I Do Not Envy Anyone

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"Envy is a resource for me," my interlocutors get better after I raise my eyebrows with demonstrative disbelief in response to their words that they do not envy anyone.

"It helps me understand what I want and set myself about the same goal," they reveal their thought further. "After all, it is much more constructive and correct to experience envy through admiration for others. Transforming this initially negative experience into a positive one."

"Admiring a successful person, rather than being jealous of him, is the key to your own success and achievements."

Well, while recognizing the logic and perspective behind such an approach, I, nevertheless, usually continue to doubt the words of these people. Not believing their statements about the fact that they never envy others (it is in the classical sense of the word - that is, they do not suffer from the contemplation of the success of another person and do not reveal this suffering through the intention of destroying a given success or a given successful person).

First, because I am convinced that feelings are not servants of reason … They are not experienced on command. Not after thinking about how it would be right to feel in a given situation.

And secondly, because I understand that before something is transformed, it is necessary to realize the transformed feeling and at least briefly experience it. That is, in this particular context - to envy before admiring.

It turns out that these people have envy in any case. Well, or was. And the faster and more automated its so-called transformation took place (if it happened), the less, I think, they had time to sort out their real desires and needs.

Often, when imitating someone else's success, goals are set much faster than a qualitative study of how desirable they are. And do they really satisfy the real needs of this particular person.

Agree, to see a new iPhone model from another and go straight to the store to purchase the same is easy enough (since the development of lending does not stand still). But is such a purchase really satisfying? Great question. And the big question is whether this purchase is a sign of an accomplished human development.

In general, it does NOT seem to me that the automatic substitution of admiration for envy is definitely a good solution. And I do not believe that it is necessary to strive for just such an almost instant transformation (which would then allow us to assert that there was no envy).

I don’t think that the absence of envy is any good sign. It happens that a person is reasonably sure that he does not envy anyone solely because he organizes his life in such a way that this feeling does not manifest itself too clearly. Simply put - so that the conditions under which it arises were not created around it.

The easiest way to achieve this is to build close relationships exclusively in a community devoid of apparently successful people.

A person is able to avoid the painful experience of envy when there is no one in his close circle who has achieved something that he himself cannot easily achieve.

I, of course, have serious doubts that such communities exist. But I admit that there are groups that are very close to this. Uniformly unsuccessful (or homogeneously successful - which is the same in this context) and relatively unambiguous.

People who seek to avoid envy are usually looking for them to communicate. They perceive such companies as warmer, honest and sincere.

You can also organize your life so that there are no successful people in your environment.

This can be done if, on a conscious level, you ignore the achievements of relatives and friends, not noticing them (successes) or ridiculing a more successful person for something else (focusing attention on his shortcomings, for example, or mistakes).

And if the ignore still does not give the expected effect (for the "upstart" achievements are too obvious or he talks about them too actively), then you can again return to the previous option - not finding the time, opportunity or desire to meet with such a person. And finding it only for those who are about your level.

And finally, the last way that came to my mind to organize a life without envy is focus on admiring only those people who are outside the boundaries of personal space. Someone whom you do not personally know and will most likely never recognize.

So, for example, it is now fashionable to idolize Steve Jobs, read Warren Buffett's quotes, study the biography of Salvador Dali and dream of achieving the same thing that those achieved by following their example, and not paying attention to the fact that, for example, a childhood friend built 2 -storey cottage while you collect the down payment on the mortgage for a one-room apartment. Or a sister gave birth to a third child at a time when you cannot decide on your chosen one.

That is, to admire successful people, but not to be angry and not to collapse about it. So what if Bill Gates has billions of dollars and Stephen King has written hundreds of novels. Well done!

To summarize the above:

In my opinion, you can organize the absence of envy in your life only by organizing its complete displacement into the background

Or, to put it another way:

You can only convince yourself of the absence of envy by allowing it to become the dominant, albeit unconscious, mental process in your life.

A well-known psychological rule works here - that the least conscious, controls life to the greatest extent.

Let me explain the idea with an example:

If a person, instead of learning to live, periodically experiencing fear, builds a bunker deep underground and settles there forever, then according to his subjective feelings and observations, he may well not be afraid of anything. There, behind the concrete walls. But for an outside observer it is quite obvious that his fear has not gone anywhere. Against - now he completely defines the life of this person.

It's all the same with envy.

So what do you do? How to build his life for a person who does not want to destroy the success of his loved ones, his relationship with them, but also does not intend to destroy himself, to deprive himself of success and prospects?

So far I do not have a definite answer to this question. In therapeutic groups "Sprouts of Success in the Field of Envy"that we conduct with Tatiana Zakharchuk, we work on the basis of the hypothesis that envy and truth can be transformed and experienced through admiration, respect and gratitude. But not automatically or instantly. This is work that is usually done through effort.

And it is realized not in the head of the envious person, not in his controlled fantasies, but in contact with the one whom he envies.

That is, if the girl from the example above turns out to be able to tell her sister, who gave birth to her third child, how she admires her ability to organize her life, build relationships with a man, raise children (realizing at this moment that with much greater pleasure she I would tell her or someone from mutual acquaintances that that stupid sow, who, except to give birth, does not know how to do anything else, even to raise offspring decently, and her husband is a stupid bastard who most likely cheats on her …) and at the same time herself does not collapse, does not experience isolating shame or despair, if her self-esteem does not fall to zero, then this means that she managed to make envy bearable.

And it means that it became possible for her to contact those people from the immediate environment who can help her achieve the goals that previously caused her attacks of helplessness and horror.

With those people whom she had previously either avoided or tried to destroy.

Help with advice, real support, feedback …

And this is the formula for your own success.

P. S. To begin with, I recommend doing this not in the field - with friends and family, but in therapeutic groups. There will also be plenty of reasons for envy.