Envy: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.
Jealous: feeling or showing an envious resentment of someone or their achievements, possessions, or perceived advantages.
You’re used to fighting against the feeling of envy and jealousy. It often leaves a bitter unpleasant taste in your minds tongue when it takes over your senses. Interacting with your envy and jealousy usually results in disdain and guilt.
Now you realise you must confront it and make peace with your envy and jealousy. How?
- Make a list of people you’re envious about.
- Figure out what type of people are you envious of (what are the commonalities they share)?
- What is it about them that you envy? AKA What is it you think they have that you are envious of?
You soon realise that envy and jealously merely reveal the virtues and qualities you admire in other people that you have not yet made a part of you.
“In your envy lurks the beginnings of a structure of ambition. You wouldn’t be envious of something if you didn’t believe that that was of value that you should possess.”
“So you lay out your envy and you delve deep into it and find out, well here’s what I want. Because remember your envious because you see other people who have what you want. Good, now all of a sudden you know what you want. Well that’s useful and a little frustrating because you might see that it’s so distance from you.”
“You’d be unlikely to be so envious if you weren’t hiding from yourself what it is that you truly want. You might be scared to admit it because once you admit it, you know what you want and so you know when you’re failing. By hiding what you want from yourself then you can hide to some degree that you’re failing — it’s no wonder people do that it’s a defense mechanism against feeling vulnerability and negative emotion.” — Jordan Peterson
Your envy and jealously reveal where you’re falling short — where you’re failing as a person, and that’s okay because now you have an aim — in fact you have multiple aims to pursue. Now you can take control of your envy and jealously instead of it driving you into dark debilitating mental state of resentment and discontentment.
How you deal with your envy and jealously is by admitting it, confronting it and accepting it. Now you’ve admitted where your failing you can use it to fuel towards betterment. Now you’re not longer hiding from yourself as you move forward towards amelioration of your endlessly fractured Being.
