Our oldest stories teach us that envy is an emotion to be feared. It can lead to moral bankruptcy, violence, the collapse of friendships, families, and kingdoms. It is the cause of the first murder on Earth described in the Bible and the Quran: Cain kills his brother Abel because he is favored by God, and is then filled with grief and guilt, cursed to wander the land forever restless and alone. Across the middle east, South Asia, and the Mediterranean, a tradition of believing that envious glances can bring tragedy leads some to wear amulets to ward off the so-called evil eye.
Envy made the list of seven deadly sins for a reason.
Read more: “Are Some People Addicted to Revenge?”
But envy can also contain clues about how to orient our lives, argues social scientist Stacy Kim, if we can listen to what it is telling us. The independent researcher and life coach is author of the new book, Envy: Why Wanting What They Have is the Key to Getting What You Want. Kim says converting envy into drive is not an easy process, but the English language does not help because we lack the vocabulary for it.
I spoke with Kim about the differences between malicious envy and benign envy, Snow White, the Buddhist concept of Muditā, or sympathetic joy, Korean economics, and what to do if you think someone might envy you.
Envy as a source of torment and ruin is a theme in some of our oldest stories across religious and cultural traditions. Why do you think that is?
First, we don’t like to feel behind or lacking. It just makes us uncomfortable. At the same time, we’re social beings, so most people don’t like feeling bad about somebody else. On top of wanting something somebody else has, now I’m also feeling like a bad person. So it’s a confluence of lots of different negative emotions.
Then we have culture or religion on top of that. I looked into the deadly sins and cardinal sins and found that, over time, they’ve become more of a condemnation or judgment, but it didn’t start out that way. [They were originally compiled as more of a physician’s checklist, symptoms of a troubled soul that warranted attention rather than eternal damnation.] So that adds guilt and shame. I think that’s a problem.
Another problem is that we’re linguistically challenged in English. In Korean, there’s another word for envy, but also German, Dutch, Russian. There’s a second word for envy that aligns with the research around benign versus malicious envy. English speakers don’t have that extra way to describe our squishy feelings. We also mix it up with jealousy, which is actually something else.
What is the difference between envy and jealousy?
Envy is simply wanting something that someone else has. It’s a negative experience that we feel. Jealousy is more of a fear of a loss of an important relationship to a rival, which means there’s three parties involved—I am jealous when my husband looks at another woman. It can also happen in a work situation: I am jealous when my boss starts paying attention to the new hire and thinks the new hire is so great. Maybe I used to be the star, and so I’m losing that relationship with my boss.
In my book, I talk about how as a kid, I was very jealous that my brother got so much attention from my parents when it came to things like achievement and career. They really invested in his career in ways that they didn’t invest in mine, and I felt very jealous about that. I was also envious that my brother had the attention that I did not, so both things were going on with me.
Interesting. And what are the differences between malicious and benign envy?
Malicious envy is when you’re more preoccupied with the person who has the thing that you want, and you don’t want that person to have it. Benign envy is more focused on what you want. Let’s say I’m the evil queen and I want the beauty that Snow White has. Benign envy would be where the queen goes, “Oh, let me figure out from Snow White what she uses for her skincare. How does she keep her face so young and beautiful?” Instead, the queen says, “I need to kill Snow White so that I can be fairest of them all.” That’s malicious envy. But it also makes for a better story. You look at all these great movies or stories and benign envy would be boring. It would be inspirational, but it would be boring. I think that’s part of what is going on, too.
In Korean, there are a few words for benign envy: bureowoyo or seonmang. And you usually, you can tell a person, “Ah, Kristen, ‘bureowoyo,’” and it translates as, “I envy you. I wish I could be like you. I admire you.” It’s all rolled into one. And because you’re able to express it, it’s a conversation starter.
I think that people usually respond in Korea by saying, “Oh, you can do this, too! This Is what I did.” Korea is a very collectivist society, so they will say, “Oh no, I didn’t do this alone. I did it thanks to my teammates, thanks to my boss, thanks to my parents,” attributing success to the group. I think that’s why culture really matters.
You argue that envy can be used to benefit oneself. How does this work?
First, you acknowledge, “Oh, I’m feeling this way. I’m human.” Then when you can, you take a look at that envy and try to decipher what it’s really trying to tell you. I use the acronym SIREN to go through the four components of envy.
S is for “similar target.” Envy usually occurs when we’re close to the person or similar to the person that has something we want. A young cellist isn’t going to envy Yo-Yo Ma, she’s going to admire him. The young cellist is going to envy the first chair, especially if they’re second chair. What’s really fascinating is that there are researchers who have found that admiration is not as motivating as benign envy. It lights that fire in you.
I stands for “intangible desire,” and I think it’s the most important piece of this. It’s usually not really the thing that you think you want. It’s the feeling that you think that thing will bring you. And if you look at that, there’s often more avenues to get that feeling. My clients come to me and say, “Oh, I didn’t get that promotion that I wanted. I lost it to some other guy. I need to find another job.” I’m like, “Well, wait a minute. Let’s just first figure out what did that promotion mean to you? What was it that you wanted? And is there another way to get that?” Don’t trash all the career equity you built up with your organization. Maybe first look at what it is that you want. It could be more financial security. It could be a recognition for a job well done. It could be the opportunity to mentor other people. What is that intangible desire?
R is “relevant comparison.” Let’s go back to that cellist. That cellist is not going to be envious of their friend who’s a tennis player, because tennis doesn’t mean anything to them. I was just in LA where cars are a huge part of daily existence, but I don’t care about cars. I live in New York City. I take the subway, bus and Uber if I need to. But if I see a writer get a clip in a magazine that I wish I could have gotten into, oh my gosh, I’m going to feel so much envy. In my book, I describe how for a long time I denied myself that. I was envying other writers, but I wasn’t paying attention to my envy. I was doing other things. I didn’t devote time to developing my craft because I was ignoring my envy. That’s why I think for so many people, it’s really good to pay attention. What domain am I envying? And maybe that’s something that I need to explore.
The last thing is N, “negative emotion.” It gives you a gauge. The more negativity you feel, the more we have to pay attention to it. I’ll envy stuff I see on Instagram. Like, I’ll see, “Ooh, I like that sweater.” But when I close my phone, I forget about it. But if I see a writer who gets a clip somewhere, and it sticks with me the next day or the next week, I know that it’s something that I need to pay attention to.
Once you figure out what it is you actually desire, what do you do about it?
For a long time, I envied Gretchen Rubin. I thought, “Wow, she’s writing all these really cool things, but I’m not going to read her book because I just don’t want to deal with it. I don’t like the feelings that I’m getting. For a long time, I didn’t read her books, and how ridiculous, because once I started reading her books, I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, she’s brilliant. She’s actually way far ahead of me. I can’t be comparing myself to her. I need to do the work.”
It’s not that I want to beat Gretchen Rubin, I want to be like her. In order to be like her, I need to figure out how she did what she did. She was doing the exact kind of work that I wanted to be able to do. I was just ignoring all of that and going about trying to build my coaching practice. Then I realized, wait a minute, this is something that I want, this is a career avenue, this could help my coaching practice. I was limiting myself because I was so focused on trying to suppress my envy instead of look at it.
Do you think there are any gender differences in terms of how people experience envy?
There’s some research around that, but I found it to be not helpful. I think that everyone envies. It’s a universal thing. If you don’t envy, it means that you’re not striving. You’re not trying to improve yourself. You’re not trying to succeed in a group. You’re not being competitive. People who are competitive, people who are striving, people who are ambitious, are naturally going to feel envy.
Can envy be used to the benefit of groups?
Yes. I use Korea as an example, because they couldn’t go after their former oppressor, the Japanese, but the Korean government definitely used envy to motivate Korean citizens to do well. I was born in Korea, brought to the United States as a baby, and then I moved back when I was about 10.
I was cultured in the U.S. and knew things about freedom, equality, things like that. And I go to Korea and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’m stuck at the bottom. Nobody cares about girls.” It’s a poor country. And when I go to school, first of all, the boys are favored, but also everybody’s being told we gotta study hard because we have to beat Japan. This was in the ‘70s, and once a week, I would hear a teacher say, “Gotta study hard so we can beat Japan.”
It was really in the culture. If you think about Korean economics, back in the ‘70s, it wasn’t the beautiful country that you see on K-dramas now. It was really struggling. We only got hot water in the mornings and nights. Electricity was so expensive. It took us a year to get a landline phone when we first moved back. Everyone was striving, and everyone wanted to collectively bring the country up out of being considered a third world country into a more modernized first world country that could compete with Japan. That’s what they did. They went after the car industry, electronics, and then later after K-Pop. Koreans don’t have natural resources, but we have lots of people, so we could go into entertainment. All of those industries were heavily subsidized by the government.
Envy is a part of the story of Buddhism. The Buddha’s cousin is envious of him and tries to have him killed and then suffers for that later. But Buddhism also has a name for a cure, which is Muditā, and translates as sympathetic joy, taking real delight in the fortune of others. I wonder if that is a step on the way to using envy for motivation or if it sits in opposition to it.
What I’ve noticed over time is that just saying, “Oh, let’s be grateful,” or, “Let’s have joy for other people,” is wonderful advice, but you can’t get there without first acknowledging your envy and examining your envy. It’s just unrealistic to jump from, “Oh, I don’t have what I want, but then let me be grateful for the things that I do have.” It doesn’t address the envy. A better approach is to recognize that envy is a negative emotion, and it’s something that’s trying to tell us something important.
Anger, fear, guilt, grief, all of these negative emotions are trying to remind us, “Hey, there’s something important you need to pay attention to.” Fear means that there’s danger. Anger means that maybe there’s an injustice. Envy shows us what we want. Grief shows us that we’ve lost somebody that we love, and we need to remember them or honor them. If we just bury these negative emotions, they’re going to seep out in ways that are not going to be helpful to us. We also need a little bit of stress to motivate ourselves. I’m not talking about chronic depression or chronic envy. I’m talking about just listening to smaller doses of negative emotion when they occur.
What do you do if you think you’re the object of someone else’s envy?
First of all, I think that you can never tell. There’s no facial expression for envy. You might be able to sense it from a combination of other cues. But trying to judge whether somebody is feeling envy is not that helpful, because only they know.
Envy can be directed to three things that can give you a good life. First, meaningful work. What kind of work would you do even if people didn’t pay you? For some people it’s organizing spreadsheets. For other people, it’s interviewing people. Envy can help you discover what that is.
Number two is meaningful relationships. Sometimes your envy points you to relationships that you want to cultivate and deepen.
And third is, how can you make a contribution? How can you serve others? If you’re sensing envy from someone, one thing you can do is to think, “Okay, well, how can I serve this person? How can I help this person? Or how can I deepen my relationship with this person?” That is far more useful and gratifying in the end than trying to compete with this person or put this person down or try to prove that person wrong. Using warmth, collaborating, connecting, is more interesting and useful.
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