Next week, I will be making a big announcement. This is a project I’ve been working on for over a year, and I’m finally ready to let it out into the world. As long as you’re receiving this newsletter, you’ll be among the first to know. I’m so excited to share it with you.
In the meantime, I wanted to re-share a post that is thematically linked to what I will announce next week. Without spoiling anything, I’ve realized that a common thread that weaves its way through my work is that of knowing yourself. I’ve come to understand that if you direct your attention inward and explore that world, then there will be no room for suffering to emerge. That might sound like a bold statement, but timeless wisdom has repeatedly pointed to that truth.
Of the many emotions that breed suffering, perhaps the most pernicious one is envy. Not only does it leave us feeling thankless about our lives, but it also makes us feel inadequate as human beings. It also doesn’t help that social media injects our veins with envy with each post we see, yet our shame about the emotion prevents us from openly discussing it.
So in today’s post, we’re going to discuss it thoroughly. And in doing so, you’ll understand the anatomy of envy while also feeling it dissolve in real-time. When you’re ready, let’s dive right in.
There are certain struggles that have their moment in the spotlight. Things that were once very difficult to admit become acceptable to reveal.
Problems with vulnerability are one example:
Shame is another:
And even a harrowing topic like depression is encouraged to discuss:
But there’s one struggle that is becoming more and more problematic, yet it’s still considered a taboo to openly admit:
The problem of envy.
Revealing that you struggle with this emotion won’t yield much sympathy. Unless you’re discussing this with a close friend, we tend to judge someone who describes themselves as an envious person. There’s something off-putting about it, and we often feel that it’s a problem you should keep to yourself.
However, envy is one of the great struggles plaguing humanity today, and it’s only getting worse. The conditions that allow envy to thrive are being accentuated by technological progress, yet our norms have not updated to accommodate this reality. It should be just as acceptable to talk about envy as it is anxiety, especially because the former often feeds into the latter. Yet we keep our mouths shut in fear of being judged, and allow it to eat away at us over time.
This is my attempt to dissect the shit out of envy, and to go deep into the problem without any preconceived notions. How exactly does envy arise, and what about today’s world makes this especially problematic? How do we manage its presence, and diminish it as much as possible?
Well, to get to the end, we must start from the beginning.
Let’s jump in.
The Anatomy of Envy
Say hello to John.
John has a pretty good life, but since he’s a human being, what he has today isn’t quite enough. He has visions of a future where he is just a bit happier, just a bit more content.
These visions are what we refer to as desires, and while he has many, he’s been trying to narrow them down lately. After some intense self-reflection, he’s come to realize that everything can be reduced down to one thing:
Fair enough, John. It’s not an especially unique thing to want, but hey, it’s honest.
Let’s represent John’s desire for wealth as this dollar-sign goalpost, which we will refer to as the “desired good.”
It may seem like John and the desired good are the only two players here, but in reality, there’s a lot happening.
Once a desire is set, John’s view of the world shifts a few degrees closer to that want. When he looks out and sees people, he will position them according to where they stand in relationship to his goalpost. The further out they are, the more “unattainable” they seem, and the closer they are, the more reachable they feel:
And here we arrive at the first rule of envy:
You will be envious of those that have reached your desired state, but are not too far removed from it. Those that are too far out will be sources of inspiration, not envy.
So in the context of John’s landscape, it will look something like this:
People like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates will be in that green area. Their wealth is at an incomprehensible level in John’s mind, so instead of being envious of them, he will buy their biographies and seek to learn from them. The people that have taken John’s desire and achieved many multiples of it will feel like distant mentors as opposed to close rivals.
On the other end, the people that are in neither the green nor red areas won’t garner much of John’s envy too. Either John is already as wealthy as they are, or he simply doesn’t view these people through the lens of wealth to begin with. Healthy friendships and relationships tend to live in this zone, as there is nothing in particular that is desired from them (outside of having a good time).
That leaves us with this terrible red zone. The space where the potential for envy is at its highest:
So the big question is: Out of all these people, how does envy choose who to target? After all, John will not be envious of everyone here; only a handful of them will personify his struggle with the emotion.
Well, it turns out that envy has a few guidelines it likes to follow, and someone who satisfies any one of them will make them a prime target (which I will now refer to as the “rival”). Let’s review what they are.
(1) You once had a shared history with the rival, but now the rival seems to be way ahead of you.
Envy thrives in the distance between you and someone you once knew.
This is because a shared history implies some form of equality, a starting point where both of you had a blank slate. In John’s case, it could his high school friend, his old college roommate, or his co-founder of the failed company they started. If any of these people then went on to reach the level of success that John now desires, then John will feel that he missed out on something that the other person clearly took advantage of.
Here’s the strange thing: Envy is more likely to arise if you have not kept in touch with the rival during the course of this divergence. In other words, the more opaque the relationship, the stronger the envy. This is because we lack the insight to know just how long and winding the rival’s path actually was, and we instead assume that it was a neat trajectory from Point A to Point B. This makes us feel that we could have done it just as easily, and causes us to envy the rival for having made a decision that we should have made ourselves.
This leads me to the next guideline envy uses to choose its targets:
(2) A rival’s path to success appears easily replicable.
At its core, envy is about attention. The more you pay attention to the rival and what they’re doing, the greater your envy toward them will grow. And there’s nothing that commands more attention than a neatly advertised path to success.
When someone’s showing you how easy it is to do what they have done, you feel inclined to accept their guidance. But by adopting their strategies, you also outsource your judgment to them, which means that you invest much of your precious attention to their path.
Whenever you do this, you tend to lose confidence in your capabilities, and any loss of confidence usually opens the floodgates to envy:
Envy loves it when you’re in the “danger zone”, and that happens the more you look outward to solve your problems as opposed to inward. And when it comes to looking outward, envy abides by this final guideline to choose the optimal rival:
(3) The rival seems very relatable to you. You have similar interests, similar outlooks, but the outcomes appear to be wildly different.
Envy thrives on the feeling of “if they can do it, then why can't I?”
In many ways, you often see yourself in the people you envy. You believe that you’re just as capable as they are, and are equipped with the same abilities that they also possess. But because of this, you are also disheartened by the fact that you feel so much further behind.
This is why envy tends to be high in any work setting. You are surrounded by colleagues that you once started with, but you may be passed up for promotions while they keep climbing the ladder. Or perhaps you’re an entrepreneur that’s been chugging along for 10 years, but someone who just entered the game last year is already breezing past you.
In order for there to be a proper point of comparison, there must first be a sense of relatability. In the past, these were the people that you would encounter on a somewhat regular basis, such as family members, classmates, and colleagues. Physical proximity is what gave you transparency into one’s character, and this is how you determined how relatable someone was.
Well, to say that things have changed would be the understatement of the century (thus far). We now live in a world where everyone is just one connection away, and when you combine this with the inability to openly discuss envy, you get the perfect shitstorm to smack you in the face.
