Envy: does it work for you, or against you?

Envy: A painful emotion that involves the beliefs that one lacks a desired object that another person has, and the desired object is important to the person’s self-concept or competitive position. Envy includes the motivation to reduce the pain it entails and to improve one’s relative standing.

I've previously talked about influence and how we are constantly influenced by what we see, who we are around, and what we do. In a world where we are subjected to so much influence, it's so important to reflect on the emotions you are feeling when you are viewing content, gaining motivation, inspiration, and guidance.

I reflect a lot on how emotion drives our behaviors, and I know one of the biggest keys to achieving your goal, is understanding how specific emotions impact your desires and behaviors.

I bring up envy because it can be a factor in what motivates us.

Envy occurs as benign envy, entailing a longing to improve oneself and emulate the envied person, and malicious envy, entailing hostile thoughts and intentions directed at harming the other.

Maybe you've had experiences in life that reflect this--experiencing envy in a way that inspires you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and push yourself into mindsets about what you *can* achieve. And on the other end of the spectrum, maybe you can also reflect on times where envy prompted feelings of wanting to bring down the subject at hand, even if it was only in your mind! The first example is benign envy, while the latter is malicious envy.

What I find so interesting about this research is how self-control plays into what you do with those feelings of envy. There was a positive correlation between envy and subjects who felt the have some sense of control in their outcomes. In short, when people perceive high control about improving their own outcome and if they regard the superior’s outcome as deserved, benign envy is more likely than malicious envy and vice versa.

The motivational power of envy is well known, and some interesting outcomes have been observed. For example, envy can relate to improvement motivation (Cohen-Charash, 2009), better performance (Schaubroeck & Lam, 2004), desire for status-related goods (Crusius & Mussweiler, 2012), or even the intention to help others (Hareli & Weiner, 2002).

Here is where awareness, mindfulness, and gratitude come in to practice. When you are aware of the envy (or other emotion) you're experiencing, you get to make a choice. Recognizing what inherent resources, talents, gifts, and opportunities you have, will help you create a mindset and a physical environment that will set you up to "level up", rather than bring down.

If this interests you or resonates with you, check out my 12-week course. I have some really insightful tools to help you gain personal introspection and understand the emotions behind what motivates you.

12-Week Course

I would love to hear in the comments what EMOTION you've identified is a big driver of your behaviors!