Picturing your future Self
Ask yourself what you would need to do to infuse your present life with the qualities you have identified.
Complete the following sentence with all the people on your list:
From [person X] I envy, I could realistically learn…
Resist the impulse to denigrate those you envy. Settle into the position of a student of your own envy.
Perspective
It feels like you are deeply equal to the people you envy. But in what way are you not in fact their equal? What genuine qualities do they have which you lack?
Fill in the following sentence:
It feels like I am equal to X because… (I am the same age/gender/nationality…)
But I am not equal to X because…
Questions/tasks
– Every life is incomplete: what do you think the people you envy might envy?
– What do you think are the statistical chances of accomplishing what the person you envy has accomplished? How common is this?
– Imagine turning envy into admiration.
– In what way is it reasonable enough that you might not have got this thing, given how things are…
– Imagine someone who likes you describing how you are OK, even quite admirable, without the thing they envy
– Name as many things as you can that you craved in the past and then acquired, but which failed to improve your life as much as you had anticipated.
Typically, envious feelings swirl around unexamined. We carry them about guiltily but blindly. This gives rise to outbursts of bad temper directed at innocent bystanders (especially one’s partner); the sneaking hope that something bad is going to befall the person we envy and a sullen sense that one’s life is second-rate.