What Envy Can Teach You About What You Want

Envy can reveal something you have not yet admitted you want. In this talk, Jon explores the difference between wishing others would lose what they have and letting their example clarify your own ambitions. Drawing on philosophy and personal experience, he introduces a simple envy diary: notice the feeling, write down its cause, and look for patterns. Return to the practice over a week to explore what matters to you and which trade-offs you are willing to make.

Transcript

The person that I've learned a lot about Envy from is the philosopher Alain de Botton. So Alain de Botton wrote books entitled The Consolations of Philosophy, Status Anxiety, How Puss Can Change Your Life, The News, The Art of Travel, The Architecture of Happiness. Yeah, He's written some really, Really, Really good books. And why I really like Alain de Botton a lot is because he is someone who studied the history of ideas really well. And so he synthesizes ancient philosophy, Modern psychotherapy, Cognitive behavioral therapy, The works of artists, Poets, Writers, And so on, Into ideas that we can use in a practical sense to improve the way that we live. And Alondra Pathan has spent quite a lot of time talking about envy and he says, Quote, It's a real taboo to mention envy. But if there is one dominant emotion in modern society, That is envy. End quote. So yeah, Envy has a bad reputation and it makes sense. You're not going to go around telling people you're close to that you feel envious. Because what that communicates is you have something that I want for myself. And because there's so much emotional charge behind it, Either I don't want you to have that thing and therefore I want to take it from you, Or i Can't be trusted if I have an opportunity to have that thing around you. So telling someone you're close to that you have envy of them doesn't make you trustworthy. Although you could argue that by owning it and acknowledging it and being authentic with that feeling, You therefore are trustworthy. So hiding it is probably a lot worse. But that is why we hide it, We don't talk about it. On top of that, In modern society, Every Disney film, The evil villain has envy. They want what the beautiful princess has. It's drilled into us. If you think of an evil person in any kind of movie or film, Really, Are they just content? They're like, I don't need anything. I'm just evil. They usually want something. They want to take revenge or they want, If you think of Snow White, You know, The evil queen wants to be the fairest of them all, You know, And she wants the same beauty that Snow White has. And this motif goes across a lot. Of different villains and we're brought up with this image of envy from a young age. If I were to ask you to do a drawing or imagine a truly envious person, You probably wouldn't think of someone who's good and kind. You'd probably think of someone who is like a haggard, Old, Witch-like figure who kind of is bitter at the world and wants what other people have. But that's not necessarily accurate because we all experience envy. And Envy has become a much more prominent emotion. It's always existed, But it's become much more prominent. In the age of social media, In the age of the internet, Where before, You wouldn't have it rubbed in your face so much about how everyone else has it better than you do. But now you can just go online and very quickly you can see photographs and stories and reels and so on of people. Living, Exciting, Adventurous lives, People that have a cool job, A cool relationship, Maybe lots of friends, A certain kind of freedom, The way that they post, Whatever it is, And that triggers the envy response in us. One of the dangers when it comes to Envy is this. A thing called rationalization. Rationalization is the mind's ability to come up with logical narratives to explain away emotions. So when we feel envy, Really, Unless we're a very experienced meditator or something, Really do we say, Oh, I feel envy in my body. Oh, I noticed where that is. I mean, I noticed what that's about and I can see that that's linked to past experience that I had. No, Usually we just color the other person or the situation as bad. So for example. You may think that person at the party is really obnoxious. But if you explore and examine that feeling, You may find at the root of it that they're just getting other people to laugh at their jokes more than you can with yours, Right? So there's an envy there. Maybe there's a certain photograph you've seen of someone. And you think that the photograph is really obnoxious and you think that the person's arrogant. But again, If you explore the root of that feeling, You might find that, Oh, That person just getting more attention than me. And I would like that too. And so usually when you dislike someone, If you explore it, Not always, If someone's actually directly mean to you or is affecting you directly, Then fair enough, You have the right to dislike that person. But usually if someone isn't directly impacting you and you have a dislike for them, You will find that they often have an aspect of their life or character that you wish you had yourself that don't, At least on that level. So everyone experiences envy. I experience envy. You experience envy. Even think of someone who's doing a year long meditation retreat. That individual can also experience envy. It might be about different things. Maybe they meet a more advanced meditator than they are currently and they might have a pang of envy. There's lots of different contexts in which envy arises. But what you'll notice is that usually you envy the things that are aligned with your own values and goals. So we're going to get into that in a moment. So first of all, Let's talk about the distinction between envy and jealousy. A lot of time we use these two different terms interchangeably. Oh, I was jealous of you, Or you did something really well, I was jealous. Jealousy, If you look at the dictionary definition, Stems from a feeling of loss. So it's almost like the reverse end of envy. So jealousy is when, Let's just say you're in a relationship and Your partner is talking to someone or having a good time. Jealousy is when you, You fear that this thing that you have could be taken from you. And it's very triggering and unpleasant. Envy is not the fear of loss necessarily. It's more like you want something through the window. You want something across the bridge. It's a form of craving, Essentially, That is expressed almost like an angry toddler who doesn't like the person, The other toddlers, Sandcastle next to them on the beach and they then want to crush it and knock it down. Now, Envy itself has two main forms that I would like to explain to you. The first one is what psychologists call malicious envy. And it was this type of envy that Bertrand Russell was referring to when he said that envy was the most potent cause of unhappiness in humans. " Bertrand Russell was a legendary philosopher, A modern day philosopher too, And a great teacher. And yeah, So. . . Malicious envy. Is a cause of suffering. It's a form of ill will. Now in a lot of Buddhist matter meditations, The classic phrases are, May you be happy, May you be free of suffering, May you be at peace, Et cetera, Et cetera. Oftentimes you also have the phrase, May you be free of ill will. And what this can also be translated as, May you be free from malicious envy. When you have ill will towards another person, You carry around this weight in your mind, This heaviness. Any kind of hatred or dislike can weigh you down and affect you psychologically, But malicious envy more so than ever. And I think in particular, The reason why malicious envy is problematic, And I'm seeing this from a stoic perspective too, Is that If you have a form of malicious envy, You are first of all dissatisfied with what you have and you believe that something that someone else has would make your life better, So it's dissatisfaction. But on top of that, It's dissatisfaction and almost like a willingness to be vengeful or nasty or evil to get it. So in a sense, It turns you into some kind of criminal not necessarily a criminal of the law as we know it but a criminal of social law of social etiquette i'm willing to inflict harm on another because they have what i want and this is very damaging but there's another type of envy and this type of envy is the type that i want us to focus on, And that is benign envy. And this type of envy was what Bertrand Russell believed was the driving force behind the movement towards democracy. So you have envy, But you have two very different outcomes. One, The most potent cause of unhappiness. Two, The driving force for democracy. Very different outcomes. So I'd like to tell you about a concept called Schadenfraud now. Schadenfraud is a German term that can be translated as kill joy. So the idea here is that Sometimes you watch a, Um, A TV show, Like a soap opera. And a lot of time the people on the soap opera having a really hard time, They kind of miserable things are going wrong for them. And this can be strangely therapeutic because we look at our own lives in comparison and we conclude, Oh, Well, Our life can't be that bad because look at these people and their struggles and they're getting through. And I think this type of shod and fraud or harm joy or kill joy is not terrible. In fact, The Stoics may say that, You know, You can learn a lot from comparisons to others. You can learn to appreciate your own lot more. But on the flip side, Jordan fraud harm joy means that you actually want to mess things up for other people. So if someone's doing something well. You have this desire that things don't go well. And this can be truly toxic because you can have shard and fraud for good friends. You can have good friends who trust you and love you and you kind of want them to not get that job. You kind of want them to go on that date and things not to go well. You kind of want to hear that their partner is having an affair or something. And it's almost like, On one hand, It's a form of drama and gossip. And maybe you have now something more interesting going on in your life. So that's one element of it. But it's also mostly down to the fact that it could be triggering when other people have things that are going well for them, Even good friends. And this is again a form of malicious envy. There's a movie called Amadeus, Which is about the life of Mozart, The composer. And there's an amazing scene. The film really has the two protagonists, The two main characters throughout it, Are Amadeus, Mozart, And Salieri. Salieri is a great composer but he's not genius level composer that mozart is i mean i'm sure salieri would be world class but mozart is not just world class you know mozart is something else he's a musical savant. Ahem, One moment. And there's a scene in. . . Amadeus where Sanieri stays up all night composing a piece of music to show to the Emperor. And when he shows it to the emperor, Mozart is present and Salieri is kind of impressed with himself. He thinks that the tune he's created is really good and he's kind of showing it to Mozart, Showing it to the emperor. And then Mozart comes along and he's like, Oh, That's really cool. And after hearing the piece once. He can not only play the whole thing back note for note perfect, But then he starts riffing on top of it and changing the compositions. And Salieri is crushed. One of his greatest pieces of music, Mozart. Thinks of it like a child's tune, Like a nursery rhyme tune, And improvises on top of it, And makes it a way more complicated, Impressive version after about two minutes on the harpsichord, Messing around with it. And from that point on, Sadieri in the film is extremely envious of Mozart and wants Mozart to suffer and struggle and not do well, And this experience in Schadenfreude. And it's stories like this that gives Envy a bad reputation. But the first step that I want you to focus on in your journey of taking envy and making it a force for good in your life is to become truly aware of its existence in your own life. So. . . There's a quote by Alain Bartholome that I'd like to read to you. He says, About how romantic love is an illusion, A financially envious person will develop conspiracy theories about Wall Street, All this rather than frankly saying, I'd love a partner, Or, How can I make more money? Such envy is depressing because it springs from feelings of inadequacy that are not owned up to. We already touched on this before, But one of the keys to the activation or triggering of envy is when the other person is somewhat similar to you. So if, For example. Mozart was really good at drumming. Salieri may not have become envious of him. If Mozart was five years old, Maybe Saudi Arabia wouldn't have got envious of him. The fact that Mozart is sort of in the same league as Saudi Arabia in terms of age and nationality, The closer you are to someone, The more likely you are to feel envious of them. Why? Because there is more comparisons drawn. And that is really important insight too. So Alain de Botton says, I think it would be very unusual for anyone to be envious of the Queen of England, Even though she's much richer than any of you are and has a very large house. The reason why we don't envy her is because she's too weird. We can't relate to her. She speaks in a funny way. She comes from an odd place. We can't relate to her. And when you can't relate to somebody, You don't envy them. The closer two people are in age and background and the process of identification, The more there is danger of envy. " This phenomenon is known as social relativity or relative position in psychology. And so in the same way, We only recognize where it's night by the contrast with the light of day. We can only recognize our status in the world by contrasting it with the status of other people in our own demographic. Oftentimes if people are given the choice between earning. $20, 000 more than their co-workers and an average yeah. Rather than $50, 000 less, Even if the absolute number was higher when they earned less. So in other words, You could either earn $90, 000 and your coworkers earn $70, 000, Or you could earn $150, 000 and your coworkers earn $200, 000. A lot of people would still prefer the $90, 000 because relatively, It still puts you in a position of higher status. And we anchor ourselves in context and in the environment. So what I mean by that is, Wherever you are in the world, Whatever context you're in, If I were to ask you, How could you become very high status in your specific context? That might be very different if you were a member of a high status political group, Right? So maybe there are politicians and presidents, Vice presidents, Prime ministers, And so on. For them to be considered high status, It may require a completely different sequence of events from the average person living a normal life to become high status. Two very different things. So everybody experiences envy, But not under every circumstance. We only envy people who have achieved what we believe we are capable of achieving, But haven't. And this is good. And so where the power of envy comes from is that it highlights within us. Goals that are usually within reach. So department goes on quote, The real problem that envy is not feeling it. But what you do with it. Envy is a highly beneficial emotion insofar as it goads us towards things we are capable of achieving. So that is the basic primer. And now let's move into the actual four-step strategy that you can use to leverage the emotion of Envy and use it as a blueprint or a map to start moving in the direction that best serves you. So Alain de Botton says that we should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy and use them as covert guides to what we should try to do next. Alain de Botton recommends that everyone keep an Envy Diary. Which I think is a pretty cool idea. So you could do this in a number of ways. You can have a physical notebook, A journal. You can have a repeating task that you add in the things that make you envious. You can have a digital notebook if you wish. There are lots of different ways you can go about this. But every time you experience that envy, That feeling of someone having something that makes you feel less than, Makes you feel inadequate. Something that someone else has that you kind of want yourself, You make a note of it. And so the four steps are you acknowledge it, Oh, I feel envious. Number two, You write down the cause. Okay, I think I'm feeling envious because that person has a way better physique than I do. Oh, I'm envious right now because that person seems to be way more carefree than I am. Or I'm envious because that person is so good at small talk and I'm struggling with that thing. I'm more of a deep conversationalist. I'm feeling envious because that person. Seems to be so well groomed in comparison to me, All these different reasons to be envious. And those are some superficial forms of envy that can come up, But they can also be deeper. Like I feel envious because that person wrote an article that has a way broader vocabulary than I can create and a way deeper understanding of the topic. So if you acknowledge it, You write down the cause and then you just repeat that and you keep doing it and doing it and doing it until you can find a pattern. And that pattern then becomes your list of goals or aspirations that you work towards. Because there's something in you that wants those things, But you may not know it. So in my own experience, I remember that I heard this diary, This envy diary technique, And I was like, Oh, That's cool. That's a good idea. Maybe I'll do it. But then I just sort of forgot about it. Didn't because I wasn't feeling envious in the moment. A couple of weeks later, I felt a pang of envy come up and I remembered, Oh, The envy diary technique. So I started jotting down the things that were making me envious. And then a few more times I felt envious and very soon a pattern emerged. And I started to see, Oh, There is something that I clearly value here. Something that's really triggering me. And then that led me to then go off and achieve good things. I remember actually, When I was, This is a true story that I've known your story about that MD was reneged. So remember. And I was probably around 15 or 16 years old. I had a guitar. I was interested in learning guitar. I was dabbling in it. And then one night I went and I saw my friend in a band and my friend did this guitar solo performance. He was like the same age as me, 15, 16. And it was incredible. Everyone was blown away. It was crazy. The crowd was going wild. I felt envious. I felt like inspired, But also envious because. In my relationship with this friend, I thought I was the one who kind of had it together more and was good at learning. Cause I was teaching him how to do magic and he pulled out this amazing guitar solo. And so I felt the end of this. And so what I did that night is I went home straight after the night out. And I think I played guitar for like three hours straight and then I kept that going and I pretty much mastered the guitar and got it to a very high level. But the fuel was envy. You know, And so instead of getting bitter and saying mean things about the friend, Which is malicious empathy, I was like, Oh, I want that for me. I'm going to work at this. And the same thing happens as well in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. If I roll with someone and they are better than me. A part of me is like, I want that, This envy that's triggered. But it's also this. . . I respect the person and I feel motivated. I want to use that as motivation. So I say to my friends, I love getting tapped out by someone who's actually better than me. That's the thing that should be better because then I'm, I'm fired up. If I go and I trade and I'm beating everyone pretty easily, That's cool. It's still valuable. You know, I still get insights from that, But it's those days where. All of a sudden I'm getting tapped out two, Three times in a round and I didn't see it coming. And that is the thing that makes me go home. It's steady. So pain, Envy, Frustration, Channel it into inspiration and positive view. And, But the key is I'm not unhappy about it. I'm not miserable about it. It's more like, You know, You're playing a video game and there's a hard level and you're not, It's not affecting your life. You're not struggling in your work or your relationships because of a video game, But you are fired up. You are by the strategy guide. You want to learn how to overcome it. And it's frustrating, But it's a good. Kind of frustration. It's the frustration of overcoming a hard problem. So Alain de Bodin says, Envy is a confused, Tangled guide to one's own ambitions, Which I love, Love that idea. So yeah, We live in a world where. . . Self-enthusiasm is everywhere. We're not only encouraged to be many things and to be successful. There are a lot of messages out there that. Anyone can do that. It's all about your will. You know, And it's all about your drive. If you don't have the drive, You're never going to succeed. And it's always expected of you now, You know, To be in good shape, To have your life together, To have a cool job, To do cool things. It's not that rare or it doesn't seem that rare. I still think it is rare because of social media and because, You know, There's a bias there because the most successful people in a certain area. So let's just say in the fitness world, The most in shape People are posting more pictures of themselves right so there's a selection bias there. That out of shape people are not constantly posting pictures of their body. But let's just say there's one percent in the population have a tone physique. What percentage of the population are also hosting most of the images. It's the same 1%. So society's conditioning us to be successful and to have all of these different things. So. . . Yeah, Um. . . Just looking at my notes yeah so for the first time in human history we feel that this type of success is not just doable but expected of us and Therefore, Our envy is going to be triggered way more than usual. And it's important that we kind of put our focus on the right things. And we have a wise approach to success. I really like what Alondra Baton said in his TED talk, Which is all about success. And he said, Here's some insight I've had about success. You can't be successful at everything. You hear a lot about work-life balance. Nonsense. You can't have it all. You can't. Any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on. Where the element of loss is, Any wise life would accept that there is going to be an element where we are not succeeding. And so I recommend that you start playing around with the Envy Diary technique. I've had one of my clients do this and they became, Only just for one week actually, Became hyper-focused on the world of Envy, Really went all in on it. It's not something you necessarily need to keep up for a lifetime, But they just went one week into it and they got a whole lot of insights. They got really clear about why they disliked certain people, What they were actually looking for, What they valued, What their goals are that weren't clear to them. Because one of the issues with envy as well is that if you are not owning up to your envy, You can't also own up to what you like. And you may rationalize, Which is what we talked about earlier, That you don't really want that thing that you do. Maybe you just want love. Maybe you just want more money. Maybe you just want a better job. Maybe you just want to have more friends, Right? Simple things. Maybe you just want to be healthier. But criticizing other people that have those or trying to express harm and joy to people who have those things already doesn't take you closer to those goals actually pushes you further away from them. And it makes your mind into a sort of chaotic battlefield of ill will. So acknowledge envy, Accept envy, Transmute malicious envy into benign envy and use it as a driving force, As a diary technique to show you what you needed to focus on and use the envy as fuel to accomplish the things that matter. Thank you very much for listening. I appreciate you being here and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Reviews

This was great. I’ve contemplated why I have envious thoughts for a long time. I’ve also thought I wish I could wipe envy away. What I learned from your talk was eye opening — the envy journal (brilliant) and I am clearly not alone nor can it be erased (part of being human), but hopefully lessened. One thing I did come to, from thinking about my envy over the years, that’s helped me is to turn it from a negative to a positive by thinking about how happy I am that my friend has whatever I’m envious about. How I truly wish good wishes for my family, friends and all beings. It has helped but the envy journal is going to take it to the next level. And I hadn’t heard about Alain before. I’ll be checking him out too. Thank you again and namaste.