Envy is one of the ambiguous human feelings. On the one hand, it is classified as a sin and is considered as a factor that inhibits the development of personality and depresses the human condition. But on the other hand, envy can become a powerful motivational stimulus, then a person is not poisoned by his own “poison”, but inexorably moves forward, trying to achieve what is the subject of envy. What is envy? And what impact does it have more often? Is it possible to envy in a kind way, so-called white envy? Or does any envy need to be eradicated? Let's figure it out.
Reasons for envy
Of course, not everyone has this difficult feeling. On the contrary, a self-confident person is motivated by the success and well-being of others to new achievements. It is precisely such self-sufficient, bright personalities who are most envied.
Creative, active and successful people do not understand that it is possible to think differently, and generously share their plans and ideas with others, provoking a wave of black envy. After all, unfortunately, there are always those who cannot adequately perceive such information. And on this “fertile” soil such dubious fruits ripen as anger, gossip, intrigue and the desire to harm the irritant object.
To learn not to envy, psychologists advise first understanding the causes of negative emotions.
Here are some of them.
- Personal failures that destroy a person from the inside for a long time. You give up, there is a feeling of hopelessness and reluctance to do anything.
- Dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, a tendency to laziness and reluctance to change the usual way of life. Degrading, a person tries to justify himself by coming up with reasons that are non-existent or important only in his understanding, why nothing works out for him.
- The need for material goods or emotional hunger in relationships.
- Lack of personal achievements, career and personal growth, low self-esteem.
- Strong envy is caused by such a character trait as greed. Without experiencing satisfaction from owning what they already have, a selfish person strives to get more and more, experiencing negative emotions towards those who are richer and more successful.
Against the background of a depressed state and anger, both at oneself and at the injustice of fate, a desire appears to justify one’s weakness. Often the culprit is the more successful person whose life seems successful. This is caused by an incomplete perception of the world and is considered a cognitive error, because the envious person does not take into account the amount of effort, time and money spent by the one who has achieved more.
Negative Impact
Envy is recognized as a vice in many cultures, because those driven by it are capable of terrible acts. Dissatisfaction forces one to step over moral principles. But the whole point is that a person cannot pull himself together and gets fixated on negative emotions. They continue to eat him from the inside and distort his perception of the world.
An envious person, more than anything else, wants to harm someone who so “unfairly” got what he wanted, and his life turns into a nightmare. Sometimes it comes to the point that people turn to sorcerers and witches, paying huge sums of money to send damage or curse the “enemy.” But is it worth it? Isn't it easier to relax and live, calmly achieving your goals? And then, perhaps, they will begin to envy your success?
Distorted thinking is constantly looking for new victims and objects of envy, but all you have to do is stop comparing yourself to others and start enjoying your achievements.
How to stop being jealous of people
Just stop being envious and get rid of this harmful feeling forever is not so difficult. The main thing is to start living your life, enjoying new achievements. Let kindness into your heart and praise yourself more often, even in small things. I coped with depression and put things in order at home - I’m great, I had successful negotiations at work - I’m cool.
If you take a closer look at your life, you will find many things for which you should praise yourself. It would be a good idea to read the article on how to get rid of aggression. Balanced people tend to focus on their lives and affairs and try to avoid conflict.
Try to look at your life, environment and achievements from the outside. You probably have something to be proud of. Feeling joy and gratitude for what you already have is the first step to getting rid of negative thinking. And if you still think that you are the most unhappy person in the world, believe in the best. There are always light and dark stripes in life. Remember the story about two frogs falling into a jug of cream. One did not fight and sank, and the second continued to fight, whipped butter with its paws, got out and galloped about its business.
If you still cannot look at life with optimism, it may well be that you have developed depression, the beginning of which is easy to miss. However, in our enlightened times, we are successfully fighting this scourge. Doctors have long developed simple and very useful recommendations that will tell you how to get out of depression without medication.
Leave the search for justice
Discrepancies between expectations and reality often cause frustration and dissatisfaction. It is important to understand a simple truth - the world is as it is and exists according to its own laws. They don't have to meet your expectations. The more you extol yourself and your Self, the more difficult it will be for you to understand others and come to terms with other people's successes.
Stop criticizing
By criticizing other people, we unconsciously inflate ourselves in our own eyes, and criticism is often unconstructive. It’s just that the person did not act as we ourselves would have acted, and we are already judging and even condemning someone. But you just need to remember the ancient wisdom: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”
If you have to criticize someone at work, try to do it in light of your colleague's success, even if you secretly envy him. And at the same time, analyze why he acted this way or that way. Perhaps he is right, and it is you who are wrong. Maybe you will understand the secret of his success.
Improve yourself
Considering the achievements of others as a lesson, learning from them, you can achieve no less success. Learning new things (reading, traveling, meeting new people) gives intellectual satisfaction, opens up new horizons and evokes a lot of positive emotions that will leave no room for envy in your heart.
Motivate yourself
The best way to prevent an outburst of negativity is to learn to admire other people's achievements. Praise the person who has achieved more than you, because he deserves it. By his example, he taught you a lesson, helped you look at your personal potential from the outside, and based on this you were able to set new goals for yourself.
Don't feed envy
Often reading the advice of psychologists, you can come across the phrase that looking for advantages in your own life helps you get rid of envy. For example: “Even if everything worked out for someone else, my health is good.” In my opinion, this sometimes works to the detriment. This is how you calm yourself down. You can stop envying only if you accept the truth that other people can really have something that you don’t have, be more prosperous, and you can’t change anything.
Put yourself in someone else's shoes
If the previous tips cause internal contradictions, try to look at the life of the object of envy from the other side. Put yourself in his shoes. Is everything really as smooth as you think? When comparing yourself, you will find that, despite overall well-being, a person makes sacrifices in some areas of life. Think about it: would you like to live in such conditions?
Signs that someone is jealous of you
If you are someone who does not envy other people, this does not guarantee that these emotions are not felt towards you. Everyone is surrounded by subjects who try to touch upon or touch upon a sore subject. They often joke provocatively and do not always follow their words. This is associated with ignorance or curiosity, but also indicates envy towards you. Superstitious people believe that strong envy can cause the evil eye by breaking through the energy shell.
You can identify an envious person by the following signs:
- manifestation of insincerity in facial expressions;
- excessive expression of emotions;
- stiffness and tension of gestures.
There are often situations when relatives or friends become hostages of this vicious feeling.
When they start competing with you
People who experience envy are constantly in a battle for leadership because their pursuit of success is actually permanent. Such people may even be dangerous, or they may be overly arrogant and want to appear better than others.
You may have a desire to put your envious person in his place. If he tries to argue with you about promotion, try to tell him that you are not competing with him. After all, such people immediately lose interest in competing with you as soon as you stop following their lead.
How to protect yourself from envy
There is no magic advice that will tell you what to do so that people stop envying you. Some people try to pretend that everything in their life is much worse than it actually is. In their opinion, this way they will protect themselves from the evil eye. Others do not pay attention to ill-wishers, continuing to live their lives. There are many examples on YouTube videos of how to behave in such situations.
There is a list of rules by adhering to which you can avoid the effects of negative outbursts addressed to you and always be on a wave of positivity.
- Don't show your superiority over others. An intelligent person knows about his intelligence without boasting, a rich person knows about his wealth, etc. By deliberately demonstrating your intellectual abilities or position in society, you can quickly attract envious glances. Remember the Buddhist wisdom: “Do not overestimate what you have received and do not envy others. He who envyes does not find peace.”
- Maintain a sense of tact when communicating with people: the less negativity and witticism you make towards your interlocutor, the friendlier the relationship will be.
- Never make excuses for what you have, because you lower yourself in the eyes of others. Envious people often tell non-existent stories in order to attract interest and see the reaction of the “victim”. Don't let them feel triumphant, just change the topic of conversation, cutting off the unpleasant conversation in the bud.
- Be friendly, be considerate, and give compliments. This is not about flattery or overacting. Try to find positive traits in every person you know and focus on them.
People are constantly gossiping behind your back
Envious people secretly always try to discuss you and your behavior in every detail. And in fact, this is not funny at all, since they can spread very bad rumors about you. You can confront them directly in order to stop these people.
As a rule, people who, out of jealousy, spread rumors behind your back, are not actually hostile towards you, and therefore sometimes one serious conversation may be quite enough for them to stop spreading gossip about you.
Useful materials for those who want to get rid of envy forever
Here comes the turn of several courses from Wikium on personal self-development. Several of my readers have already completed training in each of the programs described below. I didn’t receive any negative feedback; everyone was happy.
Brain fitness
Description. In this course you will develop in two directions. First, clear your mind of all kinds of negativity, namely: thoughts about the past, envy, fear, irritability, melancholy. Everything that makes you a pessimistic person.
Self-development will come next. You will learn how to develop thinking abilities, learn how to communicate correctly with people, control your feelings and emotions, and so on.
The course is very expensive (this is the only such program on Wikium, the rest are all cheap), because you pay for a special device - a neural interface. This is a serious development, unique in nature, which is why it is so expensive.
The neural interface analyzes the functioning of the human brain, reading the waves that emanate from it. The recorded information is then uploaded to the Wikium website in your personal account, analyzed there, and the site generates recommendations for you for each specific case. If you can't calm down because of fear - the recommendations will be the same if you envy your friends to such an extent that you can't sleep, thinking about their success and considering yourself a failure? – the advice will be different.
The neurointerface will help you understand yourself and remove from your head absolutely everything that interferes with your life and makes you unhappy. If you want, you can purchase it separately, without Brain Fitness, the price will be 1,000 rubles lower.
Authors: developers of the Vikium project.
Cost: 12,990 rub.
Find out more and sign up for training
Brain Detoxification
Description. The “Brain Detoxification” course is aimed, of course, not only at getting rid of envy, but this feeling is given a lot of attention here. Training in this program will help you get rid of a variety of types of negativity that interfere with your life.
Regardless of what negative emotion you experience, the state of your brain is always approximately the same - a “dialogue” starts, which still cannot be stopped. You chew the “mental cud” and cannot “spit it out.”
The techniques that are described in the ten lessons of this program will help you stop poisoning your own life. There is nothing complicated - you will get acquainted with the theoretical material, and then move on to practice - work out on several unique simulators, do the exercises. If you have any questions, ask them to the teacher.
Authors: developers of the Vikium project.
Cost: 1,490 rub.
Find out more and sign up for training
For now, these are all the courses I can recommend to you. If I find something aimed only at envy, I will add to the material.
If you know of good training courses on getting rid of envy or maybe you have read good books on this topic, please recommend them in the comments.
When people start imitating you
People who most often experience feelings of envy try to subconsciously seem better than you and begin to imitate you in every possible way. These people only feel better when they completely copy your clothing style or communication style.
Don't feel bad about it, rather try to encourage such people to follow their own path. And at the moment when they try to do something on their own, encourage them in every possible way. Try to show them that in order to be yourself you don’t have to imitate you.
