Why do we envy others?

 Why do we envy others?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One more emotion or feeling that disrupts our well-being and productiveness in the workplace is envy.

Envy is a feeling of discontent or unhappiness about other's success, advantages, or possessions.

We develop envy when we see others have something we wish to have. It could be personal qualities, skills, success, positional status, materialistic advantages, and opportunities.

for example, 

We become sad, angry, or resentful, 
when someone is getting appreciation or being noticed in the workplace
when someone is having some skills or other qualities than us
 
How is envy getting developed?
 
 One of the habits that most of us have is to compare ourselves with others. Initially, it starts with inspiration or general reference; eventually, it becomes envy. The process of comparison goes like this. We start comparing with others on skill sets, competency, possession, etc., start amazing, and then eventually looking at self, finding the gap, start feeling as inferior, becoming self-pity and weak. When we repeat the comparison habit with many people, we eventually conclude that “I do not have much positive qualities or possession, and  I am not deserving of greatness.”The self-pity becomes envy.
 
 The strange thing in the comparison process is that we compare and envy only our known circle or at the same level. For example, a rich/poor person compares him/ herself against another rich/ poor person and envy it. Most of the time, we may compare ourselves with our colleagues or friends’ level only, not on a higher level, says boss or beyond our network.
 
How does envy affect us?

Unlike other emotions, envy is something more inward and harmful than other emotions.

1) Internally, we lose our self-esteem as we always feel a scarcity/shortage of something when we keep on comparing with others. Lack of self-esteem will invite all the troubles, as we have discussed in many articles.

2) Externally, we express our emotions into rude behavior, criticizing other’s success with our own opinions

3) We lose our identity and focus of our priorities
 
Even though getting envy is a universal emotion of all human beings, which may vary with the hierarchy, we need to control with a clear borderline of inspiration and envy.

Let us discuss the approaches next week!