
I’ve never been a fan of unpleasant emotions. Anger. Frustration. Disappointment.
They make life complicated, take time to deal with, force me to face difficult truths - either alone, or worse, in confronting others.
Historically, my M.O. has been to deal with them as quickly as possible, or my personal favorite, “not at all.” Whatever minimizes the amount of time and frequency I spend feeling with them (ideally zero time).
But this has often been an ineffective coping strategy - my relationships have suffered, and surprisingly, I can point to cases where my work has suffered too. I needed to grow out of this.
At the same time, I’ve noticed a pattern across people I admire most - a really healthy relationship with their feelings. They’re brave enough to acknowledge them and to have the tough conversations they require. At the same time, they’re equanimous enough not to be overwhelmed by those feelings: they bring them up respectfully and preserve a sense of stability and sturdiness even while they’re disappointed, sad, or furious.
As I’ve tried to grow a healthier relationship with my own emotions, I’ve found some easier to make progress on than others. Which brings us to today’s subject: envy. The temptation to suppress envy is super strong - I don’t like to feel it, and I really don’t like to admit I feel it.
But after some realizations tied to a recent bout of envy, I wanted to share some of what I’ve learned: both why it’s so tricky to deal with, and how to make it useful.
The Trouble with Envy: A Case
A few weeks ago, I was scrolling X while rocking my newborn and I came across this post:
Nat had been fun to follow about AI topics for a while - he was posting a lot about how he was writing with it, and now suddenly I was seeing a couple posts within a week or so where it seemed like he was ripping out these pieces of personal software using AI in record time. I was impressed, and it made me excited about getting back into coding once my daughter’s sleep schedule evens out.
Then a few days later I saw this one:
I didn’t think much of it at first. This guy was still doing cool stuff.
But then by the time my daughter got back to sleep, it popped back in my mind. How much did the course cost? And he sold how many? Within 8 hours of having the idea?
A little back of the napkin math confirmed it was a wild amount of money to make in eight hours and suddenly the seeds of envy were planted.
This one in particular brought up a few things for me. The course was dubbed “Build your own Life Coach” and it was going to walk you through how to (with no programming experience), build a goal and habit tracker with an AI “life coach” to help you better track and reach your goals. I had taught myself how to code back in 2020 and spent the better part of three years building Lattis, a goal and habit tracker focused on accountability. Not the same, but now Nat was teaching people with no coding experience how to build something similar—way, way quicker.
Why Envy Sucks
I would venture to say that envy is kind of a shameful feeling for many people. We rarely admit it, and when we do, it’s a little bit sheepishly. Even this post has a bit of a confessional nature to it. I think there are a few important things to note about why envy feels that way, and I share them because I think it robs envy of a little bit of that shameful power.
First, it’s a forked tongue - it has both an external and an internal focus, and those are upstream of two other unpleasant emotions: guilt, and embarrassment.
Externally, envy is about being resentful of someone else’s success. And if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to be troubled by someone else’s success or good fortune. You want to applaud people when they do well and celebrate them. Especially if the object of your envy is someone you respect or care about. So there’s an element of guilt for even having the feeling in the first place, like I don’t have the right posture towards someone else who did well.
Envy also has an internal focus: it spotlights an area in your life you feel inadequate about. I’ve been using AI tools in my coding and grown considerably from it, but seeing the sudden whirlwind around this course made me realize how much further ahead some people are, and it took something I felt proud of and instead pointed out the deficiencies.
Another important facet about envy is the types of sources that can provoke it.
We can be envious about known wants, or unknown wants. If I’m gunning for a promotion at work and someone else gets it instead of me, envy is an obvious reaction. But there are other times where envy comes as a shock, and these are the unknown wants.
This is exacerbated in our era of social media - oftentimes the things that spark envy are things we didn’t even know existed 10 seconds ago. Suddenly you see someone living a life you didn’t consider as a possibility, and it tugs at some latent desire in you. I’d seen Nat moving quickly with his AI tools before and it was just an inspiration, but for some reason the quick movement on the course hit me in just the right spot.
Envy’s Positive Purpose
Now the important question, what good does envy do? If we don’t have an answer to that question then there really isn’t much benefit in going through this exercise.
Envy offers two things:
First, it’s a fuel. There’s no question you feel motivated when you’re envious. It’s not a clean fuel, it’s probably the emotional version of coal. Use it in a pinch if you have to, but you really don’t want to be burning that stuff for long.
I think envy is actually a close cousin to inspiration.
Envy is the lemon of emotions, inspiration is the lemonade. Sometimes you just get a glass of ice-cold, from-scratch lemonade right at the stand, but sometimes life gives you envy and then you know what you must do (refer to the title if you forgot).
Second, envy is a sign you need to look closer. You see someone else’s success and you think, “what did I miss?” “How do I get that?” I think these question are useful, but they only encourage us to look outward. Counterintuitively, envy is also a sign that we need to look inwards, and ask the most important question it brings up: “what do I truly want?”
At its best, a bout of envy will leave you (1) motivated, and (2) clear about your own goals and priorities. It’s a great opportunity to come away with a renewed sense of what you truly want in life, and the energy to pursue it.
Once you get to this place, you’ll have made peace with the other person’s success or good fortune, and it will be a source of inspiration rather than envy.
Now, how to make that conversion?
Making Lemonade
This is basically a practice of making sense of the envy. Do this however you do your best processing: Journal it out, process it on some walks, talk it out with a friend.
It’s a three parter: First, what? Then, how? Last, integrate.
First, What?
First, what are you actually envious of? Sometimes it’s simple. Someone got a promotion you were gunning for? Straightforward.
But sometimes, and often in the social media example, there’s a cocktail of potential things that could be going on (this is part of what can make it so surprising). In my example, was it the fast money Nat was making? Was it the fact that he was building all this really cool software? I realized that what I most coveted was the speed: being able to build something really quickly and share it with others just as fast. My time is scarce since welcoming a second daughter and any coding time has basically ground to a halt.
Then, How?
Once you have clarity on that, ask yourself “what led to that result?”
My envy usually comes when someone is doing something I’m interested in, but they’re doing it better, faster, younger, or more successfully. I think it’s worth taking a little bit of time to see if there’s anything I can learn from them.
Do they just do something a little differently, or have a skill that you’ve never built up? This might be something easy to learn from.
On the other hand, maybe they have different goals in life, or different personal characteristics that make them capable of things you won’t be able to do or want to do. Maybe they can put in hours working towards a promotion that you can’t without neglecting your family. Maybe they’re seven feet tall and have a shot at being an NBA center, which will never be possible for your 5’11” self.
And as an aside, sometimes this question isn’t really meaningful at all. Allie and I struggled with infertility for a few years, and several of our friends had kids during that time. I was always excited, but the question “why not us?” would pop up in the back of my head frequently.
There wasn’t much to learn from that. Of course we wanted a kid. Didn’t do any good to focus on what someone else had, so the response I tried to cultivate was just being supportive and excited for our friends, and recognize that I was having a tough time with us not being able to conceive yet, and I probably needed to vent about that with Allie or someone.
Last, Integrate
Let’s say you thought about these first two questions and realized what you’re envious of, and realize that a similar success may be attainable for you if you just spend some more time doing X, Y, or Z.
This is actually a very precarious position to be in without the last question: “does this fit into my life?”
Without it, you run the risk of remaking yourself in the image of the person you envy. I can’t imagine a worse outcome than burning that envy fuel for a while and realizing you spent a bunch of time and energy on something to suddenly realize “this isn’t me.”
So whatever you’ve determined about what you were envious of and if there’s a reasonable way to pursue that thing, it’s important to run it through the filter of “does this fit into my life, and if so, how?”
I can’t stress enough here the power of having some regular process of reflecting on what you want in life, whether it’s concretely writing down goals or intentions, talking about your future hopes and dreams with a friend or partner, doing some kind of an annual review, or something else. The clearer those are to you, the easier it will be to compare this thing you’re envious of to where you’re trying to go in life.
Knowing what you want already mitigates some of the impact envy can have, and it gives you something concrete to compare to whatever you’re envious of. Would chasing this thing enhance an existing goal? Is it actually more important than some of the other stuff you want? Or is it just a distraction that seems interesting in the moment?
Take a little time to figure that out and then make the call on whether you should spend any more time focusing on whatever it was you were envious of.
If you do this well, much of the sting of the envy should dissipate. You will get comfortable with the other person’s success and what was envy will feel more like inspiration - a model for how to be better on your own path, not how to follow someone else’s path.
You’ll either end up changing your goals as a result, or realizing it’s not worth it to pursue whatever it was you were envious of. Either way, you’ll have a clearer sense of where you’re going in life, and this will only make things easier for you the next time envy comes around.
What about you?
This is a work in progress for me, so I’m legitimately interested in how this resonates with you, or if you have other ideas on how to deal with envy in a healthy and useful way?