How envy hurts you: Actions to watch out for

In our society, it is not customary to openly discuss envy. On the contrary, they try to hide this feeling as deeply as possible in themselves, to give another, more acceptable explanation for their feelings, to find logical justifications for various manifestations of their ill will. You can act the same way: instead of admitting to yourself that you are jealous of someone, you are engaged in self-deception. You convince yourself that you’re just being objective, that you don’t like the approach the person has chosen, and so on.

Envy by itself does not make you a bad or unworthy person. This is a perfectly normal reaction; moreover, you can turn it to your advantage to understand what you truly want, determine your goals and values, be inspired, and take the first step towards your dream. Unfortunately, more often people tend to choose a different behavior model: they give in to their emotions. As a result, envy pushes them to do things that turn against themselves. Surely you have sinned in this way more than once. In this article, we’ll look at which of your actions based on envy are causing you harm.

7 ways envy quietly damages your life

1. You devalue the successes of others, instead of learning from them

The easiest way to deal with negative emotions is to convince yourself that someone’s success is not that valuable. In this case, you will be looking for, or more honestly, coming up with reasons why a person has achieved what they want. The range of possible options is wide, from banal luck to having connections. The main thing is that in the end, you feel that the person has not done anything special. In the short term, this approach may even bring you relief.

Envy will fade into the background, and you will continue to do what you usually do. But here’s the problem: by devaluing other people’s achievements, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn something. Instead of analyzing a person’s path, making use of it, and learning from his experience, you come up with an alternative, highly simplified reason for his success. The one you envy keeps growing, but you stay in the same place.

2. You’re comparing your path with someone else’s, missing opportunities

The habit of comparing yourself to other people never works in your favor. You look at a person who has already achieved some kind of result, and you correlate his successes with your own. Visit. A F R I N I K. C O M . For the full article. At the same time, you ignore the difference in your experience, in the starting conditions, in the time that was invested, and so on.

Of course, with such a superficial comparison, in most cases, you end up lagging behind. And this leads to the two most possible courses of action. You either start rushing, trying to catch up with the other person, or you give up, admitting your loss. In both cases, you make decisions based on emotions, without delving too deeply into the real situation.

3. You rejoice at other people’s failures and stop focusing on your life

It’s rarely talked about, but the joy you feel when someone fails is also a kind of part of envy. The mechanism is simple: there is a person who has achieved what you dream of. There are troubles in his life, and you become aware of them. Instead of sympathizing or just ignoring the news, you start savoring the information. There is a feeling of inner satisfaction when you hear how this person makes mistakes or faces new difficulties. It often feels like rebalancing, like you’re back on the same level, and you no longer perceive yourself as a laggard or a loser.

It would seem that this cannot negatively affect your own situation. But no: in reality, you are still people who are on different levels. Your envy doesn’t make you stronger, doesn’t bring you closer to your goals, and doesn’t give you any growth. Rather, on the contrary, you focus even more on someone else’s life. But the person you envied is likely to continue to gain valuable experience and eventually achieve what you want.

4. You start playing someone else’s role and lose touch with yourself

Feeling envious can push you to copy other, more successful people. You see that someone has a certain idea, an approach, a pattern of behavior, and you try to repeat it one-on-one. You try on someone else’s communication style, goals, make the same decisions, and react to external stimuli in the same way. At first glance, following successful strategies looks very logical. But the problem is that blind copying doesn’t take into account your own characteristics.

What works for one person may not be suitable for another. Just because you have different values, priorities, character traits, and so on. As a result, you can spend a huge amount of time and effort on something that will not bring any result, or success will not be at all what you would like.

5. You’re delaying your actions, reducing your chances of success

Envy can paralyze you, preventing you from acting even if you already have a clear strategy ready. You will look at someone else’s result and think that you are unlikely to be able to achieve the same thing, that you are starting too late, falling short in terms of knowledge and skills. Instead of doing anything, you will continue to postpone this moment for an indefinite amount of time.

You can convince yourself that you need a little more preparation. For example, you should first analyze your chances of success one more time, practice a little more, and so on. But in fact, this behavior is avoidance, and as long as you are in this state, nothing will change. The longer you delay active actions, the more doubts will appear in your head.

6. You’re criticizing yourself more than you need to

Of course, self-criticism is a useful tool. But it is important to observe moderation in everything. Envy often turns against yourself: you start looking inside yourself for reasons why you still haven’t achieved success. The first thing that comes to mind is your flaws. You list your disadvantages: character traits, lack of knowledge and skills, and behavioral traits.

Pretty quickly, thoughts begin to appear that you are not good enough, you do not have the necessary abilities, and you are lagging behind others. It is worth noting that excessive self-criticism will not bring you closer to your desired goals. Rather, on the contrary, it will reduce motivation, prevent you from objectively assessing your strengths, and delay the moment when you can start acting as much as possible.

7. You are guided by external standards and forget about your own path

One of the most insidious manifestations of envy is that it makes you forget about your own path. You stop asking questions about what you really want, what’s important to you, and what outcome will matter to you. These experiences fade into the background and gradually stop popping up in your head. Instead, you switch to external standards: you start focusing on the successes of people you envy. But you don’t take into account the fact that other people’s goals and ways of achieving them don’t always match your desires and values. You can spend years moving in a direction that you’re not really interested in.