“Envy – A feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.”
(The Oxford Dictionary)
I stumbled across this blog post I’d written ages ago and thought it worth the re-share…
I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about envy of late. It’s not something that we really talk about much, an emotion that is well and truly relegated to the shadows. It is hinted at in articles on the challenges of social media which warn us against comparing ourselves to the glossy, rose coloured pictures painted of others lives, but we don’t really look at the depths of this emotion.
As a recovering chronic self-comparer, envy is an emotion that I am familiar with. But what happens when you bring more awareness to your experiences of envy? Is it paired with any other emotions? How do you respond to it? And what might it be telling you?
As I felt into this I noticed that for myself envy tends to pair quite nicely with depression and low self-esteem. Either one can come first and the others often follow in one form or another. This wasn’t such a surprise for me, but what was interesting was noticing the lack of motivation that was also often present; the sense of ‘giving up’ and ‘tuning out’ with unhelpful pursuits like T.V. watching. It was the increased awareness of this paired sense of ‘giving up’ that opened up for me a possibility of what envy might be showing me.
This sense of ‘giving up’ must mean that I was trying at something? What I started to notice is the connection with envy and the sense of being unhappy with my achievements/performance within the same area of my own life. This started to open up a new way of thinking. I thought to myself…”If I was feeling inspired/productive/happy/purposeful in that area of my life, would I feel envious of what someone else is achieving? Would I not in fact actually be happy for them and want to celebrate and support their success in any way I could?” I started to get a sense that yes; it may in fact be the case that envy is a fabulous indicator of my own sense of dissatisfaction.
So what then? Well then, you can start to do something about it. This then becomes a great way to see where you’ve been letting yourself down. Where there is action you’d like to take but have been avoiding it. Where there is growth to be gained but you’ve been hiding from it. Where there is a fuller expression of yourself that you haven’t yet brought forth. Where there is an adventure that you’ve told yourself you can’t have. Where you’re stuck in an old mindset or construct that is no longer serving you. This starts to become a much more empowered way of experiencing envy. It doesn’t mean that you deny the feeling or immediately jump to action in order to avoid feeling envy. It just means that when envy does arise, you can more easily embrace it, view it as a gift, allow it and see if there is inspired action that may arise out of it.
