiences with envy and want to know more about it. In this post, we’ll look at what envy is, how it has evolved throughout history, and some things you can do to overcome it.
How does envy work?
I like Aristotle’s definition of envy: “pain at the sight of another’s good fortune”, roused by “those who have what we ought to have.” For this emotion to kick in, it involves three things:
- You
- The thing you want
- The person who has the thing you want
Once these three requisites are met, the result is emotional pain.
This feeling isn’t jealousy, either. It’s not the same as envy. Jealousy is a feeling of insecurity or fear over losing someone or something. Marcel Proust said it’s the “insensate agonizing need to possess exclusively.” Envy is covetous. It’s wanting what someone else has, be it a material possession or to be like them.
Consequently, it’s much harder to admit envy because it’s rooted in our vulnerabilities. Can you readily admit to yourself (or somebody else) that you want what someone else has? Jealousy, on the other hand, is easier to admit because it can be justified. Especially if it involves preserving something important, like a relationship, process, or way of living. It’s much harder to castigate someone protecting an established condition than someone wanting something they don’t have.
Moreover, envy isn’t only emotionally painful but it also alters your “vision”: you only see what you lack. The word envy comes from the Latin word invidia, which means “non-sight”. As Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. put it: envy is a “selective blindness.”
But the funny thing is that we don’t feel envious of everyone who has something we want. We feel envy only with those who are similar to us from a perspective of status, wealth, or experience level. The philosopher Alain de Botton wrote, “There are few successes more endurable than those of our ostensible equals”. Bertrand Russell also summed it up well when he said “Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.”
We couldn’t care less if a rich person gets richer. But, for example, if our co-worker gets a hefty raise or promotion, we feel a knot in our stomach.
Envy back then and now
If you look at the way envy works from an early human perspective, it makes sense. If someone in your tribe has more of something (like food or status), then they have a higher chance of surviving and producing offspring. Uneven distribution of food or power could also throw off order within the group. In order to preserve their way of life (much like a response to jealousy), members of the tribe will reproach the person who has this advantage.
We don’t like unfairness and we aren’t hard-wired for gratitude. Those traits didn’t keep us alive. We’re wired for what did: a scarcity mindset.
However, for the past two millennia, we’ve been okay with societal inequality. In his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton sheds light on how the order of older social hierarchies (king, nobles, knights, peasants) went undisputed for a long time.
Regarding the way people viewed order back then, he wrote:
“Just as God wielded absolute power over all creation, from the angels down to the smallest toads, so, too, his appointed rulers on earth were understood to preside over a society where God had given everyone his and her place, from the nobleman down to the farm-hand.”
Figures of power in older times were feared, respected, and praised almost as if they were gods —similar to how society acknowledges today’s celebrities.
Back then, to go against the hierarchical organization of society was not only unheard of and foolish, but sacrilegious. The class structures and uneven distribution of wealth were said to be designed by the divine. In other words, “the gods (or God) wanted it that way.”
Political thinking became more egalitarian only as recently as the seventeenth century, which led to world-changing events like the French and American revolutions, and the rise of capitalism.
Human progress continued to introduce more equality, opportunity, and more things for people to compare themselves to. Now, in the 21st century, we’ve reached a point where pretty much anyone can be and have almost anything they want—an environment that’s rife with envy.
So how do we navigate this complex and painful state of mind?
How to overcome envy
There’s a lot of advice about how to deal with envy like having gratitude journals to straight-out shaming the emotion altogether. But here are three exercises that I’ve found most useful for coping with envy.
1. Admit your envy
I’ve found this method to be the most useful, but difficult to do. Awareness of your envy is a powerful first step because now you know what you’re dealing with. After that, you dissect it.
As discussed earlier, three things are necessary for envy to promulgate: you, another person, and the thing the other person has that you want. You’ll need to understand if the person or the desired thing is driving your envy. It can be both, too.
What if you removed one of those things?
If the other person wasn’t part of the picture, would you still want the object or position?
What if the other person didn’t have the thing you want? Would you feel better?
What if it was taken away from them?
Gaining this understanding is hard because you need to be honest with the roots of your desire, and it can reveal something you might not like about yourself. But it’s important because it brings clarity and can do wonders to quench your envy. Not to mention the growth and awareness you’d gain by facing your flaws and insecurities.
2. Have you considered all that comes with what you want?
The psychiatrist Dr. Neel Burton said, “In life, we are rich not only by what we have but also and above all by what we do not.”
The more commitments we make and the more things we buy have an additional price to pay in some form:
- A first-time home owner has to deal with extra responsibilities like keeping their lawn fresh, a higher air conditioning bill, and an assortment of things breaking that they have to fix themselves.
- A highly paid and sought-after lawyer must trade long working hours to sustain his career.
- A famous social media influencer must publish new content around the clock to hold the microscopic attention span of their followers; sometimes putting out material that aligns with making more profit at the expense of their personal values.
For everything that you want, you must consider what you’re willing to give up. If you want to be like someone else, it’s easy to pick certain things about them we admire, like their looks, wealth, or status. But highlight reels don’t show you everything. If you’re not willing to adopt their desires, self-image, daily routine, or outlook on life, then there’s no point in envying them. Especially if your values don’t align with theirs. You’d be happier being who you are now, and you probably dodged a bullet.
3. Try emulation instead
Despite its bad reputation, not all envy is bad. It can be beneficial and life-changing if it’s channeled into action. The healthy alternative to envy is emulation: the ambition to equal or exceed someone you admire, like an older brother or mentor. Emulation drives you to be better, but without self-criticism. It shows you your own potential through someone else. In the attempt to emulate someone, you won’t have compromised your character but improved it by the time you attain the goal.
The point of these tips isn’t to renounce everything that you envy. Instead, it’s to look at what’s driving this emotion, question it, and take the right action: abandon the absurd desire or do something about it that will make you a better person.
Envy is inevitable
Envy pervades everyone. It’s a natural emotion that was useful for keeping order within a small group of people, but not so much in modern society. It can debilitate if it’s not channeled correctly. That’s why we need to confront our envious attitudes and make sure that our desires are in line with what’s important to us.
Despite envy’s pernicious effects on mental health, it’s necessary to keep civilization going. It drives the world economy (consumerism), creates new businesses (“being employed is slavery”), puts laws into action (corruption and greed), and promotes self-improvement (emulation). It’s everywhere. Warren Buffett said, “It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.” There’s no way to get rid of it permanently.
But that doesn’t mean you need to follow envy’s mantra—that life is a zero-sum game; that either you have success or others have success, but not both. You know better. With proper awareness and self-analysis, you can overcome envy and use it to your advantage.
