How To Deal With Envy: 4 Life-Changing Steps To Overcome Envy

Today you’re going to find out how to deal with envy.

“Envy is ignorance” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, and that about sums it up. No one would make themselves undergo an endless cycle of self-harm if they really knew what they were doing.

And what about jealousy? Jealousy is an emotion that’s confused with envy too many times, but they’re different.

Envy is that thing you feel when you lack something someone else has while jealousy is how you react to the threat of losing something you love.

Envy is beating yourself up because you haven’t attained what others have and it’s dangerous to you and your mental health. It will eat you up alive, leaving you with no time of your own to really accomplish something.

Envy is a wasteful emotion that needs to be gotten rid of just as much as jealousy.

In fact, Paul Chatfield once defined jealousy as “tormenting yourself for fear you should be tormented by others.” Jealousy is a paranoid behavior and if left unchecked could even be harmful to oneself.

This article is about how to stop feeling envy and regain your personal freedom from the bouts of bitterness they can throw one into.

Lots of people every year descend into depression or even commit crimes because of these emotions. They are emotions that can be deceptive if not gotten rid of.

This is a call to take control of your life again and kick out these emotions from being in command of your life.

By following the easy steps provided in this post, you can begin to get your personal happiness back and as well begin a new journey of gratitude and private accomplishment.

And it’s a journey we all need to be on.

How To Deal With Envy:

1. Identify why you are feeling them in the first place.

Ask yourself why you are envious of your friend’s new job or your neighbor’s new car? Why do you feel jealous of your boyfriend’s bestfriend?

Before any of these emotions can be dealt with in the very best way, you have to determine why you are feeling it in the first place.

And there’s no way to do this better than to have some moments of introspection. You are the only one who knows why you feel the way you do and so you must spend time figuring that out.

Figuring out why is a step that must be taken before finding a way to deal with it.

Are you envious of your friend’s new job because you want a high paying job just like his or are you envious because of his ability to get that kind of job even although you are just as qualified or perhaps more qualified.

Or are you jealous because your boyfriend spends more time watching games with his bestfriend than he does with you?

Now that you’ve figured all this out, your next plan of action is to find a journal and write it all out. Writing out your feelings gives you a perspective into your feelings and even provides you the ability to deal with all the negativity you’re feeling.

By reviewing the scenario that led to the envy and jealousy, you could really begin to deal with.

So don’t hold back when you write to discover what you’re feeling. Don’t feel terrible writing it down, because holding it all in is more dangerous. Writing it down is liberating yourself from all the negativity, so do it in details.

For example, you could write about how you felt when your friend said he got the job.

How did the conversation go precisely? Was he gloating or did you feel trapped in your own job that you wished you had been the one who went for the job interview in his place?

Whatever the reason, be honest with yourself; find the root of this bitterness, for it is simply then that it can be precisely gotten rid of.

2. Accept some reality in order to move on with your life.

You must accept that you’re significantly different from the other person you are being envious of.

For instance, you must accept that you don’t make enough money in a year to buy the kind of fancy sport car your neighbor just got. This is not thinking your neighbor is in any way better than you, but this is accepting the truth of things.

Sometimes people feel envious of others because they don’t have the accurate information. How many times do you watch a reality show and wish you had just the life they had, and you keep yourself awake at night because you don’t live in the kind of mansion they live in.

You wish you had the kind of glamorous life the people in the show have while in reality – the truth behind the scenes, it could be plainer than you thought.

They possibly worry about the things you worry about or worry about bigger things. So why would you want to be them in the first place?

Instead of allowing the bitterness of what you don’t have compared to what others must get you down, it might really be the time to highlight your own blessings.

Now, this is the time to brag to yourself about what you are literally great at. You could look in the mirror and accept that you don’t have a sport car but you are also NOT living in debt.

You could accept that you don’t have the kind of fancy job your friend just got BUT that has allowed you to spend more time at home with your kids. You can accept that you’re an excellent parent, an excellent friend, and that you’re great at your job, and you are on the way to doing better for yourself.

So lay it all down and you would be surprised at how extraordinary you are even in the face of what you perceive as lack.

If what you are feeling is jealousy, you even have to accept your reality. After finding out why you feel jealous of your boyfriend’s friend, you could accept that he might spend time with him more to discuss his work which could be beneficial to you both.

And that even although he spends so much time away from you, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care.

Accept the truth of things while also highlighting the great parts of how the situation is a blessing or a potential one.

3. Feel grateful for what you have.

Optimally the task is to exchange your envy and jealousy for gratitude and it’s an excellent deal if you ask me.

Gratitude gives you back the joy that envy and jealousy take away from you. Gratitude requires you to actively look around your life and be grateful.

There is no way there aren’t many things in your life to be thankful for and you don’t even must look hard to see it.

Begin with the easy things; you have food on the table or in the fridge? Be grateful for that. You have clothes on your back?

Be grateful for that. Gratitude requires that you focus on yourself and start to appreciate the little things you have taken for granted for so long.

Another thing is you must begin to be grateful on behalf of others and how do you do this? By complimenting!

So rather than feeling envious of your neighbors car or your friend’s job, turn the negativity into positivity and compliment them instead. Look at whatever they’ve and compliment them on the nice parts.

Complimenting them is rejoicing with them and that’s a better and faster way to get rid of envy. Stop seeing yourself as competing against them and be grateful and gracious towards them for whatever they’ve achieved.

In order to continue to be grateful, you must realize that it’s hard to be grateful around judgmental people or those who find it hard to be contented.

So you must check your life, do you have friends who seem to turn everything into a contest and can’t seem to close up about who has the best car or how much they’re making at work or how they’re wearing the best designer dresses?

Then it’s time you stopped spending so much time with them. They will hurt your gratitude process and rip the little joy you have left.

Instead, find generous and grateful people to spend your time with. This will encourage your journey and you’ll begin to see life in the right perspective.

Another thing to gratitude is generosity. It is time to give to get. You want joy and you want to feel enough; then give. This is not only in material things, but giving the time you have.

Donate to charities if you can or volunteer your time to help a good cause. It is a rewarding and healing process to give and you won’t regret it that you have.

If it’s jealousy you are feeling; rather than feeling threatened that something you love might be slipping away from you, it’s time to look back at how far you have really come with the thing or person and be thankful for those moments of joy you have been able to have with them.

Spend time to appreciate what you’ve got and keep away from people who might make you feel threatened. Dispel the fear that you might be losing it and instead give more of your time to it.

4. Keep busy.

This is largely keeping yourself so busy that you don’t have the time or the energy to be jealous or envious. You must get too busy living that you’re concerned less about how others are living theirs.

So how do we get focused?

Focus requires that you set a goal for yourself and attain it.

Don’t get ahead of yourself while you do this. Remember what we said about accepting reality? So don’t write down a goal of getting the kind of fancy car you neighbor has when you know there isn’t any realistic way of getting one like that in a month or even a year.

So start small. You could decide you want the best lawn in the neighborhood. Your neighbor can have the best car, but you can have the best lawn.

Now that’s a goal you can accomplish if you set your mind to it. Check out for what that goal requires and start to work towards it.

This won’t only occupy your time that you forget to be envious, but will also fill you with so much energy and joy. Envy drains away your joy, but doing something for yourself is a way of getting it back.

So after you’ve achieved your goal and have gotten the best lawn there’s (or whatever your goal may be), you could look at it and be proud. You did it, you achieved this and it’s something worth celebrating.

You could also put whatever talent you must use and don’t say you aren’t talented. We all are, and if you think you don’t, you can fix that by asking your friends what they think you are good at.

Whatever thing you are good at, it’s time to begin to hone it and make it work for you.

Spend time developing your talent and be thankful for it each step of the way. Keep a journal if you feel your talent is writing and divert your attention to it, better yet, start a blog. Or start visiting open mic nights, if you feel yours is singing. Whatever your talent is, spend time being great at it.

Be aware that in the course of doing this, you could get carried away and shortly begin to compare your talents with somebody else’s.

Don’t do this.

Always remember that the stage is large enough for everybody and another person’s success doesn’t in any way impede your success. So rather than seeing them as competition, you could begin to see them as colleagues or fellow travelers on the same journey.

And if it’s jealousy you feel, get focused on creating more significant memories with your partner or whatever you are afraid might soon be taken away from you.

So Instead of being paranoid, focus more on creating better things. Do you feel your job might be taken away by someone else; then get better at it. You cannot control the behavior of others, but you can control yours.

Focus and don’t let the situations you can’t change rob you of your happiness.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to deal with envy. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.