“We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.”

-Alain de Botton

All emotions can be guides and teachers if we know how to listen.

How to listen to envy and jealously is to pay attention to their first signal but not to indulge and be consumed by them.

Rather than let the dark emotion fester in our unconscious and guide our behavior, we can see that it’s telling us something and then consciously explore it.

For example, if rich people make you jealous, you should pay attention to that emotion, stop it at its outset and then ask why rich people make you jealous. It could be for bad reasons or good reasons.

A bad reason would be that you think they are so much happier, and getting more money will make you a lot happier. Unless you’re living close to the poverty line this likely isn’t true.

A good reason would be, you realize you are jealous because your own finances are a constant source of stress and you would welcome the ease and freedom rich people appear to have.

Once you realize this you might decide to put more effort on improving your finances such as by learning more about personal finance, negotiating a higher salary, looking for a new job or looking for other side work.

Jealously can be the guide that initiaties that exploration and can be transmuted into motivation.

There’s also a lot to say about how listening closely to jealously and overcoming it is a strong path to ego transcendence.