Avoid the Envy of Others

I am sure you have heard about how Sam Walton used to drive around in an old pickup truck—despite being worth billions of dollars.

Warren Buffet lives in a house not worth more than $200,000 and has lived there for thirty-plus years. He also works in the same office he has always worked in, and it is not that nice of an office.

For years, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, drove around in a late-model Honda Accord.

Very few people succeed at the level of men like Walton, Buffet, and Bezos. People who are able to gain and keep power understand that one of their greatest dangers is the people who are below them. Watching someone come from nothing to be worth billions of dollars cannot help but make some of those around the successful person feel inferior and instill some level of envy. And it does not have to be about money—it could be fame, power, or something else. The more successful you are, the more you will attract “silent enemies” who envy you and want nothing more than to see you fall.

To ensure that they do not attract the envy of others, these successful men downplay their success, doing their best not to flaunt it. They do their best to appear the same as those around them.

In fact, regardless of your level of success in the world, it is wise to downplay your success and deflect attention from yourself because otherwise you will eventually be attacked, undermined, and so forth. Envy creates enemies; they may not say anything but they will be waiting for every possible opportunity to undermine you and create problems for you. The more successful you become, the more people around you will come to resent you because your success only amplifies their comparative lack of achievement.

Envy is extremely dangerous. Often, when people envy you, they cannot admit it. For most people, showing envy for others is to also admit feeling inferior. Therefore, people find ways to disguise their envy for those people who arouse it within them. When we encounter people whom we see as superior to us, we become uncomfortable. This is because most people want to believe they are smarter, more attractive, more successful, and so forth than those around them. When we meet people who show we are not the things we imagine ourselves to be, our self-image is weakened and we become envious.

One of the most common ways of disguising envy is to criticize others. I couldn’t even count how many times I have been in conversations about successful people when I start hearing statements like the following:

• He may be successful, but he is immoral and he probably cheats on his wife.
• She may have done well, but she is really very unhappy deep down.
• They may be famous, but they are actually really screwed up.

In virtually every incident where I have heard these sorts of statements, they are being made by people who were once peers of someone who ended up becoming extremely successful.

The more successful I have become in my own life, the more people who were once close to me and my former peers have made statements like this about me. A few years ago, a bunch of statements similar to these started appearing about me on the Internet, and I was very shocked. Since the attacks were so in-depth, untrue, and personal in nature, I hired a lawyer to find out who it was.

It turned out it was a former employee of mine who had gone to school with a bunch of my college friends. At one time he had been my peer, but I had long ago surpassed him. This was someone whom I never would have suspected was so envious. The person had not worked for me in more than five years and yet had gone on an underground and anonymous vendetta—using fake names on message boards and so forth–due to his feelings of envy. This is the power of envy. If others become envious of you, they will attack in underhanded and anonymous ways and may lie in wait for years.

When I first started practicing law, at the age of 26, I had recently sold an asphalt business and bought myself one of the most expensive Porsche’s I could find. The car was flashy, drove fast, drew lots of attention, and stood out. I thought having the car was a great thing and I figured I was entitled to and deserved such a great car.

One of my first days in the office, an attorney I worked with who was very well known (and rumored to make at least a few million dollars a year), pulled up next to me in the parking lot in a late-model Toyota—a car probably not worth much more than $10,000. I was surprised.  Why would such a successful attorney be driving around in such an old car? At the time I did not understand that he was playing the same game Buffet, Walton, Bezos, and others play: he was doing his best not to attract envy.

In fact, most of the successful attorneys I was working with drove inexpensive cars. It was almost as if there were an unwritten agreement for attorneys to drive cars that were bland and ordinary. Moreover, many of the attorneys also did not live as well as you might expect them to and dressed in ordinary and inexpensive clothes. When I joined my second law firm, my boss did extremely well financially. Yet he drove a ten-year-old Mazda Miata and made sure to always fly coach when he traveled. I could list numerous examples like this of the lengths that people go to in an attempt to not attract envy.

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