How to Turn Envy into Inspiration

I saw an Instagram post of my friend last week, where he had captured his transition from a paunch-sporting, belly-over-buckle drooping, ‘L’ size-wearing, physical construct that weighed 86 kilos in 2019 to a 6-pack-ab-sporting, body-fit-tshirt-wearing, elicit-chick-drooling, physique weighing just 69 kilos in 2020 – largely akin to the ones you see in weight reduction ads that showcase transitions as ‘before’ & ‘after’…

Then I looked down at my physical construct... Even though I was hitting the gym 4 – 5 days a week, taking nutrition supplements, measuring my diet and watching a lot of youtube videos to incorporate the right exercises, I wasn’t there yet, but my friend was… And that made me very jealous. 

For a moment I thought of giving up on my attempts, thinking I did not have the right body type. After a while, I tried to justify it to myself stating that I am able to spend only 1 hour in the gym while it may be that he is spending more time. Also, he’s got more money and so he’s probably even invested in a private trainer, which I can’t afford. There was also a brief moment of guilt, when I swore off social media, saying it’s this platform that’s responsible for evoking such negative sentiments in me… With this ‘mental conditioning’ I was somewhat able to subdue these pangs of ‘jealousy’ that had gripped me since the time I saw his post. 

Does this sound familiar to you too? Can you relate to this feeling that I speak of? For you, it may not be so much about the physique but it could be about your best friend getting into a premier management institute while you could not, though you believed you too worked very hard for it. Or maybe for you this feeling had emanated when you saw your younger brother & his wife head off to an exotic foreign vacation while you cannot afford that right now… Or maybe when your boss decided to award a colleague for his contributions towards a project that you were also a part of, you complained to a few ‘like-minded others’ about the politics at work. If all or some of this sounds familiar, relax, you are among millions of others who experience envy. 

Let me make it very clear at the onset, I’m not trying to classify this feeling you and I experience as right or wrong; neither am I trying to characterize it as good or bad. All I’m attempting to do here is understand that sentiment – why and how it emanates, and turn that into something constructive for ourselves because more often than not, envy does leave us demotivated. 

Let me put up some numbers to make you feel more comfortable…. A research conducted by the university of California, San Diego in 2015, showed that about 80% of people aged under 30 years experienced strong pangs of envy with people their own age under different social scenarios including romantic relationships. This number only dropped to 69% for people aged above 50 years. So no matter your age or sex, jealousy or envy is a feeling that we all have to experience at different stages in our lives; sometime even multiple times a day! 

 Psychologically envy is an amalgamation of different emotions – but predominantly anger, fear and sadness, which in turn provokes certain types of behavior that tell the world that you are feeling envious. When we are growing up we are mostly taught to control our behavior to the stimulus, and when we reach a certain age where society expects us to act ‘mature’, we try not to let any kind of stimulus evoke jealousy. But we often fail. When confronted with such a stimulus we may choose to control our behavior by not expressing our emotions via words but our body language very often says it all. This happens because most of us have only learnt to subdue the symptoms but not how to address the underlying illness… if we choose to call it that.

If I were to create a model to showcase how this works it would probably look something as depicted above. The model shows how a normal individual would function under an envy causing stimulus. I would define it as a unique behavior type portrayed by an individual when confronted with a stimulus that invokes a complex set of emotions simultaneously. 

Invoking of emotions is a reflex action. It’s like withdrawing your hand when you touch something hot. But does this mean that we are chemically pre-programmed to experience envy and are we a slave to this sentiment?  

Yes & No. Yes, we are chemically programmed for it and No we are not a slave to it. 

Let’s look at the following situations & try to answer for ourselves, how we would react…? 

• If you see a team member bag recognition for scoring a goal in a football match in which you are also playing? - You probably experience envy if you are a fellow striker
• If you see a team member bag recognition for scoring a goal at a critical stage in the match, when you feel you’ve lost the game? - You still might experience some amount of envy but now you might also be happy that you won (especially if money was at stake) & approve the recognition. 
• If you see Cristiano Ronaldo, your team member bag a recognition for scoring a goal in the football match with ease? - You might be inspired and think he deserves every bit of it! 

If you are not able to relate to the above example, you could try another one… 

• If you see your friend get into MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), while you did not make it, despite trying your best? - You probably might experience envy 
• If you see your friend, who lost his limbs in an accident last year, get into MIT, while you did not make it, despite trying your best effort? - You might not only experience envy to the lowest degree but also be happy for him 
• If you see your son/daughter get into MIT, while you did not make it in your days? - You might feel extremely proud and think he/she deserves every bit of it! 

In the above situations, the stimulus is the same – ‘did not get recognized’ or ‘did not make it to MIT’. It all happened to you – the same individual. So ideally, you should have had a consistent experience in all three scenarios. Right? But you do not... Why? 

That’s because there is a set of customized ‘personal criteria’ that we all evaluate very consciously (sometimes even subconsciously) before emotions are invoked that lead to an envy displaying behavior. This set of ‘personal criteria’ acts like a switch that can either trigger one type of emotion or another. Personal criteria is an individual’s perception of how the stimulus corresponds to one’s own beliefs, self-image or expectations. If the stimulus is in conflict with these criteria then you experience a set of emotions (like anger, sadness, discontent, longing, fear, etc…) that provoke certain behaviors that we call envy. If the stimulus is in sync with these criteria then you experience a different set of emotions (like pride, happiness or even inspiration!) 

Let me illustrate this in a flow chart using the same example as above to understand it better -

Thus, its personal criteria, not the stimulus or the emotion that needs to be controlled to influence your behavior. The fact is also that most of the times you cannot control the stimulus and we know for sure that emotions are like reflex triggers. But if you think about it deeply, you as an individual probably do not care much about the stimulus or may be even the behavior as much as you care about the emotions that the stimulus invokes within you. Sometimes these emotions can be so strong that they can lead to depression or lead people to take self-destructive actions.

Assessing your Personal Criteria

Now that we have understood that probably the only way to control our feelings of envy is by having strong personal criteria, let’s examine what they are a little more closely.

Personal criteria can be defined as a set of rules and beliefs that are held by an individual about himself/herself or about the society at large, which impact the way in which that individual experiences any stimulus. It can be visualized as a lens through which we all experience the world around us. This set of personal criteria is not limited to the way you experience envy alone, but is broadly responsible for eliciting any emotional response. The underlying reasons for these personal criteria is dictated by our values – the beliefs we live by.

The arena of values is extremely broad and there exists a lot of reference material, both from a scientific as well as from a spiritual stand point that can be analyzed by you, but for the context of this discussion we will limit the range of personal criteria to those that invoke a sense of envy.

The first step in unearthing your own personal criteria, i.e.., the lens through which you view the stimulus that causes envy or jealousy, is to consciously question the causes of your discomfort with the stimulus by asking ‘wh’ type of questions till the time you reach the root cause. Let us look at example (2) and see how we can unearth our own personal criteria – 

• Why is there a discomfort in me that my friend made it to MIT & I did not?

Because I too worked very hard maybe even harder than him

• Why do I think I worked harder than my friend?

Because he went for a movie just 2 weeks before GMAT, while I sacrificed going for it.

• So what does that prove?

It proves that I’m not as smart as him and I’m afraid all my friends and family will perceive it that way too.

• Why does that matter to you?

Because I believe I have always been seen as the smarter one in our group

You can opt for such a line of questioning till you unearth the basic fundamental belief that’s causing a conflict - in this case it was the belief that ‘I am smarter than my friend’. There may have been empirical evidences of this in the past (in terms of rankings in school level, etc...) that forged this belief. In the long run the mind forgets the evidence and only retains the belief (I am the smartest), which when reinforced again & again becomes your personal criteria (or lens through which you experience the stimulus).

These beliefs can be as superficial as being ‘Good Looking’ to something as ‘trustworthy’ and when a stimulus presents itself that is in conflict with this belief, one experiences Envy.

I did attempt to develop a common set of questions that I thought we could use here but I realized that it can be quite impossible to achieve that. The easier mechanism here is to know the direction of your self-questioning – to (re)-discover your beliefs.

It is probably very tough to address all of your existing personal criteria at one go. You cannot expect to hold a 1 or 2 day workshop to discover all of them. The best way to identify your personal criteria is to evaluate them when you experience a strong sense of Envy (I would recommend you start by working on the ones that cause you maximum discomfort).

Re-molding your Personal Criteria

Once you discover the underlying belief that triggered this discomfort you have to deal with some major decisions, some of them will change your life forever because they will change the way you experience the world around you.

In order to deal with your personal criteria, you will have to ask yourself 3 basic questions -

1. How accurate is it?
2. How in sync is it with my values?
3. How will the new belief benefit me?

• Gauging Accuracy

Very often the process of arriving at the conclusion that our belief is in stark contrast with reality happens very fast. Hence it’s important to gauge the accuracy of our own analysis. Am I using the right evidence to conclude that my beliefs are in contrast to reality? Am I in a position to see every empirical evidence or am I making assumptions here? This check is critical because more often than not, we work on assumptions and old biases. Thus for those ‘big’ envy causing discomfort it is key that you re-examine these questions.

Most of you might have seen the below representation of the ‘Iceberg Illusion’. What you see on the outside is probably just 20% of the reality for someone else. So what you end up doing is comparing this 20% with your 80% - this causes a huge amount of discomfort.

© Sylvia Duckworth, @sylviaduckworth

In the football match example, why do you not feel as envious of Ronaldo achieving the same feat as that of your team member? Maybe because you’ve read about Ronaldo’s exhausting training schedule, the mammoth effort he puts into developing his skills, maybe you’ve even watched a documentary that had outlined his early life struggles to become a world champion footballer.

The knowledge and understanding that someone has paid the price (80%) to achieve success (20%) neutralizes the discomfort to a great extent. Of course, the feeling of envy will not disappear 100% but now you have a leverage to convert this discomfort into inspiration. Now you know what it takes to achieve something that Cristiano Ronaldo achieved – the only question now is are you willing to pay the price for it (80%)?

So when your friend got into MIT and you did not, there might be some part of that 80% which you are not aware of yet. This unawareness leads you to believe that you probably deserved it more. This unawareness is what some people classify as ‘luck’ or ‘politics’. I’m not saying luck or politics don’t play any role here, they most likely do but they are not the only reasons in most cases. Yes in some cases they might turn out to be so and maybe there isn’t much you can do about it (of course you can try your hand at getting involved in politics, if that’s in sync with your value system). People with a higher locus of control tend to believe that these factors can be overcome by being so good at your craft that no amount of luck or politics can lead anyone to ignore you.

This is how you can turn Envy into inspiration – by improving the accuracy of your personal criteria.

• Sync with Values

Whether you know it or not, you have a value system embedded in you since the time you were young. It is this value system that keeps you from jumping the traffic light even when there are no cops around or when there is zero traffic. It is this value system that keeps you from picking up that extra pen or notebook from office and bringing it home for personal use. Every time we try to do something against it, we experience guilt that we somehow try to silence. As we grow up, it’s a good idea to write down these values for ourselves and gain a deeper level of cognizance about them because a strong set of values can act as a compass in life.

All our beliefs tend to stem out of some value system ingrained into us by the environment in which we grow up. Hence to truly alter our beliefs we need to examine if they are still in sync with our values or not. Sometimes you may discover that a conflicting belief has stemmed out of an obsolete value system that needs an overhaul.

Let us work with example (1) here. While you read the 3 statements in example (1) some of you might have faced a conundrum with statement 2. Let’s recap what statement (2) says – 

·         If you see a team member bag recognition for scoring a goal at a critical stage in the match, when you feel you’ve lost the game?

Some of us may still encounter strong pangs of envy in this scenario too. But this is a classic indication of how your personal criteria is probably not in sync with your underlying values. Anyone who experiences envy in the above scenario probably believes that ‘my recognition’ is far more valuable to me than ‘Team victory’. It is for that person to introspect if this belief is true. The underlying value here is ‘Teamwork’ – is he in sync with this value or is he out of sync? Most of us would probably like to be in sync with this value. That means we need to re-set our personal criteria.

A check with our value system gives us the ability to re-calibrate that lens with which we experience the stimulus. Hence, it’s a key step to take once we have established accuracy.

There might be some of us who also might not believe in ‘Teamwork’ at all. Unfortunately for them, envy will prevail and show up in your body language (if not words) from time to time.

•          Benefits of Renewing Personal Criteria

We live in a world that is constantly evolving, and everyday facts of the past get replaced with new facts which weren’t visible to us earlier due to lack of resources or technology. If you look back at your own life you will see that old science lays shattered and replaced by new science that is closer to the ‘Truth’ as we know it today. This is what human evolution has been all about, getting closer to understanding the ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, albeit at our own pace. Besides this overarching or philosophical benefit, there are a few more short term benefits of keeping your personal criteria in check and some of them are as below –

a.       Build higher self-confidence

When you gauge the accuracy of your beliefs and work on bridging those gaps you take away personal biases to a great extent. This in turn gives you the ability to be just and honest in your feelings. You can express yourself much better without sounding resentful of others achievements. On the contrary, you are genuinely appreciative of people whose actions align with your belief system.

On the other end of the spectrum, if something is not in sync with your belief system, you will also have the confidence to voice it and gain a perspective that you probably did not have before. But more importantly, you would have opened yourself up to the other person rather than shut yourself, which so often is the case when you experience jealousy.

b.       Increase pace of self-development

A consciously executed relook at personal criteria often results in uncovering hidden facets of your personality. It is like an exercise to uncover the ‘unknown’ in the Johari Window, only here you are drawing cues from what you experience when you feel envious.

While this process has been described to deal with envy, you can pretty much use some of the same principles to deal with any other negative emotion – simple or complex, to study how and why they affect you.

c.       Build stronger relationships

Networking in today’s world is the name of the game. Having an open personality, high level of confidence, rational and reason driven set of beliefs and strong values generally go a long way in portraying a character that is professionally very amiable.

You will connect better with the new generation of co-workers or even your children.

The benefits of having an up to date personal criteria will keep you relevant in this ever changing world. And in all likelihood, you will reap the health benefits of living a happier life with not much of a bandwidth to spare for envy.

We all realize that today’s world is highly competitive and an average professional finds it very difficult to view opportunities as anything other than ‘Limited’. Most of the times the concept of expanding the pie stays lost somewhere in our mind’s challenger deep. By understanding the root cause of envy you will not only be able to overcome the negative effects, but be able to live a more fulfilling and productive life. After all, we all know what happened to Othello… :)

<Reference> Paper on 'Jealousy in Adulthood' by Christine R. Harris and Ryan S. Darby
<Iceberg Image>  Sylvia Duckworth - © Sylvia Duckworth, @sylviaduckworth