Learn psychology with me #1: How to use envy to succeed?

Once I admitted to my very close friend that a couple of years before it felt annoying for me to listen to her talking about her new relationship when I was newly single. She said she felt the same after that, when she broke up, and I got a new boyfriend I was very excited about. We have always cared about each other, and this was just a nice moment of openness and acceptance of our own feelings and imperfections.

We can feel many 'wrong' emotions, and have many 'wrong' thoughts during the day. It is totally okay for as long as we accept them, understand them, and do not let them control our actions, and ruin our relationships.

A short dissection of envy

Okay, okay, I know we all know what envy is. But let me analyze and define that emotion as a psychologist (as I am :D). Envy is very well described by maybe a non-psychologist on urbandictionary.com:

People envy Paris Hilton because she has large wealth for which she has done nothing, but they comment on other aspects of her rather than this.

So, envy is the emotion that a person feels when he or she estimates that somebody else undeservedly possesses something that he or she desires. It manifests as a desire to have something that somebody else has, but it also includes negative feelings towards the other person. The purpose of enviousness is to balance the social differences, and to reduce the feeling of being inferior.

Envious face is not attractive :D [Image 'stolen' from brucesallan.com]

The more some person is similar to us by some characteristics (gender, age, education, etc.), the more easily we can feel envy towards him or her, and not someone totally different. That is why we can often feel envy towards our friend's or sibling's success.

Is evilness the source of envy?!

Yes, it is, if you are from Eastern Serbia! [Image 'stolen' from http://tpknewss.altervista.org]

No, it's not. For us humans there are two sources of enviousness: external and internal. 

External source lies in our society - we value things like physical appearance, career success, material possessions, popularity, etc. We evaluate our own success by comparing it with the average or the highest success in our environment. So, we see ourselves as higher or lower on the social ladder, and if we see ourselves as lower, it can induce envy of those who are higher.

Internal source of enviousness is the (chronical) feeling of being inferior or, in other words, the lack of sense of one's own value. So, if we see that we are not even capable of achieving something, it can induce the emotion of envy.

How to use the feeling of envy as an advantage?

If you thought that I will teach you how to set a trap for your more successful colleague to get fired, you are in a wrong place. I will actually help you figure out how to get a piece of successful mindset.

[Image 'stolen' from bigthink.com]

As nothing in psychology is really unambiguous, the same is with envy. That being said, we don't need to suppress our feelings, thinking that envy is only something that some sick-minded people feel. Envy is an emotion as any other emotion that all of us experience, but we just experience it in different ways and levels. Here are the most important of those nuances explained.

Constructive vs. destructive envy. A person feels destructive envy if she thinks that someone else's success means  her own failure - that is why that feeling is similar to the feeling of sadness. This kind of envy leads to destruction or wresting something from someone, in order to 'achieve equality'. It also manifests as happiness when something negative happens to somebody we envy (or as reading the scandalous articles about J. Lo's cellulite!). On the other hand, constructive envy means that other's success does not mean our own failure. This type of envy helps us define our goals and pursue them without putting the others down. We feel inspired by someone else's success.

Adequate vs. inadequate envy. Inadequate envy is the desire of a person to achieve something that another person achieved, although it is not his own real, intrinsic need (for example, studying math just to try to achieve the success of your older brother, while actually your real interest is in literature). Adequate envy is the envy that helps us recognize our authentic desire, and to pursue it, by envying someone who achieved the same.

Healthy vs. unhealthy envy. Unhealthy envy is the one that is destructive and inadequate. The person attempts to deprecate other's success, to destroy or take something from her, while actually not intrinsically desiring it. Healthy envy is the envy that is constructive and adequate. So, the person pursues getting something that she genuinely wants, by allowing the other person to achieve the same.

So, in order to really use the feelings of envy in our advantage, we need to build a habit to recognize our own feelings of envy, as well as to differentiate the healthy and unhealthy one. Envy can be an important tool for success if it is transformed from unhealthy to the healthy one.

Katarina Milivojević

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