When we envy, we are never free from stress.
Each time we covet another person’s career, each time we assign ourselves the role of deciding who deserves what, each time spitefully ask how anyone could get so far on so little, we squeeze a little more cortisol into our bloodstream and squelch a little more joy out of our hearts.
It’s not healthy and it’s not helpful.
Stoic philosophers claimed envy was the mobilizing force that helped us discern the direction of our desire, but it’s really an infectious disease that we inflict upon ourselves when we are afraid to love.
My favorite fiction novelist, when asked if success among his writer friends created animosity, maintains an admirable mindset around this issue. He writes that everyone who has success is adding to the success of the entire business, enlarging the pool of industry finances, and making it possible for others to succeed. One man’s triumph increases the opportunities for all.
Koontz doesn’t contract into envy when his book gets bumped off the charts, he expands into gratitude, abundance and affirmation. He doesn’t imprison himself through the poison of comparison, he simply trusts that where there is one, there is a ton. And he doesn’t waste vast amounts of energy bemoaning what everyone else is getting away with, he trusts the fact that something happening at all means that it’s possible.
How much energy are you spending bemoaning the success of others? Is that feeling of envy really a tuning fork for your instrument of motivation, or is it contracting your heart into a state of scarcity and tension?
Listen, everybody is getting away with something, but each of us still has a responsibility not to participate in the spread of envy’s contagion.
If you want to complain, go make something. Metabolize your resentment into something meaningful instead of spewing more bile into the world.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you ready to move the boulder of resentment that is blocking the entrance to your own heart?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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