Why Your Envy is Good
Welcome back to Your Lazy Sunday: A Newsletter to help you…
Embrace Your Lazy
Lazy Question of the Week
Which part of yourself have you lost to get to where you are today? Which part of yourself have you repressed or forgotten about?
Sculpt Yourself
Why Your Envy is Good
In my effort to always play with structure, here are…
19 Unfinished and Unedited Thoughts on Envy
They say, people who are “enlightened”, have no envy. And if you have envy you must rid yourself of it. I’m not “enlightened.” Pretty sure you aren’t either 😉.
People will admit to all other deadly sins before they admit to envy.
The worst thing you can do when you’re feeling envious is to judge yourself. It’s natural. Instead ask yourself: Why am I feeling envy?
Our society perpetuates a fixed mindset culture. I’ve talked about why I think this is true before, but most of it is summed up in this Nietzsche quote: “If we think of genius as something magical…we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking.”
With a fixed mindset, envy is a reminder that you’ll never be good enough. However, if you have a growth mindset, then envy becomes something wonderful.
Envy allows you to see your insecurities. It allows you to see what you’re missing in your life. Envy allows you to see who you must become and what insecurities to sculpt away.
I’ve never been envious of people who flex their nice cars and houses on social media. I’m not envious of people who take pictures of drinking margaritas in swimsuits next to blue ass water. It shows me I don’t care about that.
I AM envious of storytellers who make a living doing what they love. I am envious of social butterflies who can work the room and charm everybody. I am envious of people who can connect with anyone. I am envious of those who can cultivate mischievous joy and playful chaos in everything they do.
Now that I’m aware of this, I can go deeper and ask why. I can ask myself in what situations am I being unkind to myself? And in what situations should I change to incorporate positive behaviors of others.
Envy tells you what you should change in your life.
Wearing rose-colored glasses while looking at somebody else’s life doesn’t tell me about how they FEEL.
Many people wear rose-colored glasses while envy-ing me. When I hear what they think of me, I’m shocked. Envy has taught me to recognize what I do well and compliment myself. There is no shame (as I previously thought) to celebrate your wins. It doesn’t make you complacent.
Kierkegaard said, “Envy is secret admiration.”
If you turn envy —> admiration you can turn the people you admire into mentors. We all copy somebody. We all have a religion (even if we don’t realize it). Using admiration to copy your heroes is a great way to sculpt yourself. Once you turn envy into admiration it’s easier to objectively see what they’re doing behind the scenes to get to where they are. Creating relationships with these mentors is one of the main ways I’ve grown as a person.
The Sanskrit word Mudita which means a pure joy for others that is “unadulterated by self-interest.” Instead of going from envy —> no envy, go from envy—> Mudita.
This quote from Alain de Botton is amazing “No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy, and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment. - Alain de Botton
Think about what your future self would be envious of you for. Are you discounting the ways your life is great? It reminds me of that wonderful quote from the World of Tomorrow, “Now is the envy of the dead”
While a certain type of envy can be good, beware of malicious envy in yourself of others. More than half of all the famous Greek, Roman, Biblical, and Shakespearean tragedies are caused by envy. Don’t be like Cain. And don’t be naive enough to think that modern-day Cains don’t exist.
Three Questions to turn envy into a tool:
Who has something you would like to have?
What lazy habits will you need to build to achieve those desires?
Is the envy you’re feeling the result of social media use or other bad habits? Or is it you unfairly comparing yourself to other people’s highlight reels? Or is it useful envy?
Develop a Better Petri Dish
I compiled a list of the 23 Amazing Movie Endings Writers Need to Watch with a little help from my Write of Passage students.
An interesting article with an amazing title: How Scientists Are Bringing People Back From the Dead. My favorite line, “What if you could induce a near-death state in order to save lives?
Next week, I’m going to write an article called Pranav’s 11 Laws of Power based on Robert Greene’s infamous 48 Laws of Power.
If you have any “Laws of Power” or words you live by, email me. I would love to hear them.
I’ll talk to you next week.
Hasta la vista my lazy,
Pranav