Find someone who would never envy anyone, most likely, impossible. Waking up early in the morning, we would like to be in the place of those who do not need to go to work, and having been forced to "leave" - to become those who sit in the office from morning till night. Making a perm, we remember a friend who has curls from nature, and after a hard training in the gym, we think about another, which can sit on the couch all day, eat sweets and not get fat, and so on.
Envy is often called a negative emotion. But psychologists say that this is true only when it appears literally for a minute, for example, at the sight of beautiful expensive shoes on a friend. Something like - "and I would be like that, but there's no money, well, okay." And if we constantly think about this friend, her shoes, dresses and faithful admirers, envy becomes an emotional setting, that is, a feeling. And, as the Japanese scientists from the National Institute of Radiology found out, it looks like a pain. It turns out that the reaction of the brain during his experience passes in front of the cingulate gyrus - the same region of the brain plays a key role in the treatment of pain.
The superficial reasons for which we suffer envy are nothing but the hatred itself, maybe a million. But the basis for them is the same - when comparing yourself with others, the account does not come out in our favor. However, not low self-esteem is one of the main catalysts of this feeling.
Black and white
Recently, Masha saw off friends at the airport - they flew to India for two weeks. And she had not been on vacation for six months! Actually, Masha was happy for them. But not only. Therefore, I honestly informed them that I envied white envy. And my friend, holding happy tickets to the ocean, said: "But you have such a car!" But Masha knew for sure that her friend was happy to buy her dream car. In a word, they envied and dispersed, satisfied with each other. Because in this case the phrase "white envy" was used as a synonym for the expression "sincere joy for others. Not a very good synonym, but in Russian it happens. But experts, speaking of the division of this consuming feeling into white and black envy, imply a division into constructive and destructive. The first is motivated by useful things, the second - hatred and inaction.
White envy is envy with an admixture of intellect. A person at least analyzes for whom it makes sense to chase, but for whom there is no. And, most importantly, having taken a fancy for someone else's success, he is already making plans, what exactly he needs to do in order to achieve the same high results.
And black envy is not constructive and even destructive, since it does not give the incentive to do something yourself. Why, if the one who achieved all this is the same as me, and he just fell head over heels?
In addition, he is sure that black envy destroys not only a single individual, but the whole society as a whole. After all, envy, not that other than the hatred, many suffer. Imagine, one person envied the other, that he has some thing, and began to take it away from him. They fought and in the heat of the fight, the notorious thing was torn or broken. Now neither one nor the other has anything. And if the second one had seen the thing that I liked at first, I would have decided to "go and earn the same or better", in the end, two beautiful expensive things would appear instead of one, plus an additional incentive to work to earn, show constructive activity. What, on the contrary, is also for the benefit of society.
However, there is an opinion that constructive jealousy is fraught with danger: if used awkwardly, it can cause feelings of inferiority or prevent you from achieving what is really needed. Everyone should have this sense within reasonable limits. It is something like a famine - after all, if a person does not feel it, he will stop eating and will not live long. Although with excessive appetite will begin to suffer from overeating. Adults explained that by comparing themselves with others, we see our shortcomings more clearly, and this gives us the impulse to strive to become better. And completely without envy, a person turns into an indifferent, primarily to himself, creature. But she admits that although she helps her in her career, she has already forgotten about the feeling of satisfaction with her work.
And one of my friends has another problem. She envies figures of skinny, frail women, so every day she goes to the gym and tried all the diets on herself. But its constitution simply does not allow to achieve the desired image. And as a result, quite nice and slender girl constantly reproaches herself, then for laziness, then for gluttony - ate three cabbage leaves instead of two and also considers herself a fat aunt.
Understand and neutralize
Anyway, it's a gnawing feeling - a kind of bell that hints at you that something in your life or in you is not either or not that way. This, indeed, as with pain: if we had never felt it, we could not have started to treat illnesses in time. So it's worth learning to manage it. First, you need to be able to understand when you really envy. After all, often we are unconsciously or deliberately, so as not to injure ourselves loved ones once again, we confuse it with an allegedly fair critical attitude towards the one who, we think, has achieved undeserved successes, or we accept for insult - I say, I do not envy, but why else, successful, trying to show me that I'm worse?
Specialists list the symptoms of hidden envy:
- You are bored to listen to the joyful news of the interlocutor;
- you spoil the mood, there is a desire to quickly finish the meeting;
- there is self-pity.
I am not sure? Then ask yourself: would it be easier for you if tomorrow the same person lost all those joys that he now has? If yes (at least a little bit), you are exactly jealous. And it is much more useful to admit this. Autotraining helps to tune in to a positive attitude towards the world as a whole. Then we need to analyze: what exactly do we lack? Perhaps, it's not that someone was promoted for you, but that you did not finish the foreign language you really needed?
Understanding yourself, you can safely draw up a plan of action to achieve what is really needed and important. Make a new hairstyle, change the wardrobe, sign up for an English course, rent out your apartment and give up for a year in Bali. Or just suddenly discover that in fact you are all right, and enjoy your life without looking back at others.