Does anyone have some mindfulness tips for dealing with feelings of envy?

Listen to your feelings and feel them to find the part of their source that comes from the past, which isn’t authentically about the present. In that way, you can bring attention to them separately, instead of having the weight of past upsets piled upon present circumstances.

You may be right in many aspects in your thinking about the present – it is great to have a dishwasher, and it’s not fair that some people have many advantages that they didn’t work for, but strong recurring feelings and patterns of emotion are almost always really about the past, and when we recognize where they come from for us, we can develop a practice of separating those reactions from present details.

It’s very helpful to acknowledge the past and heal its wounds, but it makes a huge difference if you can separate past from present.

There are many practices that can help do this sort of thing. e.g. Meditation, focusing, intuitive sense, analysis.

Maybe you’re not looking for tips, but this is what i try to tell myself when I feel regretful about the past. I tell myself that it doesn’t pay to regret the past, because it’s gone now and it can’t be changed. I can only learn from it so I don’t repeat those same mistakes in the future.

As for envy, I tell myself that I might not have a life of luxury but it’s better than a lot of people’s. I will then remind myself of what I have and how it’s a pretty decent life. It’s not “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” but it’s not half bad.

This might sound simplistic, but start a scrapbook or notebook of the things that you want to have or achieve, and then begin the process of determining what you need to be, do or have in order to accomplish the goals. In other words, don’t just stew over what you don’t have (and don’t give even a second’s worth of time to what you cannot have, such as inherited wealth from non-existent family members, etc.), but start the process of visualization and mindful achievement of known, quantified and qualified goals.

By “qualified and quantified” I mean specifically and as narrowly (or broadly!) as possible defining the things that will make you happy. “To be rich” is probably not possible. In some people’s eyes – maybe most of the world’s eyes – you are already rich. (Most Americans are, whether they realize it or not.) But it’s possible to have “a certain income” or a certain level of assets. (Even better, of course, is realizing WHY you want “to be rich”, and achieving that goal whether or not you have a lot of money.)

Likewise, “to have a happy family life” is so nebulous and unqualified that everyone and no one could qualify. What, in your mind, constitutes “a happy family life”?

Keep attempting to define and clarify what the things are that you want – and to prioritize them! – because you may be able to have much of what you want, but you will never have everything you want. Or let’s hope not, anyway. How boring would that life be?

Just realize that most stuff that you are jealous about are purchased on credit and they are worse off financially than they let on, just to show off to you. Other stuff is accumulated slowly over time.

My sister is jealous of other families and other people’s childhoods and in my opinion it just brings her misery. If you can get past it, do it. What I see in her is that she idealizes other people’s lives and has unrealistic expectations of other people. She has some valid points that some things could be better in our family, but I know a ton of people with dysfunction in their families so it’s not like we are the only ones. This helps me. I don’t feel isolated.

My sister also has very certain ways she thinks kids should be raised and treated, and in my opinion, since she never had kids, she is incredibly unrealistic about the difficulties parents go through. If she had kids maybe she would want them to not be so critical of her and she would be less critical of our parents. I don’t have kids, but I’m more understanding of the pressures parents deal with for some reason. My sister remembers every little thing she thinks my mom said or did that fell below par in her opinion and holds onto it like it’s gold, but it’s poison.

You might have some very valid complaints about how you grew up, but just know most people deal with some crap growing up.

Remember your ex? I bet from first glance you two looked like a beautiful, young, happy couple. People don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, and trust me you don’t know what went on behind closed doors regarding your friends families.

Thanks all for your insightful and compassionate answers.

@JLeslie I agree 100% and your sister sounds a lot like my late mother who was ALWAYS jealous of what other people were doing. A typical conversation with her:

**Her:** “Ugh, so-and-so is taking another vacation. Ugh. Must be nice…”

**Me:** “Mom, why don’t you just take a vacation if you want? You’ve been complaining about this for years. You have an income. You have savings. You have plenty of PTO. I’ll look after the dog and take care of grandma, who barely needs any help.”

**Her:** “I CAN’T. I have too many responsibilities!”

See, it wasn’t that she wanted to take a vacation as much as she wanted to be a martyr and for people to feel sorry for her. I loved her dearly, but she drove me crazy, and she died a miserable person, not having done a lot of what she wanted to.

My complaints about my past are valid, but also keeping me from sometimes living in the hear and now. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of joy in my life and I cannot emphasize enough, like @jca said “It’s not half bad”.

It’s just that today, when my cat is driving me up the wall, my partner is lazing about the apt. and kind of annoying, I’m looking at a sink full of unwashed dishes and a bunch of deadlines piling up, I can’t help but think of my friend who is inheriting 1.5 million from the sale of a relative’s apartment and went to an Ivy League school debt-free, or another friend who has a wealthy husband and a maid to wash her dishes or an acquaintance who just had an incredible wedding at her parents’ expense and just got back from a honeymoon in Tahiti. I can’t help but sigh and say “it must be nice…”

Petty and counter productive? Absolutely. Which is why I’d like to move away from it.

It seems like you often are in a pattern of comparing yourself to other people either favorably or unfavorably. And like most of us, you have a lot of baggage from the past. Some talk or group therapy might help you put several of these issues to bed. When patterns keep recurring, it is not always possible to think yourself out of them; outside help may be the answer.

I don’t know if this applies to you, but I see in my sister she holds onto grudges. I’m more likely to deal with a bad situation, or even sometimes I don’t deal with it, and brush it off as a sucky temporary blip. I don’t always do it in a quick second, but it’s a much shorter time frame than my sister. Her blips pile up and seem constant, and ongoing, and for her it’s overwhelming. I do this regarding my medical care, and I try to be better, she does it with everything. Every little thing.

You have so much more than most people have. I have to tell you that my first reaction to your question is anger. You have your health, you have a job, you have a partner. You or your family didn’t grow up with cancer or a debilitating illness that drained your time, energy and money.
When you start feeling this way, remember what you have and be thankful for it because it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.

No matter how much you have, no matter how good you have it, someone is always going to have it better. That’s the truth. Someone’s always going to have a better job, a better car, go on more luxurious vacations, be thinner, more beautiful, live off the interest from a trust fund, wear better clothes.

Someone’s always going to be poorer than you, too so try to keep that in mind.

@chyna I think you may be jumping to a lot of conclusions based on my question. (Especially the part about illness and death. Really?) If you’ve been following me on this platform over the years, you’ll recall that I’m no stranger to grief, pain, or adversity. Things have been better in the past 2–3 years, but my life hasn’t always been easy and I’ve experienced more pain in my 28 years than many people have.

As @Zaku said, I think a lot of my pain that I feel is based on events from the past I’m still trying to come to terms with and move on from—the death of my mother, my abusive childhood, sexual assault, abusive relationships, and recently, the loss of a friend who betrayed me.

@LeavesNoTrace I was thinking along the lines of you didn’t have a child with cancer. Yes I remember your story. And it’s not a good story. But now is the best your life has been and I think you need to focus more on what you have than envy over what someone else has.

Go talk to some missionaries and find out how people live in other nations that would see what you have as wealth. When you discover you get to turn the tap and have fresh hot and cold running water and not have to lug it by jug 70–110 yards, not have electricity, have to cook over an open flame, have a swarm of flies hanging around that hanging meat at the market you have no other option to buy, with roads that wash out often causing you to have to dismount your beast (if you even have one) for fear they will get stuck in the mud, and having a house that is more than a shack, the storage unit you buy at Home Depot would be five times better (and we are just getting started), you might give up those feeling of envy.

To add on to what @Hypocrisy_Central said, go to another country (a poor country) and you’ll see people living in shacks made out of corrugated tin and plywood. You’ll see poor people standing in fields of garbage, picking stuff up, looking for scrap or food. You’ll realize that someone here in the US living in a housing project lives way better than a poor person in a poor country.

@Hypocrisy_Central and @jca I’ve traveled to countries in the developing world and have seen the harsh conditions people live in up close and personal. I certainly understand that myself and everyone on this forum has it much, much easier than someone born into such circumstances.

To get back to my original question, are there any specific mindfullness exercises (besides guilt and emotional self-flagellation) one can exercise to free themselves from envy?

^ Then you can try what I have to force myself to do when I start thinking I should have had more than what I have; think of three things that are a plus to everything you see as a negative.
• If I feel bitter over buying gas, I remind myself I do have a vehicle, and some people are waiting on a bus on the cold as I pump.
• If I think I should be able to eat at a better restaurant, I remind myself some people had to eat at the soup kitchen this morning and they will go hungry overnight.
• If I think I should feel bad because I have no speed boat for the river, I remind myself I was able to get up out of bed on my own and not have the nurses roll me over and change my diaper.
I just go over the pedigree of good things that has happened to me in spite of the things I wished I could have had. It may not be totally mindless, but I am not sure anything totally mindless would work anyhow. I guess you would have to resort to a video game.

Richard Cory

@CWOTUS And put a bullet through his head.

@LeavesNoTrace Here’s one mindfulness tip I try to use when having negative or unhelpful thoughts. Recognize the thought, let it happen and then let it go. Don’t stay mired in it. It takes a lot of practice to learn to do that but if you can, it helps. Sort of like not feeding a fire. don’t fight it because that gives it fuel but don’t stay with it.

@LeavesNoTrace I don’t know of practices designed specifically for envy. However I have heard from people who teach different relevant disciplines, and from my own experience, that one wouldn’t expect to directly design a treatment for something like envy, because that’s not how such things generally unfold. People tend to best process their material in a sequence that has to do with the way they are organized at a level that can’t be seen and intentionally manipulated. What generally happens when people engage in effective techniques, is they create conditions where they will respond and unfold what there is to unfold in the sequence that works, whatever that is. Sometimes courses are offered with an explicit intention in mind, or people go to do work with an intention in mind, and then they have great results but in other unexpected areas, and later at some point their path leads to the thing the had in mind originally, sooner or later, or they reorganize enough that they’re no longer concerned with the original intention, or somehow it just stopped being a problem.

What I recommend is what I ended up doing, which is to look for techniques and try the ones that seem interesting, see what happens and learn about new techniques (often from the other people trying the ones you go to). Different things work well for different people at different times, and I don’t think I’ve ever tried any such thing that I regretted or didn’t find useful at some point.

One that I found useful at first, and still, that was fairly easy and very cheap to try, is simply reading the book Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, which is a concise, quick easy read that’s mostly a quick solo manual for a mindfulness technique that can be very effective. The intro is interesting in explaining the history of psychiatrists noticing only some patients were healing from psychotherapy, and determining what they were intuitively doing that the non-healers were not, was something like the technique explained.

Here is a specific daily exercise that I do that will alleviate your feelings of envy.

Every evening list three things you are grateful for today. Then send the list to someone that will reciprocate. Do this every night, even if you are out late, or are sick, or on vacation.

I have been doing this for almost three years. It refocuses you in the present, makes you mindful of your circumstances. And, after a little while, it opens your eyes to things that will make you grateful today.

It works.

You sound disappointed with your own life but there is no need to be. Your life is unique and you have some power over it. The dishes can be done and if you are concentrating on getting them clean you won’t be thinking of other people’s extravagant weddings which are not always a good idea anyway. Maybe your partner can help with the dishes and while doing them you could discuss your future together?

@flutherother Generally speaking, I have a lot of gratitude for the life I’ve been given and for the chances I’ve had to improve my circumstances. My childhood was difficult and while I try not to dabble in self-pity like @JLeslie describes her sister doing, sometimes I do feel pangs about the hate-filled abuse I suffered from my father simply for being born female.

Now that I’m 28-years-old and haven’t seen him in four years since my mom died, I’m in a much healthier space and now able to understand that A) He is severely mentally ill and B) There is absolutely nothing I could have done or can do to change the circumstances of my childhood.

I’m not very religious and tend to learn toward Agnostic/Deist but have recently started dabbling in Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality at the gentle suggestion of my partner and it has helped me greatly. I spoke to a very kind and scholarly older priest a few weeks ago about all of the above. In response, he gave me a simple and practical spiritual exercise:

Every morning, before I get out of bed, I thank God (or the universe, or circumstances. I’m still not sure if I believe in God…) for my life and I thank my parents, despite their flaws, for bringing me into this world.

^^I don’t know your exact circumstance, but if you have cut off your father, and he still plagues your mind, and disrupts your relationships, then your relationship with him might need to be worked on. I don’t know what he did, so take what I said knowing I don’t know, and feel free to dismiss what I’ve said.

What I can tell you is that in my family my sister and I pretty much agree about what happened in our childhood, the negative things, she just reacted to it very differently, and interprets it all differently. She will criticize me for how I react, but she is the one in misery.

@JLeslie Considering the fact that my father physically and emotionally abused me for the first 24 years of my life, treated my late mother like dirt and is totally unrepentant about it, I don’t think a reconciliation would be a healthy choice.

He’s plaguing my mind less and less frequently as the years go by and I think that with more time, and more experience, I’ll feel better about it.

I believe that many individuals who dwell on the past do so because, in their minds, forgiveness would imply that whatever was done to them was okay and therefore invalidate their years of (sometimes justifiable) anger.

^^I agree that people don’t want to forgive, because it can feel invalidating or letting the bad personal off the hook. I don’t use the word forgive too much, I always lean towards trying to have some understanding of the other person. It’s what helps me. I was not physically abused, so I don’t even try to guess the horribleness of it, and what you went through. Our family it’s more verbal and mental abuse. It can be very hard.