Envy is a tough emotion to deal with. I feel envious of people around me and on social media. I’m envious of people who look better. I’m envious of people who are doing better in their careers. I’m envious of people who can find healthy relationships, etc. The by-product of envy is the pressure you feel to keep working lest you would fall behind others in the race for everything -- better jobs, better relationships, better looks, etc.
The ubiquitous advice we come across to deal with this envy and pressure is to be grateful for what you have. Look behind and see how much better off you are compared to most of the population in every aspect. We’ve all heard statements like most people don’t even have a stable income, most people can’t find relationships, let alone a good one, etc. While I agree with the facts presented, I feel that this advice doesn’t go far in reducing the pressure.
To give you an analogy.
If you are running a race, you would feel the pressure to keep running to try and get ahead or at least maintain your position. If someone tells you at that point to look back and see how many people you are ahead of and that you should be grateful for that, it won’t take the pressure off of you. You might even feel that you’ve come very far and can’t sit back now and relax. You can only look at the people ahead of you.
What this advice (“look behind to see how much better off you are and feel grateful for that”) is saying, in essence, is you are special already because you are much ahead of the population, so don’t compare to people ahead of you. You are already at the 90th or 95th percentile. But being called special rarely takes away the pressure.
Sometimes I find the opposite of this advice more comforting.
If you find yourself envying your friends or people in your proximity, zoom out and see that there are people way ahead. People who have earned more money, people who have started successful businesses, people who have found great relationships, etc. In every quality you pride yourself in or qualities/achievements of your friends you envy, there are people who have accomplished far greater. So you are just average compared to them, but the good news is that so are your friends and other people in your proximity (who you were putting on a pedestal for being ahead of you). I find that liberating to think about.
The frontrunners of this race are not even in your eye view. Some of them had even finished before you started. This way of thinking, in a nutshell, says you are average, but so are the people you find yourself comparing yourself to, so don’t compare.
Moving on from envy, this kind of thinking reduces the pressure in multiple other contexts — for example, decision making. I feel a lot of pressure in making decisions related to jobs and careers. To me, it appears like the biggest decision I have to make at this point in my life. Then I try to think about the kind of decisions that have already been taken in this world. Millions of people must have made even more difficult decisions related to careers. From moving from one career to a very different one, moving from stable jobs to high-risk jobs, quitting everything, and retiring early, all such decisions have already been made in this world. So it will be okay either way.
Supplementary Article -
https://markmanson.net/being-average