Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, brings with it a sense of sadness, shame and resentment. It’s a deeply uncomfortable emotion to feel and can lead to destructive behaviours aimed at ruining someone else’s perceived good fortune and luck.
But if you can view envy as providing you with information, then it can be a motivating force that helps you achieve your goals. Before this can happen, you need to understand the roots of envy, how it manifests in your life, and how to use it for personal growth rather than fuel for personal failure.
Firstly, what exactly is envy, apart from being a deadly sin according to some Christian traditions? Envy is the desire to have the possessions, achievements or attributes of another person. This differs from jealousy – another uncomfortable emotion – which tends to arise when you fear losing something you have, typically occurring in a relationship where you worry about losing your partner to another person. Envy is one of the earliest emotions humans experience. Remember being envious of children at school who had the latest must-have toy or top-branded trainers rather than a pair of cheap supermarket copies? Or those children who consistently got the top grades in exams and tests or were popular and everyone wanted to go to their birthday party? So, the roots of envy lie in comparing yourself to someone else and coming up short in some way.
Once envy is triggered, you have a choice of how to respond. For many people, it can result in an urge to damage or destroy someone else’s property. For example, if someone has been given a promotion at work and you feel envious of their success, you might start to spread malicious rumours about their ability to do the job or become uncooperative when they seek your support and ask you to complete a task. In extreme cases, it could lead to violent acts of vandalism or physical harm. This is envy at its most destructive when shame spills over into anger and aggression as a way to stifle internal suffering.
However, if you’re able to recognise envy for what it is and acknowledge the painful feelings it evokes without reacting impulsively, you can choose to use it as motivation towards personal growth. This is not about trying to be the same as someone else, rather you can use envy as a set of clues to help you identify what’s important to you and what you value. To use the example above of someone being promoted at work, you can examine what it is about this situation that leaves you feeling envious. Is it the status of a new job title that you want, or more money, job security, or enhanced professional skills? Once you’ve pinpointed what it is you actually envy, how can you start to make changes in your life towards this goal? Some ways to support goals would be:
- Find a mentor – someone who has what you’ve identified as a personal goal. This might be a career, financial, or lifestyle goal or a specific skill you’re looking to improve. A mentor can support you in finding ways of moving forward with your goal by sharing their own processes as well as being open about challenges and obstacles they’ll have faced along the way.
- Compare yourself to yourself – envy feeds off the tendency to compare yourself to others who appear to have more or are better than you in some way. This is easy to do in a world where people can promote themselves on social media and curate the perfect life in a series of photos and updates. It’s hard not to believe they are having a wonderful time. Rather than comparing yourself to people who are in different circumstances to you, start to compare yourself to yourself. Think about how far you’ve come in life, the difficult periods and situations you’ve gone through and managed. No matter how minor you think your development has been, you will have already achieved a lot. Success isn’t always about getting to the top of Mount Everest; sometimes, taking the first step is a sign of immense courage and growth over time.
- Notice existing achievements – similar to the point above, as well as noticing your own stages of growth and development, start to think about your existing strengths, abilities, attributes and resilience. Someone, somewhere, is probably envious of you.
- Recognise that feeling envy is normal – trying to not experience a feeling will only give it more power and intensity. It’s part of being human to look at others and, sometimes, feel envious, especially if they have had more advantages in life. Allow yourself to feel envy or to grieve for opportunities you may not have had in life. If you get stuck feeling envious, sad, or angry, then seek professional help to move you forward. Self-acceptance is always a work in progress.
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