Transcription
I'm Dr. Orion Taraban, and this is Psych Hacks: Better Living Through Psychology. And the topic today, a short talk, is three tips for dealing with envy.
Envy is a very corrosive emotion, and if left unchecked, can devour people's minds, if not their very souls. This is exacerbated by the fact that envy tends to be invisible. Folks might willingly admit to being angry, or sad, or afraid, but few people will admit to feeling envious. And this invisibility makes it difficult to manage.
That said, I have three tips to deal with this negative emotion, and I'd like to discuss them with you today. But before I do, please remember to like this episode and subscribe to this channel. It takes less than a second, costs you nothing, and it helps to defeat the haters. So do the thing.
To begin with, I'll offer a definition of envy so that we're all on the same page. Envy is actually a fairly complex emotion. It needs a number of things in order to exist. Here's my definition: Envy requires a perceived deficit with respect to a personally relevant good, relative to a perceived equal. That's complex, so I'll say it again: Envy is a perceived deficit with respect to a personally relevant good, relative to a perceived equal.
So, there's a lot of things that need to happen in order for envy to occur. And this is good, because if we can dismantle any one of those things, then envy sort of falls apart. It needs all three components in order to exist.
The first useful avenue of attack is to dismantle the "relative to a perceived equal" part. No two blades of grass are the exact shade of green, so we need to be careful about our assumptions of similarity. Is it true that whoever you might be envious of is really your equal? Are you two equivalent? Which is to say, could we swap you for the other person without anyone noticing? Does this person have more experience than you? Does this person come from a background that may have given them advantages in certain ways? Does this person have other skills, or traits, or talents, or abilities that might influence the perceived disparity? If so, maybe it's not exactly true that the two of you are equals in every sense. And creating a kind of psychic distance between the two of you might help to mitigate your felt sense of envy.
Another avenue of attack is to address the idea of a perceived good. I've noticed that we as a society tend to ascribe the attribute of good to things that are more properly neutral. For instance, money is not inherently good. For many folks, money accelerates their self-destruction. A relationship is not inherently good. Many folks are abiding in abusive or hateful relationships right now. Power is not inherently good. The more powerful you are, the more you become a target for others' animosity. From a stoic perspective, the things that people tend to feel envious about are generally not goods, but neutrals. And the proper attitude to maintain towards neutrals is one of indifference. The sheer fact that someone has money, or a relationship, or power tells us nothing about the goodness of the person or his or her internal happiness. Reminding yourself of this can help to dismantle the emotion of envy.
And now we come to the third avenue of attack, as suggested by my definition: the idea of a perceived deficit. Chances are very good that if you're watching this, you're neither the best in the history of the world at something, nor the worst in the history of the world at something. This means that there is always a bigger fish, and that you are the bigger fish relative to certain others. It's also very likely that in the near-infinite domain of human action, you are neither better nor worse in all aspects of being than any other specific individual. This means that whomever you are envious of has traits or abilities that aren't as impressive as yours. Focus on these instead. This is a downward comparison that can do a lot to alleviate feelings of envy.
Envy is a complex emotion, and there's a lot more I could say about it. These are just some initial thoughts. In general, if you understand how an emotion is constructed, you can also learn how to effectively dismantle it. I hope these tips help. What do you think? Got any tips of your own? If so, let me know in the comments below. And thank you for listening.