The Upside of Envy

Wake-up Call #14

Summarizing the findings of researcher, Erzo Luttmer, back in 2011, Alina Tugend wrote in The New York Times:

“…most of us feel better if we make, say, $100,000 if the majority of our neighbors make $75,000 than if we earn $150,000 when most of our friends bring in $200,000.”

This is why living in a place like New York City, where I used to call home, can be, on the one hand, quite magical, and on the other, maniacally futile and demoralizing. No matter how much you earn or have, you will always be able to surround yourself with those whose relative wealth, power, status, stuff, and access dwarf yours.

Turns out, we’re wired for comparison.

Our measure of okay-ness, in nearly every domain of life, is slanted toward how we stack up not just against our own, internal sense of being and doing and having, but rather, how that compares to everyone around us. Especially those we see, in some way, as being similar to us.

We can meditate, do therapy, yoga, and breathe, read books and walk in nature. They may help. But research tells us that breaking the tether to comparison is a brutally hard thing to do.

Comparison just is.

And the thing about comparison, without fail, is that it leads to envy.

Which we’ve all been told is a bad thing.

But, what if it wasn’t?

What if envy had a potential upside?

What if we took more of an Aikido approach?

What if, rather than pushing against our “envy opponent’s” energy or trying to destroy it, we worked with and redirected it to create better outcomes, not just for us, but for those we seek to serve?

What it, instead of labeling envy as “bad,” we simply saw it as a form of activation energy, capable of driving behavior and being harnessed?

In fact, a fascinating bit of research on envy supports this possibility.

Turns out, envy is not just envy, it comes in two flavors. 

Envy Flavor #1: Malicious envy

This is the envy we’ve all been schooled on. The envy that drives us to hate, that makes us feeler less than, not enough. It’s the envy that leads us to wish bad things on others and maybe even act in ways designed to take them down a peg. It’s about that feeling of “why them? It should’ve been me!” It’s the ugly envy of schadenfreude, pleasure in another’s demise. 

Malicious envy is not about activation in any generative kind of way. If there is something harness-able about it, it’s the potential for diminution and destruction. Both, in the context of the way we feel about ourselves, and the regard in which we hold others. It’s a winner take all kind of envy, working on the assumption that “if they have it, I can’t.”

Malicious envy is dark cloud envy.

Envy Flavor #2: Benign envy

This is the polar opposite kind of envy. The one that serves not as a source of anger, jealousy, futility, maybe even sabotage, but rather awe, inspiration, celebration, motivation and, ultimately, constructive activation. It’s the envy that makes you say, “hey, they’re not so different from me, if they could do this, or be this, or achieve this, maybe I can too!”

It’s the envy that leads you to work harder, mount quests, say yes. The one that leads you to accept and forgive and be grateful for where you are, who you are, and what you have, while still working toward something you now believe is achievable, because someone like you has done it.

Benign envy is an expansive, we can all have, be, or do kind of envy. Your win does not preclude mine.

According to a study by Tilburg University’s, Niels van de Ven, benign envy motivates people to improve themselves. It is, in fact, a more effective source of motivation for positive action than simple admiration.

Benign envy is blue sky envy.

And here’s the thing…

We can’t easily opt out of the experience of comparison and envy, they’re just a part of human nature. But we can choose whether the way they show up is malicious or benign.

I’ve experienced this myself in my approach to writing. In the early days, I’d often get jealous not just at the quality of another writer’s craft, but also the recognition they were getting for it. Now, I look at sentences that I know I’m not yet capable of writing, and sometime find myself laughing out loud at how good they are, being filled with respect, and feeling inspired to work even harder to reach that level of expression.

We spend so much time labeling envy as bad, morally or socially repugnant, and trying to snuff it out. There are, no doubt, certain generations-old neural grooves or even outright pathologies that, to the extent possible, can and should be rewired or extinguished.

But what if, instead, we learned to notice when we’re feeling them, then decided to wrap them in a frame of healthy, generative activation energy that led to meaningful action, service and contribution?

Something to ponder as we all explore how to be who we want to be, feel how we want to feel, build what we’re here to build, and tell the story of our lives in a way that taps our innate conditioning as fuel for positive action and impact, rather than a source of suffering, anger, and futility.

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Wake-Up Call #14

Bring to mind something, someone, some situation where you’ve recently felt yourself dropping into comparison or envy mode.

Is the feeling more malicious or benign for you?

If the former, how could you reframe the story you’re telling yourself about it to transform it into inspiration and energy?

What is the story that lets you see it as simply proof of possibility, and motivation to take more concerted action toward your own path of growth?

Noodle on it. And, if you’re inclined, write a bit about it.