Why envy is a POWERFUL MOTIVATOR

Sit with the discomfort and treat your green-eyed monster as a messenger, providing fresh fuel to fire up your ambitions

- Anna Bartter

We’ve all felt it. A surge of adrenalin. A quickening pulse. That familiar sting: Envy. A friend has been promoted, moved to a huge new house, jetted off somewhere amazing on holiday. Our envy triggers may all be different, but the outcome is the same: it makes us feel bad.

Aristotle defined envy as ‘The pain a person experiences at the sight of another person’s fortune’. Nuanced with shame, imbued with hostility and resentment, it’s a feeling as old as time. One of the seven deadly sins, not one but two of the Ten Commandments warn against it. From ancient philosophy to modern psychology and throughout history, literature and beyond, we’re told that envy is evil. It’s supposedly responsible for crimes from murder to genocide, and it certainly doesn’t sit well with most of us.

It’s little wonder, then, that we go to extreme lengths to deny or repress feelings of envy. After all, admitting to it is not only an uncomfortable, shameful confession, but it’s also an admission of inferiority: we lack something we desire.

But rather than berating ourselves and feeling bad, there are ways we can reframe this negative, much-maligned emotion and work it to our advantage.

As a species, humans are designed to self-compare. Historically, it literally meant the difference between life and death, therefore, comparison and envy are hardwired into our DNA.