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I’m not much of a jealous guy. I feel jealousy sometimes but it often passes pretty quickly and without the almost burning intensity some people seem to experience.
Still, I have of course thought about this problem and found a few ways to overcome it when it arises within. Hopefully this article can help you to decrease this destructive feeling in your life.
Stop comparing yourself to others.
Comparing what you have to what others have is a good way to make yourself miserable. It feeds your ego when you buy a nicer car or get a better job than someone else. You feel great for a while.
But this mindset and the focus on comparing always winds up in you noticing someone that has more than you. That someone has an even better job or car than you. And so you don’t feel so good anymore.
The thing is that there is always someone with better or more than you. So you can never “win”. You just feel good for a while and then you don’t.
A more useful way to compare is to just compare yourself to yourself. Look at how you have grown and what you have achieved. Appreciate what you have done and what you have, how far you have come and what you are planning to do. This will make you make you more positive and emotionally stable since you are no longer comparing and feeling jealous of what the other guy has that you haven’t.
Develop an abundance mentality.
Jealousy often seems to come from a perceived scarcity in some area of your life. Maybe you feel jealous because someone else got the job you wanted. Or because someone else got the opportunity that you had hoped for. Perhaps you are feeling jealous because you are afraid of losing something and feel that if you do then you have hit rock bottom.
Comparing yourself to others seems to be a symptom of this belief of scarcity. And you feel jealous because someone else has gotten one of those scarce things or opportunities that you wanted.
Focusing your mind on the scarcity can really screw with your thoughts, feelings and life. It can cause much stronger negative emotions than is really reasonable. And it gets you really stuck in the jealousy, intensifying it, making it stronger and more long-lasting by feeding it with more thoughts and emotional energy.
To get out of this confining and destructive mentality you can develop an abundance mentality. An abundance mentality tells you that there are always new chances and opportunities.
That there are always new business opportunities to find, new tests in school to take and new people to date/make friends with. This relieves much of the pressure you may feel if you have a scarcity mentality that makes you think that you only got this shot right now. Or makes you feel like an utter failure just because you just stumbled and things didn’t work out.
An abundance mentality allows you to feel more of an inner emotional freedom and it makes you more relaxed and positive. I believe that developing an abundance mentality is the most important step in reducing or overcoming jealousy because when you feel that there is always an abundance then there is little to feel jealous about. And whenever you feel jealousy starting to creep in you can stop or drastically reduce its power over you by switching your focus from the scarcity to the abundance in the world.
You can find more practical tips about this topic in How to Create an Abundance Mentality.
Surrender. And develop a habit of not identifying so much with your thoughts and emotions.
Although just switching my focus to the abundance usually seems to work to overcome jealousy I thought I’d share another way to has also been helpful. This method is useful if you have been carrying the negative emotion for a while and don’t seem to be able to get rid of it.
And it’s basically this: stop fighting your jealousy. Surrender to it instead and just accept it. This may sound counter-intuitive. But the thing is that you are feeding the emotional loop with more energy by resisting the emotion.
When you surrender to the emotion and let it in then you stop feeding it. And it goes away. Here’s one practical way of doing this:
Say yes to the feeling.
Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labelling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems to physically locate itself to the middle of my chest - and just observe it for maybe a minute or two the feeling just vanishes.
I would also recommend to not identify so much with your thoughts and emotions. This basically means that you realize, learn and remember that you are not your thoughts or emotions.
You are the one observing them. They are just things passing through you.
If you learn to identify less with your thoughts and emotions then you don’t have to do the exercise above so often. You just accept your thoughts and feelings in a more automatic way and let them pass without getting all wrapped up in them.
Think about what’s in it for you.
I don’t know if this pretty analytical method works for a lot of people. But I have found it to be helpful in many cases when I have negative thoughts or when I’m behaving in a less than useful way.
Basically, I ask myself: What’s in it for me? And each time I fall back into that negative headspace and behaviour I remind myself of this question and the answer.
This reinforces to me the pointlessness of what I’m thinking. And often I just think to myself: “Oh, I’m being stupid again. Time to focus on something useful/fun/positive instead”.
Asking yourself what is in it for you is a good way to find distance from your thoughts and behaviour and to motivate yourself to just drop the less useful stuff whenever you can.
Think about what your jealousy is telling you.
This is an interesting and useful way to look at jealousy.
As I wrote a few days ago - in Epictetus’ Top 7 Timeless Pearls of Wisdom - what you think and feel about the world can often tell you quite a bit about yourself.
So thinking about what your jealousy tells you about yourself can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. Think about what is reflected when you feel jealous of someone else.
Is a fear of rejection? Of not being good enough?
Or a fear that you will lose something/someone/some part of yourself you feel very attached to? If so, why are you feeling so attached?
Try to find a solution or help – from books, people, the internet etc. - for whatever fear or belief within you that you think is making you feel the jealousy. Ask yourself: what can the jealousy reveal to me? How can I grow from this insight?
What are your best tips for overcoming jealousy?
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译文:
如何克服嫉妒
我称不上是一个嫉妒的家伙。虽然有时候我会嫉妒，但是，它往往很快就消失了，而不像有些人几乎会妒火中烧。
然而，我当然想过这个问题，并在它出现的时候，找到了一些方法来克服它。希望本文可以帮助你减少你生活中的这种破坏性的感觉。
不再拿自己与别人相比。
比较你所拥有的与别人所拥有的是一个让你自己痛苦的好法子。当你买了一辆更好的车子或者得到了一份比别人好的工作，你会更自大。而且你会短暂性地觉得伟大。
但是，这种心态以及把专心致力于比较上（的心态）往往会在你注视在那些比你拥有更多东西的人身上时荡然无存。因为那些人比你拥有一份更好的工作或者一辆更好的车，所以，你不再觉得（你自己）那么好了。
问题是，总是会有人比你拥有更好的或更多的东西的。所以你永远也“赢”不了。你只会短暂性地感觉良好，而之后就不会了。
一种更有用的比较的方法是让自己与自己相比。看看你如何成长以及你有了什么样的成就。感激你所做的以及你所拥有的，你达到了怎样的程度以及你将打算去做什么。这样将会使你更积极，情绪更稳定，因为你已不再比较，不再因为其他家伙拥有你所没有的东西而感到嫉妒了。
发展富足心态。
嫉妒似乎往往来自对你人生中某些领域的理解不足。也许你觉得嫉妒，只是因为别人得到了一份你想要的工作。或者是因为别人得到了一个你希望得到的机遇。或许你感到嫉妒，只是因为你害怕失去某些东西，而且觉得如果你这样做之后，你就会触及谷底。
拿自己与别人作比较似乎是这个信念匮乏的一种症状。而且，你感到嫉妒是因为其他人已经得到了那些稀缺的东西中的一个或者你想要的机遇。
专心致力于那些稀缺的东西真的会牢牢束缚住你的思想，感知和生活。它会导致更强大负面情绪而不是合理的（情绪）。然后它使你陷入嫉妒当中不能自拔，并通过付诸以更多的想法和活力来使嫉妒不断地加剧，使之更强大。
为了摆脱这种拘束性、破坏性的心态，你可以发展一种富足心态。富足心态会告诉你：总会有新的机会和机遇。
这种新的机会与机遇是：总会发现新的商机，在学校会接受新的考验，与新的朋友约会或者结交新朋友。如果你持有匮乏心态，这种心态让你想到你现在只拥有很少，那么，这样做会极大地减轻了你所承受的压力。或者让你觉得自己的彻底失败只是因为你刚才的出错而使事情没有奏效。
一种富足心态可以让你感受到更多的内心情感自由，并且让你更放松，更积极。我坚信，发展一种富足心态是减少或克服嫉妒的最重要的途径，因为当你总是觉得富足时，就很少会感到嫉妒了。而每当你发觉嫉妒在悄悄地进入你心田的时候，你可以通过把你的注意力从世界的匮乏转移到世界的富足上来阻止（它的入侵）或彻底地减少它对你的影响。
在如何创造富足心态一文中你可以找到更多切实可行的的建议。
屈服，然后养成一种与不等同于你的想法和情感的习惯。
虽然，我刚才把注意力转移到富足上来通常似乎可以克服嫉妒，但是我想分享另一种也很有效的方法。当你暂时持有消极的情感而又似乎不能摆脱它的时候，这种方法是有效的。
从基本上来说：停止与你的嫉妒战斗。相反，任由它摆布并接受它。听起来也许是违反直觉的。但是，实际上你是通过抵抗情感来为情感环路付诸于更多的活力。
当你屈服于情感并接纳它，然后又阻止它滋长。之后它便会消失了。这里有一个切实可行的方法可以这样做：
对这种感觉说“是”。
屈服并接受它。在没有标签或判断它的情况下，观察你心里和身体上的感觉。如果你接受它---对我来说，这种感觉通常似乎都局限在胸腔的中间---然后只要观察大约1、2分钟的时间，这种感觉就会消失了。
我也建议不要（把它们）等同于你的想法和情感。根本上来说，这样做意味着你意识到、知道、而且记得你并不是你的想法或情感。
你是留心它们的人，而它们只是你生命中的过客而已。
如果你学会更少地把它们等同于你的想法和情感，那么，你就没有必要频繁地做以上的练习了。你只是要以一种更机械的方式来接受你的想法和情感，在深入研究它们的情况下放过它们。
想一想你能从中得到什么好处。
我不知道这种分析法是否对很多人来说都是有效的。但是，当我有消极的想法或者当我表现得异于常理时，我发现它在多种情况下都是有帮助的。
根本上来说，我询问自己：我能从中得到什么好处？而每次我都重新陷入消极顶端和消极的行为，我要提醒自己这个问题和答案。
这样使我更加了解到我所想的毫无意义。而往往我这样看待自己：“哎，我怎么又犯傻了，看来我该专心做些有用的、有趣的或积极的事情了”
问问你自己能从中得到什么好处是一个好方法。它可以让你从你的想法和行为中找出差距并激励你随时可以扔掉那些没有多大用处的东西。
想想你的嫉妒告诉你什么。
这是一个有趣的、有用的审视嫉妒的方法。
正如我前些天所写的---在埃皮克提图的7个永恒的智慧珍珠里---你对世界的想法和感受往往可以告诉你很多有关你自己的事。
因此，想想你的嫉妒可以告诉你什么，这样可以帮助你更多地了解自己：你所害怕的东西以及你可能会如何愚弄自己。同时，也想一想当你嫉妒别人的时候反映了什么。
这是害怕遭拒绝吗？觉得自己没有足够好？
或者是害怕你将会失去某些东西/某个人/还是你自己非常重视的部分？假如这样的话，为什么你会觉得（它们）如此重要呢？
设法去找到一个解决办法或者从书籍、人们、或因特网上寻找帮助，因为你觉得你所害怕的和你所信仰的东西会让你感到嫉妒。问问你自己，嫉妒向你透露了什么呢？我又该如何从这一洞察中成长起来呢？
你克服嫉妒的最好秘诀是什么？
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