Heal Your Relationship With Envy
And use it to get what you want out of life
Every day, when we go on social media, we’re exposed to the lifestyles of many different people. And as you scroll, you might get exposed to people’s lives in a way that stirs up a really heavy feeling that’s often hard to admit and name: envy.
But sometimes the people we feel envy toward aren’t strangers on the internet. It can be toward your friend, colleague, sibling, or someone else you know. And when you feel it, instead of acknowledging it and processing it, you might instead decide to suppress it. Because envy is one of those emotions we’ve been taught is ugly. Toxic. A sign of poor character. So when it shows up, we don’t examine it. We instead pretend it isn’t there.
Envy isn’t the problem. Your shame about it is.
Why We Struggle with Envy
We were taught that envy makes us bad people.
Envy gets lumped in with jealousy, bitterness, and resentment—emotions we’re told reveal moral failing. Society tells us that if you’re envious, you’re a hater, petty, or ungrateful for what you have, so when you feel it, that shame runs so deep that most people can’t even admit when they feel it.
We mistake envy for something more dangerous.
Envy doesn’t mean you wish harm on someone. It doesn’t mean you can’t be happy for them. It just means you want something they have. But because we’ve conflated envy with malice, we think feeling it makes us terrible people. So we reject the feeling entirely instead of learning from it.
What Envy Actually Is
Envy is information. It’s your internal system telling you what you value, what you want, and where you feel like you’re falling short. It’s not inherently destructive. It becomes destructive when you ignore it, suppress it, or let shame turn it into resentment.
When you feel envy toward someone, your nervous system is saying: That matters to me. Maybe it’s their relationship. Their career. Their body. Their freedom. Their confidence. Whatever it is, envy is pointing to something you want for yourself—not something you want to take from them.
If I can tell you a secret, I’ve been envious of people, both online and offline. But I’ve always known my envy was feeding me information about my own unhappiness, grief, or inner conflict.
I’ve envied the woman online with the really large house because it highlighted that I’ve outgrown my living space.
I’ve envied the Instagram chef who’s a really good cook because I wish I had the energy, skill, and desire to make elaborate meals for myself.
I’ve envied friends who freely moved across states because I resented the caregiving obligations that have kept me feeling stuck in one place.
I’ve envied the people who can still celebrate Father’s Day with their dads, while I’ve had to mourn the loss of mine, knowing I’ll never see him again.
I’m human. And sometimes what comes with being human is the desire for an abundant life, while grieving that abundance is broken up into seasons, and some seasons in life are more fruitful than others.
How to Heal Your Relationship with Envy
Ask what it’s showing you.
Envy is a compass. What is it pointing toward? If you’re envious of someone’s career success, what specifically are you envious of—the recognition, the money, the freedom, the creative work? Get specific. Envy stops being useful when it stays vague.
Leverage your connections.
If the person you envy is someone you know, you have a direct data source who can provide the information you need to achieve your goals. Learn to leverage your connections instead of damaging them by behaving in ways that push people away. Instead, engage positively and learn directly from the source.
Separate the person from the thing.
You’re not envious of the person. You’re envious of what they have or what they represent. When you can separate the two, you stop resenting them and start understanding yourself. You can be genuinely happy for someone and still want what they have. Both things can be true.
Use it as motivation.
Envy can motivate you, or it can paralyze you. The difference is whether you let it turn into resentment or whether you let it clarify what you want to build. Ask yourself: what would I need to do to create a version of this for myself? Not their exact life—your version of what they have.
Accept that some envy won’t resolve.
Sometimes you’ll be envious of things you can’t have. A different body. A different childhood. A different timeline. That envy is grief. It’s mourning what wasn’t available to you. And that’s okay. You don’t have to turn every feeling into action. Sometimes you just have to feel it.
Reflections
What are you envious of right now? What is that envy trying to show you about what you want for yourself? What would it look like to stop hiding from it and start learning from it?
If This Resonated...
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I’ve definitely experienced different variations of grief, but avoid being envious of things that will happen in its own time.