Why Do We Feel Envy?
In a world of endless social comparison, we often find ourselves judging our worth via how we measure up to those around us. How do we compare to our friends, family, or neighbors? Perhaps we experience a sense of smug satisfaction knowing we got a better job offer, a nicer car, or a more expensive home. However, when someone else has something that we want, we experience the opposite: envy. Envy is deeply rooted in a feeling of inferiority–we see someone have something we desire, feel badly about our lack of that thing, and then judge ourselves and others based on that comparison.
Why We Feel Ashamed of Envy
As an emotion, envy gets a bad rap. It is often viewed as an unbecoming, ugly, and unproductive feeling. And truth be told, it can be. Envy is often at the root of damaging behaviors such as bullying or revenge-seeking. To make matters more complicated, because envy is surrounded by such negative stigma, most of us experience high levels of shame when it shows up. Envy is a “bad” emotion, and we are therefore “bad” for feeling it. This shame prevents us from gaining a deeper understanding of the emotion and why it shows up for us.
What Happens When We Don’t Understand Our Envy
If we do not work to understand our envy, and what it says about us, it is highly unlikely that it will be the source of meaningful, positive, and longstanding personal change. When unconfronted, envy is more likely to damage our own self-esteem and potentially the quality of our personal relationships. Envy will not disappear, it is natural to desire what others have. The problem with envy is not experiencing it in the first place, but rather the inability to analyze what it is telling us about ourselves. Envy is prompted by the experience of desire and comparison and, unbecoming or not, this can teach us more about ourselves and what we want from our lives.
Let’s say you have a close friend who recently graduated from their medical residency in a specialized field and will soon be employed at a highly successful private medical office, making a high salary to match. You wrestle with the desire to feel happy for them, to celebrate their success, whilst also struggling with the deep feeling of “why can’t I have that?” At its worst, envy pushes us to resent those who have more than us, and occasionally desire for their downfall. Only then, when your friend’s medical practice fails and their home goes into foreclosure, can you say “Ah, maybe I’m better than them.”
What Your Envy Is Really Telling You
But the answer to envy is not found in the downfall of those we perceive as “better” than ourselves. The answer is in better understanding exactly what we are so envious of. Is it the career, the money, the big house, all of it? Or is it something more subtle: the desire for professional expertise and mastery, the respect your friend garners when they walk in the room, or even their charismatic personality? Envy is born out of insecurity, so what does this person have that is lighting up your preexisting insecurities, and what do you wish to be different about your life and yourself? Envy can point us in the direction of our values, our goals, and our deeper motivations. Envy is not about what we see on the surface of someone else’s life, it is about what we wish could be deeper within our own.
Turning Envy Into Meaningful Change
This is where we can find lasting and meaningful motivation for change. If you applied to medical school, got in, completed the same course of study and residency, got the same exact job in the same office, and lived in the same neighborhood, you would still be unfulfilled. And why is that? Because the solution was never about having what this other person has, but about having more of what you have needed all along.
This is where we can transform envy away from an obsession about others, into an understanding of our own desires. It is not pathological to desire more from our lives or from ourselves, and to use other people as methods of measuring ourselves up against. Envy is an emotion that is necessary and unavoidable, but must be sublimated into something of value. Here we are forced to take responsibility for what envy reveals about our own insecurities, and take action in doing something about them. Find what lurks beneath the surface of your envy, and use it to craft your own path of meaningful, purposeful, and unique change.