ARTICLE

Five Ways to Ease Your Envy

By Juliana Breines — 2013

What can we do to disarm the green-eyed monster when it strikes?

Read on greatergood.berkeley.edu

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People’s sense of self-worth is pivotal to their ability to look clearly at the hurt they’ve caused. The more solid one’s sense of self regard, the more likely that that person can feel empathy and compassion for the hurt party, and apologize from an authentic center.

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Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

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If only our passion to understand others were as great as our passion to be understood. Were this so, all our apologies would be truly meaningful and healing.

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Respect the fact that all you do and are now has evolved for a good reason and serves an important purpose.

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When forgiveness experts talk in binary language (’You either forgive the wrongdoer or you are a prisoner of your own anger and hate’), they are collapsing the messy complexity of human emotions into a simplistic dichotomous equation.

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When we do not put our primary emotional energy into solving our own problems, we take on other people’s problems as our own.

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When we take rejection as proof of our inadequacies, it’s hard to allow ourselves to risk being truly seen again. . . . The problem arises when shame kicks in and we aren’t able to view our flaws, limitations, and vulnerabilities in a patient, self-loving way.

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Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.

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Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.

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The best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication.

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EXPLORE TOPIC

Jealousy/Envy