How To Beat Malicious Envy

His luau shirt was unbuttoned down to his upper stomach. His Ray-Ban sunglasses sat smugly on his nose. A slender and toned bikini-clad girlfriend, or perhaps a hired actress, walked beside him with a plastered grin. They were on a beautiful beach on a South Pacific island, surrounded by smiling, sparse crowds of elite vacationers.

“Wow, I haven’t seen this make or model in years,” I thought. He was a 2014 era get-rich-guru, revived, and running rampant on my Instagram feed. He was elaborating on making $20,000+ a month while working only 20 hours a week.

One video cuts to a shot of him staring off into the sunset, then to a shot of him in front of a whiteboard, doing guru math on how you can escape your boss and lame, biweekly paychecks and start living for once in your ordinary, mundane life.

In another, he stands in a lavishly decorated room, adorned with opulent furnishings and golden accents, as he details an incredible “remote closing” opportunity — for the low, low price of $1,399 — which doesn’t even include the actual job. It just teaches you how do it.

It was obvious: he was leveraging envy in a tacky, obvious way that would surely bring the most vulnerable among us to spend money they badly needed. And it was clearly working. I saw so many comments begging him for more information.

Envy is a silent intruder that enters with ease and without invite. It seeps into every tiny insecurity. And it isn’t limited to those of lower socioeconomic status. Per a study by psychology professor, Dr. Nicole E. Henniger, 75% of adults have experienced envy in the past year. As younger adults, we tend to envy appearance, social and romantic success, and scholarly excellence. In post-30 adulthood, envy shifts towards wealth orientation, but isn’t restricted to it. What can we do to counter it?

A means of improving

One strategy to bypass envy is to stop trying to be envied yourself. It’s one thing to celebrate a new home or car on social media, but another to gratuitously flaunt it in people’s faces. Showing off reinforces the idea that you aren’t enough already and only encourages you to keep flexing. Worst of all, it invokes malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, where people resent you. Malicious envy is proven to increase hostility and sabotage, and increases the risk of depression and lowers self-esteem for both you and your audience.

Psychology professor, Dr. Allison Ward Brooks, demonstrated that when people were honest and also acknowledged mistakes and vulnerabilities alongside their triumphs, it resulted in less malicious envy and greater contentment. However, humblebragging — admitting a mistake but burying it in bragging —does nothing to rectify the problem and hurts your likability.

These problems emerge through the Social Rank Theory of Depression, where our psychology warps and we view people through a subconscious rank-order system. We unintentionally put people above and below each other in social value and then place ourselves within that ranking system.

By definition, feelings of envy are sparked through exposure to people more fortunate than you. The conditions for envy increase exponentially when we are routinely exposed to these things. This, of course, describes social media for many of you.

For example, I have a slight love of looking at mansions on YouTube and Instagram, just to daydream about what it is like to own them — with the incredible perks and ocean views. I’m always curious about how people with money choose to spend it.

The insidious part of envy, which I’ve fallen for, is that you don’t often realize you are succumbing to its effects. It infiltrates you and leaves you feeling less content and more anxious. But you don’t recognize it because many people think envy is this powerful, massive wave of jealousy that overtakes you. Envy is the desire to have something someone has. Jealousy is the fear of losing something you already have to some 3rd party.

I’ve realized that, often, the people who have so much more than me aren’t any happier than your everyday person. Even further, if they didn’t earn the wealth they sit on, they are often quite unhappy.

It is as Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” The latter sentence describes benign envy — which is good, and inspires us to act and chase dreams that others have achieved.

The trap comes when we fall for the “focusing illusion” where we focus on one key dimension of someone’s life that is overwhelmingly positive. You see the billionaire on his yacht, but don’t see the fights with his wife, the career stress and sleepless nights, and lack of happiness.

During an experiment, researchers had students compared themselves to demographically similar people who were in better circumstances. Each time, it led to envy. But when researchers had students envision the daily ups and downs of living, those feelings of envy vanished.

The thing is — we don’t really know what is going on in someone’s life. My high school classmate and co-captain of our swim team, Jared, was a better version of me in every dimension. He was a faster swimmer, more attractive, more intelligent, harder working. Every girl seemed to choose him over me. I was envious of him for so long. Despite all that, I respected him immensely and we got along well.

We lost touch after we finished college and I assumed he was out, living his best life, being a star, making tons of money and being happy with his beautiful wife. Part of me, which had been jealous of his good fortune, assumed he was living great.

We reconnected on Facebook and I noticed he was looking a bit run down. I tried messaging him but he never got back to me. Just a few months later, I saw notifications about his untimely death. He’d suffered from depression, fallen into alcoholism and died of liver failure at 37 years old. He left behind a wife and two small children under the age of 5.

I was completely shocked and felt guilty we’d lost touch. I don’t say this with any satisfaction or glee, but his case reminded me that you never know what’s going on “under the hood” with people. There’s often a façade of happiness.

Something went so horribly wrong in Jared’s life that he drank enough to ruin a healthy liver by the age of 37. I still can’t wrap my head around it. I was ignorant for assuming he’d been living so well.

Remember to practice gratitude and remember those who have far less. If you have your health, you already have much to be grateful for. Admit your flaws. Don’t assume those you envy have it so good as it often isn’t the case. And remember, the easiest way to stop feeling envy, is to stop trying to evoke envy in others.