Slaying the Green-Eyed Monster: How to free yourself from envy

You’re happily achieving your goals and doing what’s important to you, and then BAM, someone you know has something great happen to them. You lose focus. Instead of being happy you’re envious. You wish you were on the receiving end of good fortune and you’re slightly resentful that life seems so easy for them.

They’re buying a new house. They’re traveling the world. They just made the most prestigious list of (name the award.) You’ll never be able to move. You have yet to book a vacation, and you’ve never won award.

Envy is a complex emotion that makes you want what someone else has while believing you’ll never be as happy as the person taking up space in your head. If you examine envy up close you'll discover it's made up of a false narrative; a fantasy in your head, that if not addressed can cause distress and even mental health problems such as anxiety, depression or overwhelm.

Here are some ways to slay the green-eyed monster and free yourself of envy.

Face envy head on

Many people avoid admitting envy, or if they admit their feelings, to cope they avoid looking at the root cause. Avoidance is a good tactic if you have a low tolerance for discomfort, but if you want to be more courageous, my advice is to face envy head on. You’ll get a lot of insight about yourself and about the idea of envy itself. ?

When you face envy head on, you’ll find a common denominator: Judgment. You’re either judging yourself or judging them. If you’re judging yourself, you’re comparing yourself to them and coming up short. If you didn’t judge yourself, you’d be happy for them because you’d see their journey as uniquely theirs, and not related to yours. It wouldn’t matter that they grew up with privilege, started younger, had a lucky break or have specific talents. That’s their journey, not yours. ?

If you’re judging them, you’re trying to find fault, or looking for evidence that they don’t deserve the promotion, the award, or the opportunity—after all they are so young and life’s just not fair. (I have a saying: Judgment blocks prosperity.)

When you face envy head on, you’ll see how much time is wasted by judging and comparing. ?As my algebra teacher used to say, “you can’t compare apples to Billy goats.”

Master your narrative

In narrative coaching I learned that “your story is the source of your suffering.” If envy is anything it’s suffering, and the fastest way to end suffering is to master your narrative.

What are you telling yourself about the other person’s success? You’re telling yourself that they’re happier than you and don’t have as many problems. You’re telling yourself that you aren’t enough and that if you had a best-seller, a promotion, or more money you’d also be as happy as they are. You’re telling yourself that you aren’t that smart, that time is running out and you’re too old. Your envy gives you justification to be unhappy and unfulfilled.

Changing your narrative is simply a matter of perspective and practice. In the past when I was approached for coaching by highly successful people, I felt inadequate. How could I possibility help them, when it seemed that they had it all together.

Now, I know better. Today when I’m around highly successful people I’m grateful and in awe of their unique abilities. I’m genuinely curious because there is no comparison. I don’t strive to be an engineer, a physician or a CEO. I can’t possibly know what they know, yet they want to work with me. Why? Because I have my own unique talents, and expertise to help them gain leadership clarity, increase confidence, and navigate conflict.

Tell yourself the truth

Most of the time when we envy someone else’s success, we aren’t telling ourselves the truth. For example, you may envy someone’s financial success but if you’re truthful, you aren’t willing to make the sacrifices they did. You have different values and desires for what you want to create.

Until we tell ourselves the truth about who we are and what we want, we’re striving to be a computer programmer when we’re an artist at heart; or we’re traveling on weekends when we long to be with family.

Some have told me they envy me being an author. ?It’s meant as a compliment, but here’s the truth: they have the experience and resources, they haven’t yet made the commitment.

In addition, we often confuse regrets with envy, but regrets are about the past, and opportunities lost. For example, I started my professional journey at the age of 40. By the time I was 45 there were much younger people who seemingly were way ahead of me. The envy was misplaced until I told myself the truth and accepted my choices. When we stop living by fantasies of what could have been and instead tell ourselves the truth, we can stop taking the bait and slay the green-eyed monster and free ourselves of envy.

?Marlene Chism is a consultant, speaker, and the author of?? From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading (Berrett-Koehler 2022). She is a recognized expert on the LinkedIn Global Learning platform. Connect with Chism via?LinkedIn ,?or at MarleneChism.com

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