How to Stop Being Envious and Jealous Based on Science
It’s not uncommon for people to occasionally feel jealous. But it is possible to learn how to stop being envious.
Perhaps almost everyone has once wished they had someone else’s success, beauty, or relationship. Yet for some people, it can be a real struggle to get a control of these emotions. But knowing the causes may help provide the solutions to overcoming.
As the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side. If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, it basically means that someone else’s life can always look good on the outside to us.
But we don’t know the hidden pain and struggle they go through on the inside. If we did, we’d probably be a lot more grateful for our own lives.
When you stop to think about it, you really do have so much to appreciate having in your life. Why waste time being angry and unhappy with not having what someone else has?
Perhaps a better way to challenge that energy is to be more hard working in life and eventually earn the things we desire. Instead of wishing for someone else’s life, we can work towards one that uniquely satisfies us.
How to stop being envious
- Express gratitude
- Enjoy your own experiences
- Stay off social media
- Have things to look forward to
- Be humble
- Improve your life
- Be mindful of advertisements
- Understand how envy harms you (and others)
1. Express gratitude
A study conducted on university students found that having more gratitude decreased the levels of malicious envy people felt. When you’re grateful for what you have, you can feel less angered by what other people have that you don’t.
When you find yourself wondering how to stop being envious, think about the things you’re grateful for. Choose to be happy for those people’s successes in life and maintain a positive mental attitude.
2. Enjoy your own experiences
A group of researchers from Germany and the Netherlands discovered experiential purchases were what most often caused envy on social network sites.
An example would be a picture of someone traveling to somewhere. The issue here seems to be a lack of experiences in our own life.
That would suggest the solution is for us to enjoy more of our own experiences in life. Perhaps if we consistently have enough of them, we’ll be less jealous of others experiences.
Here are some experiences you can try having more of:
- Visit a location (in town or out of town) you’ve never been to
- Eat at a new restaurant
- Learn how to do something
Two professors from Germany conducted a study that found Facebook caused envy among it’s users.
Beyond experiential purchases, people can fall into social comparison seeing their Facebook friends have success in life.
Unfortunately, those who felt jealous would be more likely to embellish there are own Facebook profiles.
As a result, it can make other people the feel same, and cause a continuous negative cycle. Let’s just stop for a moment and realize how crazy that is:
- People are misleading each other for the sake of looking better.
- It’s not actually making them feel better, but it makes other people feel worse.
- Then in return, those other people embellish and make the other people feel worse.
It makes me wonder what kind of world we would live in if we all just acknowledged our lives suck sometimes. If everyone didn’t pretend their life was always so amazing.
Maybe more people would be real with themselves about addressing the issues they’re masking and we’d live in a better world.
Until that day comes, it’s best just to stay off social media. Use social media wisely and mindfully when you are on it. Interact with people and avoid passively scrolling your feed.
Practice social media minimalism and devote your time to more productive activities.
Related: How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Related: How to Quit Facebook Gracefully in 2021
4. Give it time
The Association for Psychological Science found that we feel more jealousy for things that haven’t happened yet than when they have.
The group assessed the level of envy people felt before a friend was going to go on a Valentine’s Day date.
The level was high before the date, but the day after it, it dropped to a low level. Researchers concluded from the results that envy is an emotion that can fade over time.
When you’re feeling high levels of jealousy in your life, get your mind off of that feeling by taking care of tasks in your day or doing activities you enjoy.
You could also plan things in your life that you’ll be excited for. It can help offset any negative feelings you may have about someone else having an exciting event coming up in their life.
5. Be humble
Narcissism and envy have been connected for a long time in psychology. A study done by Iowa State University dived even deeper into this idea.
Their research focused on the concept of vulnerable narcissism. These are people who feel like they deserve more in life, but they’re too self-conscious to be more proactive.
As a result, they feel anger for not having what they believe they’re worthy of, which can sometimes result in negative outbursts.
It’s important to be humble in recognizing we’re not better than anyone. We’re all people with strengths and weaknesses, good circumstances and bad circumstances, and so on.
We can only do our best in life and believe that we can gain what we desire someday.
Related: How To Be Confident But Humble
6. Improve your life
A Psychology Today article noted 7 reasons why we envy our friends.
- Money
- Relationships
- Fertility
- Physical attractiveness
- Weight
- Career
- Social Media
Younger people tend to feel more jealous about physical attraction and careers. Jealousy over money was noted to be something that spans across all age groups.
Of course, improving our lives is easier said than done. Some of us do have difficult circumstances. But not trying because of that isn’t going to make your desires anymore possible.
We can underestimate the amount of possibilities that can help us improve in life. The possibilities to make money, to meet someone new, or to have the career we want.
There are three things you need to do to make things more possible:
- First, have a mindset that what you want (within reason) is possible.
- Second, have a drive to continually pursue knowledge that can help you.
- Third, apply that knowledge on a consistent basis.
You continually try to do these three things, and opportunities can be more likely to open up, and something good could potentially happen.
Related: How To Get Your Life Together for 2021
7. Be mindful of advertisements
Marketers often use envy to get us to buy things we may not really want or need. They use celebrity models.
They show us something that most people are doing, and we don’t want to miss out on doing that too.
Recognizing how you’re being manipulated by ads may help you fall into these traps less often. It might also helpful be if we limit our exposure to ads as well.
Avoiding watching commercials, and or maybe just not using the internet that often. Advertisements can be hard to avoid when they’re everywhere on the web.
But it’s important to try ignoring them when we can so they don’t continue to make us feel this negative emotion.
8. Understand how envy harms you (and others)
We all generally recognize the negative effects of enviousness on ourselves.
MentalHelp.net notes in the article, “The Nature of Envy”, that it can cause us to feel anxiety, depression, irritability, and personal unhappiness.
They also point out that our physical well-being can be negatively affected as well. But we often don’t think about how being jealous can harm other people.
Society for Personality and Social Psychology decided to study just that and found that enviousness hurts those around us in two ways.
- In one study, a researcher that posed as a participant dropped pencils near a participant. They found people who felt envy were less likely to help strangers. Even when those people did help strangers, they were less likely to give that much help.
- In a second study, participants were asked to assign a puzzle to someone, believing that if the person completed it in a short time, that person would get a reward. The participants who felt enviousness were more likely to give the most difficult puzzles to hurt the chances of the person doing the puzzle. They were even comfortable admitting it.
It goes to show that when we’re in that state of mind, we can be more harmful to each other.
Knowing that this negative emotion only makes the world a worse place can inspire us to choose to be better.
Thank you. Insightful and practical tips to help overcome this sneaky green demon.