how to fight off jealousy/envy

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I used to be envious of a friend many years ago, for some I suppose it's something you grow out of. I always used to try looking at things from a different point of view (theirs mostly), or consider what it is that's making you feel this way. IE if it's material objects, relationships or social status.
 
What usually works for me is to think: In order to have what someone else has, you have to be them. Only they can be what they are and have what they have. If it were yours it would, necessarily and by definition, be different. So: Ask yourself truly, would you be willing to BE them? Give up all that you are to BE them, in order to have what they have?

I haven't yet wanted to actually give up myself and BE someone else, so I find that this helps.
 
I try to look beyond the obvious and question whether the person has anything I really want for myself. For instance, when I was younger, I had a friend who I frequently felt jealous of. They had many material possessions, lots of friends and a great deal of success with the opposite sex, all without any seeming effort on their part. It was all very frustrating to be around.

After one particularly trying day around this, I decided to try to look at my friend in a completely objective way, without any emotion, and what I saw really shocked me. The possessions they had were all the result of being spoiled by an overcompensating parent, the friends were little more than casual acquaintances/drinking buddies and the romantic successes were a consequence of dressing provocatively and being rather undiscerning in that regard. I also saw qualities my friend had that I had only been somewhat aware of before, because I was so envious that it blinded me, in particular their laziness, sense of entitlement, arrogance, conceit and complete lack of responsibility.

Needless to say, I was never jealous of them again after that day.
 
I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.

But those feelings quickly pass, however, when I remind myself that the person who owns it probably works some kind of crummy, boring 8+ hour per day job that would probably drive me to alcoholism and smoking cigarettes, probably 6 or 7 days a week, and probably doesn't have much else to talk about besides their job, their car, or TV shows.

I also remind myself that a car, while fun, would definitely not solve all of my problems in life. I know this very well.

And lastly I say that hey, maybe I might even surpass this level of success someday. You never know.
 
The fact that I know what I've been through and the fact that I know how strong someone has to be to have pulled through those things... I can't be jealous of anyone else. The grass isn't always greener, and even with all the things still going on in my life, I'm much happier with my own yard. I was never a jealous person to begin with, though, and even as a kid, I believed in dealing with the devil you do know is preferable than dealing with a devil you don't know. I just don't see the point in envy and jealousy.


TheSkaFish said:
I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.

Do you still collect them?
 
All you are seeing when you envy someone is the surface. Everyone you know is going through some sort of a struggle, or will do at some point. How they deal with their demons will be different from how you would. Walk a mile, as they say.
If it's one aspect like a material possession or a skill or relationships etc, it would do no harm to aspire to it. Just take the other person out of the equation. The envy is there because they have something you want. Focus on what it is you want and not on them.
 
Aisha said:
All you are seeing when you envy someone is the surface. Everyone you know is going through some sort of a struggle, or will do at some point. How they deal with their demons will be different from how you would. Walk a mile, as they say.
If it's one aspect like a material possession or a skill or relationships etc, it would do no harm to aspire to it. Just take the other person out of the equation. The envy is there because they have something you want. Focus on what it is you want and not on them.

This.

All you see when you are jealous or envious is what you want to see. You don't see their everyday life. You can't know what they go through. THEY could be just as jealous of YOU, as you are of them.

But yeah, like Aisha said, it's not THEM, it's WHAT. If you want something, do the work to get it. It might be hard work, it might be more than you think you can do, but you CAN do it, for most situations. All you have to do is stop making excuses and try.
 
VanillaCreme said:
TheSkaFish said:
I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.

Do you still collect them?

Yeah, as a matter of fact I do! I still have the ones I had as a kid. It fell off the radar for a while, but I happened to see some of the newer ones they were making these days, and I was impressed with the level of detail they have now. They were already moving in that direction when my childhood was winding down, but they have only kept improving, with more and more accurate representations of actual cars. So, with that, I resumed collecting them again. The first two I got were a green '67 Shelby G.T.500 and an orange '71 Dodge Challenger R/T. As you might guess, I especially like the muscle cars, classic and new. And I have a soft spot for the creature cars. I've always thought they were interesting :)




Anyway. I wanted to answer your question but didn't mean to get this too far off track. The more I thought about the topic of jealousy, the more I thought to myself that it wasn't so much even the cars that I was jealous of as I was the idea that usually, someone who owns a car like that has their life figured out. That's what I truly envy. They know what direction they want to take their life in, and are well on their way to somewhere. Of course, it is possible that they really don't and are in debt up to their eyeballs, which I would not be jealous of at all. But I don't think that's the case for most of them. I think most of them have a solid handle on their skills, finances, personality, and their identity.
 
TheSkaFish said:
VanillaCreme said:
TheSkaFish said:
I usually do this with cars. There are quite a few cars I like....I have liked cars since I was a kid collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels. I have to admit, I do feel some pangs of jealousy when I see certain cars go past.

Do you still collect them?

Yeah, as a matter of fact I do! I still have the ones I had as a kid. It fell off the radar for a while, but I happened to see some of the newer ones they were making these days, and I was impressed with the level of detail they have now. They were already moving in that direction when my childhood was winding down, but they have only kept improving, with more and more accurate representations of actual cars. So, with that, I resumed collecting them again. The first two I got were a green '67 Shelby G.T.500 and an orange '71 Dodge Challenger R/T. As you might guess, I especially like the muscle cars, classic and new. And I have a soft spot for the creature cars. I've always thought they were interesting :)


If we see them in the stores, we'll grab some of the newer ones too. My guy has a few containers full of them, in original packaging, and they were pretty neat to look at. I claimed some purple cars for myself. He also has shelves full of model cars. Some are broken that I want to fix up.

TheSkaFish said:
Anyway. I wanted to answer your question but didn't mean to get this too far off track. The more I thought about the topic of jealousy, the more I thought to myself that it wasn't so much even the cars that I was jealous of as I was the idea that usually, someone who owns a car like that has their life figured out. That's what I truly envy. They know what direction they want to take their life in, and are well on their way to somewhere. Of course, it is possible that they really don't and are in debt up to their eyeballs, which I would not be jealous of at all. But I don't think that's the case for most of them. I think most of them have a solid handle on their skills, finances, personality, and their identity.

I don't think having any vehicle means someone has their life in order. In fact, many sports cars get the bad rap for belonging to someone who's going through a mid-life crisis. So, I wouldn't exactly associate cars with that. Anyone can have or own a car. Or have multiple cars. And still be in debt, still have turmoil, and have a rough future ahead of them.
 
VanillaCreme said:
I don't think having any vehicle means someone has their life in order. In fact, many sports cars get the bad rap for belonging to someone who's going through a mid-life crisis. So, I wouldn't exactly associate cars with that. Anyone can have or own a car. Or have multiple cars. And still be in debt, still have turmoil, and have a rough future ahead of them.
Vanilla is completely right. People wrap too much of their or other people's sense of worth in money or objects. The fact is that most of the wealthy were raised in wealthy families. Many of them having numerous personal problems. Even the ones who so-called "earned" their wealth from relatively nothing still have tons of personal problems.

Look at 'Notch' Persson, the guy who made Minecraft. The guy got married shortly after becoming wealthy/famous and divorced a few months later. He's then seen constantly having parties on Yachts and stuff. Now he's bought up a multi-million dollar house in California and sold away the company he built from the ground up.
Some people might look at that and think "Oh I wish I could have that", but then if you really look at his life, you know he's just doing that to cover up feelings of inadequacy. He now has a ton of money and attention he may not even feel he deserves, and how is he to know who to trust among his friends? Who are real and there for him and who just want some of his money or a good time?

It is lonely 'at the top'. It's definitely a different kind of loneliness, though. And I'd honestly say I don't feel sorry for those kind of people at all. They do it to themselves.

As another example, look at the Koch brothers. Outside of people they fund look at how much they are truly hated globally. That is not just jealousy causing people to hate them, that is because they are generally just two jerks looking down on everyone else and hoarding everything away from everyone else in the world, ruining people's lives for their own personal gain. But the law and governments protect them, because they practically fund governments and rulers themselves, who are the very people who ensure protection.

Anyway, my point is you shouldn't look at wealth and objects as having everything together. In many cases these people are just trying to compensate for their issues in a way that is destructive, either to themselves or to everyone around them.
As Vanilla noted, it can be as simple as just having a mid-life crisis. Sometimes those fancy new cars hurt an entire family's budget due to only one person's ridiculous decision-making. Those kinds of things have been known to ruin good marriages, as well.

Money is clearly not everything.
 
Despicable Me said:
Anyway, my point is you shouldn't look at wealth and objects as having everything together. In many cases these people are just trying to compensate for their issues in a way that is destructive, either to themselves or to everyone around them.
As Vanilla noted, it can be as simple as just having a mid-life crisis. Sometimes those fancy new cars hurt an entire family's budget due to only one person's ridiculous decision-making. Those kinds of things have been known to ruin good marriages, as well.

Money is clearly not everything.

Exactly. Material wealth and property don't make a person. Their actions, their deeds, and their will make them. I know that life happens and people change, but sometimes they change regardless of having a seemingly stable life. Truth is, no one knows what happens behind someone's closed door. Sure, that person might have a nice house, a couple of nice cars, and whatever else, but that doesn't mean they're happy with who they are or what they do. Many people just go through the motions of life.

Ska, perhaps because you want it to be that way, you see it that way. But you have a car (I think - correct me if I'm wrong), and you still aren't exactly happy with where you are in life. So, that should tell you right there... It's not all it's cracked up to be sometimes.
 
In my experience, I always resented not being able to have things that would make me better in what interest me. I study music and I'm the only one in my class who has to work to pay the bills. Others can go skiing every weekend and could afford various instruments while growing up, resulting in them being able to play different things. Their parents pay for the career, their stuff and even their rent. So while their are partying on saturday night, I'm stuck in the stand of a condo, opening the door for other people that can have everything they want. I play the keyboard because we couldn't afford anything else. No guitar, no drums, no bass. Is not that I resent the people itself, it's not their fault. But it irks me that I have to work so hard just to cover my basic subsistence, while others spend like nothing. The only thing that comforts me is that I'm the first of the class, and is weird to think that probably others envy me by that. The difference is that it took me a lot of work to be the best, while I know they didn't work for the money they got.
In my opinion, a good way of suppressing envy is to set goals and focus on them, do your own thing and most importantly, try to enjoy what you do and the outcome of your work. If you feel satisfaction with what you do and with who you are you won't be affected by what others have, because what you have makes you happy, in the same way you thought they where happy with what you didn't have. Keeping your mind and your passion bussy and challenging is good way of detaching yourself from expectations. For me, the hardest part is letting go your sense of meritocracy. We have to accept that some people never get what they deserve or never achieve something no matter how hard they try. My biggest fear is never is being extremely good at something but never recognized because of bad luck or bad timing.
 
Despicable Me said:
Vanilla is completely right. People wrap too much of their or other people's sense of worth in money or objects.

.....

Some people might look at that and think "Oh I wish I could have that", but then if you really look at his life, you know he's just doing that to cover up feelings of inadequacy. He now has a ton of money and attention he may not even feel he deserves, and how is he to know who to trust among his friends? Who are real and there for him and who just want some of his money or a good time?

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. I guess just as someone who hasn't had much of the "extras" in life (a few but not nearly as much as some people around here, it blows my mind), I'd like to live it up a little. But not to the degree of those people you described. I'm not really into mansions or big houses (though I would like to live in some kind of house instead of renting) or yachts (though a nice car would be a plus - not necessary but a plus), and I'm certainly not into attention-seeking or fame. I like a few high-profile things and ideas but I'm a actually for the most part a low-key person.

The thing I desire most from the super-rich lifestyle would actually be access to top-quality medical care, a healthier diet, and the freedom to spend my time on things I care about for their own sake or follow curiosity instead of having to do things first and foremost they make money, and if I'm interested fine but it's not really something I can consider. To come and go as I please, instead of feeling like I'm always being rushed. I have a hard time getting into the zone of any kind of hobby when all that's on my mind is the need to be making money, not even to have anything but just to exist.

Mostly, I'd just like to have a little more breathing room in life and feel like the decisions and thoughts and ideals I have in life aren't determined for me by a lack of money, but by my real thoughts and feelings. For all my decisions to be based on the idea that I don't have a lot of money, it makes me feel like I am in this life to be a victim to those with more money like mice are helpless but to be victims to birds of prey. I'd like to not feel like my life, interests, and indeed my very personality and life philosophy revolves around the bills and the feeling like I was beaten to my knees every time they arrive. I'd like to be able to just pay it, not care about it, and go on doing what I want to do. That's what I mean - peace of mind. Living for me, not them.

Despicable Me said:
Anyway, my point is you shouldn't look at wealth and objects as having everything together. In many cases these people are just trying to compensate for their issues in a way that is destructive, either to themselves or to everyone around them.
As Vanilla noted, it can be as simple as just having a mid-life crisis. Sometimes those fancy new cars hurt an entire family's budget due to only one person's ridiculous decision-making. Those kinds of things have been known to ruin good marriages, as well.

Money is clearly not everything.

I'm sure that at least some of the fancy cars I see around here are mid-life crisis mobiles. And then some more are owned by younger folks who don't even make that much money but want to appear like it or at least want to have their fun right now, and are in fact up to their eyeballs in debt. Neither of those scenarios are really anything to be jealous of. I agree there.


VanillaCreme said:
Exactly. Material wealth and property don't make a person. Their actions, their deeds, and their will make them. I know that life happens and people change, but sometimes they change regardless of having a seemingly stable life. Truth is, no one knows what happens behind someone's closed door. Sure, that person might have a nice house, a couple of nice cars, and whatever else, but that doesn't mean they're happy with who they are or what they do. Many people just go through the motions of life.

Actually I agree somewhat. Living a life of going through the motions and being boring instead of becoming self-actualized is something I fear at least as much as having no money. I'm afraid that if I pursue dreams, I'll be poor and frustrated. But if I pursue money, I fear that I will only ever get to experience going through the motions and have my whole life turn out meaningless.

VanillaCreme said:
Ska, perhaps because you want it to be that way, you see it that way. But you have a car (I think - correct me if I'm wrong), and you still aren't exactly happy with where you are in life. So, that should tell you right there... It's not all it's cracked up to be sometimes.

Oh, yes I realized that many years ago in my own case. It was at that office job which I'm sure I've complained about somewhere on here. Sure I arrived and went home in a Mustang, but I wasn't any happier than I would have been on a bicycle. I couldn't pretend to be anything but a boring office drone, and the car couldn't fool me into thinking I was a rock star or an action hero. I was still an unhappy person with little to talk about and no ideas.
 
I think often people don't know what they really want in life... Someone else's life might look good on paper, but reality could be much more different than you could have even thought about. Because you haven't been in the other person's shoes, living their lives. You don't know their problems, issues... Everyone have them, smaller or bigger issues. You just assume that you know how it feels, but you can't know it. You can only live your life, no one else's life.
 
Xpendable said:
In my experience, I always resented not being able to have things that would make me better in what interest me. I study music and I'm the only one in my class who has to work to pay the bills. Others can go skiing every weekend and could afford various instruments while growing up, resulting in them being able to play different things. Their parents pay for the career, their stuff and even their rent. So while their are partying on saturday night, I'm stuck in the stand of a condo, opening the door for other people that can have everything they want. I play the keyboard because we couldn't afford anything else. No guitar, no drums, no bass. Is not that I resent the people itself, it's not their fault. But it irks me that I have to work so hard just to cover my basic subsistence, while others spend like nothing. The only thing that comforts me is that I'm the first of the class, and is weird to think that probably others envy me by that. The difference is that it took me a lot of work to be the best, while I know they didn't work for the money they got.
I'm not at all a jealous or envious person, but this hate is really what drives me now. It's one of the only things I ever think about anymore. How we are basically treated like the dogs of society and we're just being thrown scraps from people who did absolutely nothing to earn their place. They were simply born there. And I even know in some cases, even I have been privileged and gotten things I did not deserve. But that's simply how the world works, there is no justice here and there is absolutely no equality. Society prevents these things, destroys them.

This is the root of all of my problems. Everything that is destroying me. It is where all of my hate and resentment comes from. Everything that is eating away at me, slowly driving me insane.

But it's not at all jealousy or envy. I'm not even a slightly jealous or envious person. I do not want their lives. As I have explained above, there is nothing there that I would want, and I'm not materialistic enough to care about money. All of this comes from my beliefs. Ever since I was a kid I've had an extreme sense of justice and equality, and it bothers me to no end when things are not 'fair'. And I won't make excuses for it at all. I refuse to change until the world itself changes, until society changes. Until then, I will continue to enjoy being the monster that I am.

... Sorry for the rant.
 

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