When envy descends
On using envy as the fuel to achieve our goals
I don’t think it’s too strong to say that envy is one of the most universal emotions experienced by humans. It’s also one of the emotions that brings us the most shame, encourages negative self-talk in ourselves, keeps us stuck, and whose effects can sometimes have regrettable and irreversible results.
Writers are no strangers to envy. For every writer we’ve admired, looked up to, or who’s inspired us, there’s been one who’s made us wonder “Why them and not me?” We all know too well that moment when we find ourselves smiling hard, fighting back tears, molars grinding as we congratulate someone on their latest accolade.
It takes a strong sense of self to be able to admit this without wanting to bury our heads in the ground. But envy is a very real emotion, and even though we’ve been taught that it makes us “bad people,” even though we’ve been taught to push past it, to ignore it, envy — just like every other emotion — shows up when it’s trying to tell us something. We just have to know how to listen.
I would be lying if I said that I’ve never been envious of anyone. I have and it always feels like a wave of heat that pours through me and transfixes me, keeping me paralyzed as my brain struggles to find ways to act and respond, to ensure that no physical part of me is giving away what I’m really feeling inside.
When I was much younger, this envy fueled much of my attitude. I was an angry person who walked around always seeing what everyone else had, what everyone else had achieved, how far behind I had been left. I damned anyone’s good fortune. Spewing old refrains like Must be nice and Well, some of us just can’t and these were just two of the mistakes I was making.
I’m much older now. I’ve spent considerable time working on myself and have clocked many, many hours of therapy. I knew deep down that the way I was back then had me set on a course to become exactly like the people I swore never to become. People I couldn’t stand to be around because they left me feeling drained and feeling like the world was just a bit darker than when I first woke up that morning.
Therapy and circumstances in life finally led me to understand the following more clearly: The things the world has to offer don’t come from a giant pizza pie from which everyone gets a slice while I stand in the back holding an empty plate that seems more and more unlikely to be filled. We, and only we, are completely and fully responsible for what we get out of life.
I feel like I need to preface this by saying that I know there are people in this world who were born more privileged than others in certain areas. But I believe those people have a different journey. Or rather, we all have similar journeys and similar lessons to learn, but we’re all taking different paths.
There is enough abundance in the world for everyone. There are enough opportunities for every writer to get their share, their fifteen minutes of fame or more, and their accolades.
But they don’t come to us when life is approached with an attitude of scarcity.
Letting go of envy is easier said than done. And it’s not a thing where you learn to let go of envy and, poof, just like that it’s gone forever and you never experience it again. In fact, I think that’s unlikely. The emotion of envy exists for a reason. It has a purpose, but it’s been muddled by all the negative filters through which we’ve been made to look at it and because some people have reacted in unhealthy ways to emotions that only ever needed to be felt. This is the big secret about envy.
When you feel cold, you reach for a sweater or a blanket. When you feel thirsty you look for water. When you’re tired, your body seeks a place of rest. Our bodies are always giving us signals about what we need. Envy is the same.
When we feel envy, this is our mind and our soul showing us that there are so many wonderful and interesting things to experience in this world. Having a house, buying a car, having children, not having children.
The problem is that in our fight for survival, we have gone and made up rules about what the best way to live life is. We’ve made up game rules like “You need to live in a big city and get a fancy corporate job and make lots of money." Others tout that “to live away from the big city, close to nature, in a big ten-bedroom house and with lots of children running around is what the actual dream is.”
By making up these rules, and worse yet, by believing them, we get sidetracked. We start striving for the things we’re told that we need instead of the things that we actually want.
I think a moment of envy is a good moment to recalibrate and check with ourselves — what is it that we really want? Where and in pursuit of what is it that we want to expend our limited energy?
When envy arises, you can ask yourself these questions, and not only will the envy subside, but you’ll have gotten to know yourself just a little bit better.
To give you an example, I’ll confess that I’ve been envious of someone when they got a new fancy car. But even as this envy arose, I knew something about it wasn’t right. I don’t even like to drive — it gives me anxiety. So I sat with the envy. I didn’t try to force it away. I didn’t try to reason it away. I just let it be in my body.
When the feeling had settled, I asked myself, “Is it a fancy car that I want?” The answer, of course, was no. What I wanted was the feeling of having achieved something. What I wanted was the excitement that came with having something fancy and new. Something to celebrate.
So maybe not a car. But other things in my life give me this feeling. Having a long chat with a dear friend. Finishing a chapter of my WIP and getting so much closer to finishing my first draft. Reading a book that feels like it’s left me a better, more knowledgeable person.
So I knew I didn’t have to run out and get a car. Or stew in self-pity for not having the same car or not being able to go out and get one at the drop of a hat. I also didn’t have to be angry with that person for having something that I didn’t (something that I didn’t even want). And I didn’t have to be angry with myself for having felt envy in the first place. All I wanted was a win.
The fantastic thing about this is that you can create wins in your own life every single day. Simply by showing gratitude for what you already have. There are so many ways in which we’re already winning, all we have to do is refocus our lens and look around a bit more.
Sure, I didn’t want that car. But what about when someone has something I actually do want? Like a book deal, for example?
This is where my envy peaks its furry, green head most. But when I start to feel envious of someone having something I dream of having myself, I remind myself that this person is simply proof that my dream of becoming a published writer is as tangible as the keyboard I’m typing this newsletter on. So I take my envy and I turn it into the drive I need to keep going, to keep reaching for my dreams.
In fact, I find that when we’re feeling envious, the best solution is to bring the focus back into our own lives. Find something in your life that you’re working on, and transmute your envy into the drive you need for that thing you’re hoping to achieve.
In this day of social media, envy is even more rampant than ever. We used to be envious of our neighbors and just the people we came into close contact with. But thanks to social media, we’re constantly being bombarded with everyone’s wins. We sit there scrolling, full of envy that some stranger we know nothing about just landed a book deal. Yet we don’t know their story or their journey or all that it took them to get there. We just see the final result and mutter to ourselves must be nice.
All this does is add stress to our lives and drain us of energy we could be putting into achieving our own dreams. So once again, if you feel envy creeping up on you when you’re scrolling, maybe it’s time to put the phone down. Refocus, and instead find ways in which you can work on your own goals. Or simply take five minutes to practice gratitude. I promise this is an exercise that, when done right, with a true appreciation for the abundance all around us, can only leave you feeling like you’re already winning.
This month on the blog
How to Stop Letting Perfectionism Control You and Set Your Creativity Free
Perfectionism has had us all by the throat at some point. Maybe it still does. In this blog post, I explore the many ways and tools that we can use to let go of perfectionism and get back in touch with our creativity.
Is Your Novel Romance or Women’s Fiction
A common misunderstanding in the writing community is the difference between what constitutes a romance novel and a women’s fiction novel. There is definitely some overlap, but there are stark differences that set these two apart. Check out the blog to learn what they are and to ensure that you’re correctly categorizing your novel!
How to Describe Physical Appearance and Make Your Characters Stand Out
The physical appearance of our characters is so much more than describing the hair and eye color. There is so much more that we can do to add layers of depth that will make our characters pop off the page and truly create a rich and stimulating reading experience. Read on for some tips on how to do this!
Why You Should Avoid Melodrama In Your Writing
Bigger and louder may be an excellent tactic at, say, a Chappelle Roan concert, but in fiction writing, sometimes dialing it back is the true trick to writing heavy emotional scenes. Read this post to learn why writing melodramatically can be a detriment to your story and see some tips on how to avoid it.
Rec of the month
If you haven’t read it yet, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is a spectacular narrative on writing advice, inspiration, and motivation. I kept thinking about it, most of all, while writing this piece because she has a section on jealousy that has stayed with me since I read it over 15 years ago. To this day, I still recall what she said whenever I feel jealousy/envy flooding in. Hers is one of the most sincere accounts I’ve ever read on being a writer and dealing with jealousy when others seem to be winning. Here’s an excerpt:
Of all the voices you'll hear [in your head], the most difficult to subdue may be that of jealousy. Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you've been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know — people who are, in other words, not you.
This is going to happen because the public herd mentality is not swayed by the magic that happens when mind and heart and muse and hand and paper work together. Rather, it is guided by talk shows and movie producers and TV commercials. Still, you'd probably like the caribou herd to run in your direction for a while. Most of us secretly want this. But maybe the herd is going to stuff itself on lichen and then wander after some really undeserving writers instead. Those writers will get the place on the best-seller list, the movie sales, the huge advances, and the nice big glossy picture in the national magazines where the photo editors have airbrushed out the excessively long eyeteeth, the wrinkles, and the horns. The writer you most admire in the world will give them rave raviews in the Times or blurbs for the paperback edition. They will buy houses, big houses, or second houses that are actually as nice, or nicer, than the first ones. And you are going to want to throw yourself down the back stairs, especially if the person is a friend.[…]
My therapist said that jealousy is a seconary emotion, that it is born out of feeling excluded and deprived, and that if I worked on those age-old feelings, I would probably break through the jealousy. I tried to get her to give me a prescription for Prozac, but she said that this other writer was in my life to help me heal my past. She said this writer had helped bring up a lifetime's worth of feeling that other families were happier than ours, that other families had some owner's manual to go by. She said it was once again that business of comparing my insides to other people's outsides. She said to go ahead and feel the feelings. I did. They felt like shit.
— excerpt from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
What I’ve been into this month
After the political madness of last month, I became glued to my phone in a way I’ve never been before. And when I tell you that I’m already on my phone A LOT, this is saying something. This was new, record-breaking levels of phone anxiety (for lack of a better term), and I needed to do something about it because I was flushing all my time down the toilet of the internet.
So I downloaded an app called Offscreen that blocks social media, games, and any other app that you find is too addicting/distracting, around a schedule that you set to help you stay off your phone. This has helped me immensely as I tend to know no limits and can go down the spiral of social media for hours on end. I truly feel like I’ve regained so much time and organization in my life. I have so much more room for activities! (Brownie points if you get this reference.)
Which brings me to the next thing, which is an app called HabitShare that I’m using to set daily habit goals. On this app I’ve set goals such as “write 100 words” and “drink at least 60oz of water” and “journaling” to remind me to do these things so that I can make more of a habit of them — especially now that I’ve reclaimed so much of my time by staying off social media more.
I’ve fallen in love with Dr. Tara Swart whose book, The Source, I’m currently listening to (or will resume listening to once my audiobook hours renew on Spotify). Her insights on how manifestation is actually all in the power of our own brains has blown my mind. I stumbled into a YouTube interview with her on Mel Robbin’s podcast and fell down a rabbit hole. This led me to pick up her book, and I’m now also assembling an action board (this is what Dr. Swart calls what we otherwise know as vision boards). I’ve been collecting pictures over the past month which I intend to print and pin to a small corkboard that I’ve placed by my bed. These pictures include mock-up covers of my novels that I made on Canva. I get so excited looking at them. I can’t wait to put it all together!
Along with Dr. Swart’s book, I’ve also finished buddy-reading When He Was Wicked from the Bridgerton series with my sister, and I have to say this is by far my favorite book in the series. So many feelings. Absolutely fantastic prose. Five stars all the way. I truly wish every romance book I ever picked up could read like this.
I’m also trudging through Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. It was a bit of a slow start with this one, but I think I’m finally getting into the groove of it. Rice definitely had a unique voice, and it’s not something I’m used to. I think I prefer the storylines as depicted on the AMC TV show, but the book is still quite interesting.
That’s all for now! I hope you have a wonderful September. I’m looking forward to the cooler temperatures and for the fall mania to take over!
Until next time,
Hi there, I’m Maria! I’m a freelance fiction editor assisting women writers in amplifying their voices through their writing. You can find me on Instagram @theintuitivedesk and on Pinterest. Or visit my site www. theintuitivedesk.com to find out more about editing services.