Let’s talk about envy
Yes, yours / Issue 1,145
Oh, hi friends!
You know it when you feel it.
A little heart pang when you hear about someone’s good news (book deal! new house! fancy job title!).
You don’t want to take away their win — you’re happy for them.
But then the envy gremlin whispers, “Hey, you want that, too.”
Envy crops up over and over again.
I am never envious when I hear about certain types of news, but a different stray comment can make me spiral for days. (After reading the press release for an acquaintance’s new play, I literally felt ill! Maybe it’s just me?)
So what can envy teach us?
How can it direct us?
What might we learn?
I wrote a new story for The Wall Street Journal about using envy as a blueprint for what you might want to do next in your life and career.
Because our emotions (even negative ones!) can often teach us something new.
What we really want.
What we really don’t want.
The first steps to moving along.
The things we’re willing to sacrifice.
Writing this article has been extremely, shall we say, instructive. (Interviewing psychologists, researchers, philosophers, On Our Best Behavior author Elise Loehnen, and Gill, a woman who is pursuing a PhD in her fifties after a pang of envy, was inspiring and enlightening.)
So now I am embracing the idea of using envy as a catalyst.
Don’t hate, in other words, but emulate.
Use that admiration to move forward.
You can read the article here, and I’d love to hear if envy ever sparked a change in direction for you.
Or maybe it will now?
Funny tidbit: I’ve written about envy 16 times in this newsletter over the past seven years! Broken record!! Or extremely consistent?
Without a little envy, my first book, It Gets Easier and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers, would never have been published. I had been pitching to agents and publishers with the MS for months. I found out that my high school nemesis had gotten a full book deal for her organizing book. That was it. I taught myself how to self-publish, created a self-publishing company, and published my book 5 feverish months later... 3 month's after the nemesis's book published. Her publisher decided to market her book to moms, too, so we ended up joining forces to promote our books as a team. There's nothing like a little fire under the tushy to get one motivated to get 'er done!
An, ahem, "instructive" experience! Bravo, ma cherie, for producing another powerful and important piece of writing. Something we can all learn from. I especially love "Don't hate, emulate." (And not just because it reminds me of/rhymes with the 90210 slogan "Donna Martin Graduates!")