Envy is that I am lacking something that you have.
We actually view it as a bad emotion to have, and one that we often don't want to acknowledge or admit to.
It feels so dirty and shameful.
You're both thinking of examples in your head.
Particularly when I go to Sydney, you know you need like big houses and I'm like God this.
How good would this be?
But it's like, it doesn't actually align with what's important to me.
When I'm in my own suburb, I feel pretty good.
But then when I have to go across town to a nicer suburb, you start being confronted with like oh yeah, I'm not enough dropping off at school and having to wait half an hour to the child to settle, while the parents would drop and just turn around and go.
I was so envious of that.
To be clear, I am open to having one of those houses.
When we compare, we will do one of two things.
Admiration, if she can do it, so can I. Or I might feel angry towards them.
I might feel bitter towards them.
We will experience envy because we're all normal human beings.
It's what we do with it that really matters.
Quick, is anyone here a doctor?
Yes, her name is Dr Emily and she's a psychologist.
Please welcome to The Imperfects, our very own psychologist.
Dr M, always the best day of the month, Dr M Day.
Thank you.
That's okay.
Yeah, great.
Pleasure.
Absolute pleasure.
You didn't really have a say in the song that you're like theme song.
We just assigned you a theme song.
What theme song would you choose?
If you could choose any song to really encapsulate your energy?
Who you are to start her.
Well, I don't know about –
I feel like it would be something very sombre, which is not coming to my mind.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I must say when I asked ChatGPT about what, if I could be like a book character, what would I be?
It came up with all of the suggestions were old English women.
Oh, like Jane Austen.
Like from like Jane Austen-y type things.
Yeah.
Interesting.
I was like, right, okay, I now know who I am.
That's interesting.
I wonder why.
Yeah, yeah.
Serious, I feel.
Oh.
Sincere?
Maybe earnest?
Maybe wise.
Yeah, wise.
Okay, yeah.
Well, Em, it is so good to see you.
And today the topic that you are bringing is is one that I can't see myself having anything to relate to at all, but I'm sure these boys will probably tap in.
But it's not really hitting any things for me, so you probably won't hear much from me today.
But envy as a topic is, I genuinely can't wait.
We should have worn green t-shirts.
Yeah, that would have been good.
Yeah, that's right.
Alas, we did not.
No, here we are.
Yeah.
So, yes, I really would love to talk about this topic.
And it's actually a huge one.
It brings in a lot of things.
But...
What I will do in a minute I'll share a clip that I think kind of even just highlights a little bit of this.
But, really importantly, one of the biggest things that we want to do when we talk about envy is differentiate it from jealousy.
So I'll do that perhaps after I've played the clip.
Great.
Okay.
So who's this?
So who the clip is from?
So this is with Dave Hughes.
Oh, Husey.
I mean, one of the most legendary Australian stand-up comedians.
Yeah, love Husey.
So I mean he talks a little bit in that episode actually about envy, particularly professional envy.
But in this particular clip he's actually talking about like an admiration he has for his wife Holly and how she approaches, I guess, relationships in the world.
Great, great.
And she said actually that when she was a teenager she actually made the decision to be happy for her friend's success, which I did not make that decision when I was a teenager.
Not at all.
How did she do that?
I don't know, but she said she really did and I can see that's true that for whatever reason, she must have found some wisdom.
Because if we're happy with other people's success, there's success all around us.
Of course.
It never stops.
But it's really it's sort of easy to.
I find it easy to be happy for other people's success, if it's completely, if it's something I could never do.
Yes, I know what you mean.
But if it's something that I could do, I'm like I'm happy for you, but I'm kind of jealous or envious, or now I'm scared that I'm not going to get that.
And what does that say about me?
But that you are and I am, and I've made this decision to be miserable for a long time, but we are making that decision.
We don't have to make that decision.
We actually can.
Be happy because they won't.
It's such a good clip, that.
Not the bit where I talked about my envy, but the Husey's.
It was a very wise episode, that, in the end, with Husey.
Yeah, I mean.
The first thing that comes to my mind is with envy.
It's just us looking at his hair most of the episode, just thinking what I wouldn't give.
Yeah.
What I wouldn't give to be sitting underneath that.
Yeah.
What a roof.
What a beautiful roof you have, Yuzi.
Okay, Em, so yeah, what does that lead us to?
Yeah, well, as I said, I think the first really important thing is that we understand what envy is.
And for that, we need to understand what jealousy is.
So to begin with, jealousy is an experience that we have between...
Three parties.
Envy is an experience we have between two.
Let me explain this.
So when we experience jealousy, in essence, we have, let's say, a partnership with one other person.
And that relationship there is important to me.
The third party comes in as the threat.
So with jealousy at its core, it's the threat of loss, the threat of losing something I value.
So jealousy can show up obviously in terms of like our romantic partners.
It's going to show up in sibling relationships.
It's going to show up in lots of family dynamics.
At any time where there's a threat to something, some relationship that we value, there is a vulnerability to experience jealousy when a third party arrives.
Yes.
Okay.
So it's like the obvious example in relationships being you see your partner talking to another person.
You're not envious.
You're jealous.
You're jealous.
Yes.
Yes.
You're jealous.
We know that jealousy is experienced actually by most species or most mammals, particularly dogs.
They're very good.
They're very attuned to experiences of jealousy.
So, I mean, I can talk about this at another time.
But really at its core, it's about there being this reaction to the fear that I will lose something.
Envy is actually really different.
Envy is that I am lacking something that you have.
Mm-hmm.
And so this exists between me and one other person.
So I will experience a host of unpleasant emotions in the presence of viewing someone that I perceive as having something that I really want.
Yep.
That is envy.
Yep.
Now, we can experience both.
Like, for example, you could say that I am feeling jealous of my partner talking to this person.
That's the threat there to my relationship.
And I'm envious of their body.
Yes.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So they have something that I want. they're also threatening my relationship.
So we have jealousy and envy in the same experience.
The Quinella.
Yep.
So that's really, really important that we distinguish it because, like any emotion, envy is information.
And so we need to tune into envy to understand what it's telling us.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
That is great.
Yeah.
Because if we think it's jealousy, then we have a whole different pathway.
Yeah.
Right?
So, to begin with, we really have to tune in to understand that envy is that I want something that you have.
Okay.
Now, what sits at the core of envy is an evolutionary basis.
Much like all of our emotions, there's some sort of adaptive function to the experience or the emotion of envy.
So envy in essence is like a status checker.
And it involves an attunement to the people that are around me to determine my safety, my worth, my standing in a group.
So from a cave person point of view, you might see, let's just say, another cave person getting more food.
Now...
Envy in that situation is really adaptive because it's saying, I want what you have.
In fact, I need what you have.
So there is actually a really important function because when we understand that this is a signal to an unmet need, then we can look at how we go about meeting that need.
Yeah.
The huge problem that we encounter in the modern world is that we are no longer exposed to an immediate comparison of our tribe.
We are now exposed through social media, the news technology.
We are exposed to a million different targets of comparison and we're flooded with it all the time.
Is that bad?
LAUGHTER
I knew we'd find a flaw with social media.
Yeah, and look, I'll explain why that has become so much more overwhelming.
But just to start with, our brains just haven't evolved to cope with that level of comparison.
One of the, I think, really important ways to understand envy is to look at what's called social comparison theory.
And it was developed by Leon Festinger in the 1950s.
And it's still immensely, I think, immensely applicable and relevant.
And he identified that At any given moment in our social groups we are engaging obviously in evaluation.
And the only way we can work out our standing is to compare ourselves to other people.
And we can do one of two things.
We can upwardly compare.
So that's called upward comparison.
So upward comparison is when I compare myself to people that I perceive as superior to me in some way.
That's I'm looking up at them.
We also have downward comparison, where we evaluate ourselves in comparison to people that we perceive as less superior to us.
Once we have that, we then, what matters is how we relate to that comparison.
And again, we will do one of two things.
When we compare upwardly or downwardly, we will either assimilate or contrast.
I'm going to explain this.
So if we say, let's take the example of me comparing myself to another psychologist and And perhaps I see that they're doing this incredible job and I might notice like a pang of envy, right?
Like I wish I was, you know, I wish I got to do what they're doing.
With that, I'm upwardly comparing.
So it's upward comparison.
And then this is the real key that determines actually how well we live with this feeling is.
I can either assimilate to that comparison.
And what that means is I step into admiration and I step into if she can do it, so can I.
I step into that's my model for where I want to go.
That's called assimilation.
Or I can move into contrast, and contrast is she's got there.
There's no hope for me, there's no way I can get there, and now I feel really resentful.
I might feel angry towards them.
I might feel bitter towards them.
I might feel in essence that my self-worth is really under attack here.
And what we tend to do is upward comparison with contrast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we compare ourselves to people that we think have more than us or something that we want, and then we say I'm not good enough because I can't do that.
It's kind of like the classic version is the keeping up with the Joneses sort of idea.
Yes, yeah.
I heard the other day that there's some research done around.
If your next door neighbour wins Tats Lotto, there's like a massively increased likelihood that you will go broke apparently.
I'll have to try and keep up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, wow.
That makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
But I guess that, like the next-door neighbour theory I guess from what Emma's saying is like that could apply.
It doesn't have to be next-door neighbour now, because we're seeing people on social media more than we're seeing our next-door neighbours.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's actually really complicated, a complicated experience, and there's a lot of theory that exists around it.
But I will really acknowledge that part of the trouble with envy is that we...
We actually view it as a bad emotion to have, and one that we often don't want to acknowledge or admit to.
It feels so dirty and shameful.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I don't want to tell them that I'm envious of your work achievements.
It's kind of like what's that going to say about me?
But then if we know, everything that we know about emotion is that if we don't acknowledge that it's here, if we suppress it, avoid it, deny its existence, that is actually going to make our experience so much worse.
Yeah.
But yet we all, like it's a really hard thing to admit to feeling envious.
Why is that?
Yeah.
Well, what do you think it says?
Because even just thinking about times, I've got butterflies in my stomach, even just thinking about it.
I haven't even got a solid example, but like well, I guess I do, but it's just like, generally speaking, thinking about times where I'm envious and can sort of step outside of myself and see myself not behaving in the way I wish I was and like being like yeah resentful, or playing it down or not referencing the incredible thing this person's just done.
It feels gross and dirty, but I can't get myself out of it, I can't shift it yeah yeah, I think it's because it reveals it's me confronting, that I'm not good enough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it's also.
It feels also.
I know that logically I should be happy for other people's success, and it feels like I'm not aligned with my values as a person to be at all resentful or unhappy for people who have had success.
Yeah, yeah.
So again, we kind of get two layers of experience here.
The first is the envy.
So this pang here, and there's lots of stuff to unpack about it.
Sorry, but are you both thinking of examples in your head of?
Yeah well, the example I'm thinking about I've talked about too much on the podcast, but it's just like growing up when I was, when Hamish, my friend from high school, was doing a lot better than I was in the industry, that we were both trying to be successful in.
And I was just envious of not being, not able to be happy for him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mine's actually kind of...
I'm a bit ashamed of what it is, because I hate that I care about this.
But mine, I think, is like somewhat like money and house and focused of thinking of people who have have it all seemingly in that way.
And it's actually interesting when you brought up the social media thing, I I
Realise also that because we tend to live, generally speaking, in the suburb, that is sort of our socioeconomic bracket.
When I'm in my own suburb I feel pretty good.
Yeah.
But then when I have to go across town to a nicer suburb, you start being confronted with like oh yeah, I'm not enough.
Mm-hmm, because I don't have all this stuff, but when you're in your own geographic bubble for me anyway, I don't feel the envy anymore, because it's like I'm with my people.
I get that all the time, yeah, particularly when I go to Sydney.
I like big houses and I'm like, God, how good would this be?
And then I genuinely start thinking, okay, what do I need to do?
Like what changes do I need to make?
And I'm completely, I'm like, my values are like hours behind me.
I'm like just veering into like this.
I'm just such an unknown area.
Like I want that.
I just want it.
I mean that's interesting because that's actually an example there of upward comparison with assimilation, because it's actually pointing to a movement towards that thing rather than a movement away.
So the away is like the sadness, the depression.
Yeah, I get that as well.
Yeah.
But in that moment there where you say, oh, what can I do?
Like that's a different experience of envy.
Like I want this and so then we look at action towards it.
Yeah, that makes sense and this might not help what you're saying, but I think what then happens and I'll get down about life and myself and everything and the impossibility of reaching those places, and then, after speaking with Jam about it, it's like I remember that, it's like actually I don't.
I mean, of course I would take one of those houses if they were given to me, but it's like it doesn't actually align with what's important to me.
Like I don't need that.
Yes, exactly.
And once I realise that, then it's sort of that's my path back to, you know, not being so anxious.
Yeah.
I think I'm exactly the same as you, but I feel shame that I care because it's not aligned with my – I know it's not aligned with my values because I'm – chosen.
I only know one way to live and it's roughly in accordance with my values.
Yeah, prioritizing making money and having a big house is not one of them.
But then i feel shame that when that arises i'm like yeah yeah, i feel not enough.
Yeah yeah, to be clear, i am open to having one of those houses If they're being handed out at all, like I don't want to not be on the list.
So just saying that.
But you know, I think Josh, what you've said a couple of times is actually for a lot of people it's not always, but it is for a lot.
It shows up in therapy all the time is that this envy is not necessarily signalling that I want a big house.
This is a message around enoughness.
And it's actually often signaling like a history of feeling not enough.
And when we feel not enough, a number of things can happen.
So, for example, if we feel enough, we can move into competition.
Yeah.
So if we have like a scarcity mindset, where there isn't enough to go around, there isn't enough attention love, nurturing resources, then I'm going to become naturally really competitive, because if I win then I get the resources.
Yeah.
If I win, then I'm enough.
The version of that that I've sort of like I'm right in the thick of kind of working through with my psychologist.
Is this like lifelong want that I've had, and this just absolutely is an example of it?
Is this want to have what he calls it?
Yeah.
Like sort of to be special and having the big house in Sydney it sort of like communicates that oh, you're special.
You have it.
Yeah.
And it's like I don't want to want to have it, but I do want to have it, if you know what I mean.
Yeah.
I think I want to have it and not care about it.
Oh, yeah, of course.
That's the dream.
And not realise you've got it.
Do I?
It's okay.
All good.
I'm too busy spending time with people I love.
I'm too busy connecting, brah.
Are you worried about what house you got?
Fuck, I used to do that and not anymore.
So I guess I really want to emphasize that envy is kind of like the tip of the iceberg and we really want to uncover what it's signaling.
And you know again, for a lot of people it can really signal a much deeper felt sense of that I am not good enough.
And that's the place, like in therapy, that's the place we want to go to.
Envy is just telling us that it's here.
And then we can work with that in a different way.
But envy can be, as we know, really destructive sometimes.
One of the ways in which envy can show up is actually through the reactions to the feeling, most obviously,
So if we feel envious of people around us, it can result in a number of different kinds of behaviors.
One of them can be that I now withdraw myself.
So I don't want to be around that person because it just reminds me what I don't have.
So that's the first thing.
So we withdraw.
The second thing is that it might show up as even like passive aggressive comments.
It might show up as bitterness in an interaction.
It might, you know really, in essence it's kind of looking like a coolness in this relationship that actually might be important to me.
Mm-hmm.
So, for example, if you're experiencing, you know, some kind of challenge in your own life and I say this, you know, with a deep felt sense of compassion here if, like hypothetically, you're struggling with grief or you're struggling with maybe you're going through IVF, then going to a kid's birthday party is going to trigger a whole host of very painful feelings, and one of them might be envy, because they have what I so deeply yearn for here.
Mm-hmm.
And so, to cope with that very confronting and distressing feeling, I may stop going to these sorts of things.
And that helps me.
It kind of feels protective.
But it also means that my life becomes smaller.
And it also means that I can't now go to a whole range of things that perhaps in the past were really important to me.
So that's, that's not an uncommon experience.
It also feels remiss of me to not take the opportunity to mention a Bluey episode which I think onesies speaks to this perfectly.
Excellent.
So the other thing is that we can see how it can show up in passive, aggressive comments or gossiping, or in its worst form.
You know, we can see how this turns into trolling and really very harmful behaviours.
Right, yeah.
And when you say trolling, do you mean like, because I think of trolling as, like you know, attacking someone you don't know.
But trolling can be like bullying people you do know.
Yes, it can.
Yeah, yeah, and it can.
I think, in this context, for me, what stands out and what feels so obvious to me is, in many cases of online trolling, for example, particularly people that you don't know is that you see someone that has all of these things right.
And that makes you feel like shit.
And so what we do when we notice that is in order to feel better about myself, I bring them down.
So we devalue them.
And that might look like online comments or like you might have this house, but you're a blah blah blah.
Or I bet she might have this body, but I bet she's not a nice person.
Yeah.
So what we do, what we engage in is- in an attempt to make us feel better about ourselves is that we devalue and bring someone down so that they are now no longer better than us.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I remember a long, long time ago, I read a book by, I think it's Hugh Mackay.
Do you know him?
Hugh Mackay.
I think he's Australian.
Anyway, I think it was the first chapter because I didn't think I got to the end of the book.
I've read a lot of first chapters.
But I think it was about like something along the lines of in every single situation we're in as humans, we're always assessing are we higher status or lower status?
Yes.
And we react accordingly because we're always wanting to be the high.
If we're low status, we just need to do whatever we can to get the high status.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
We are social creatures that are constantly assessing status.
And that again, it's built into our genes that we have an imperative status to be as high as possible.
That's the place that secures our gene proliferation.
It means that we have all the resources.
It means we have the attention and love of our other cave people, for example.
So there is a biological imperative in some ways to be checking for our status constantly, Then to make an effort to look after ourselves in the best way possible when we understand what our status is.
When you were talking about trolling and you did a for anyone listening, you kind of did a good visual of your one hand being higher than the other and sort of pulling the person down to your level.
But in my mind and I don't know if this is true you're doing it in a way to pull the person that you perceive as higher down to your level.
So you're on an equal playing field, but it feels like in doing it, you're pulling yourself down as well.
And so you'll never actually be on the same playing field.
Yeah.
I mean, yes, absolutely.
It's not necessarily a conscious awareness that that is the case.
We often will think about, you know, with the experience of envy again, like how much energy goes into, first of all, having this struggle, with this feeling, and then also obsessing and ruminating about what this person has that you don't have.
So much energy goes into that.
And again, what that does is it actually misses the key part of this, and that's that there is a pain here.
But that's really difficult to go to the painful part, right?
So it's actually easier to stay in anger and resentment than it is to come to grief or loss or a sense of abandonment, for example.
So yeah, when we get hooked into, like hating someone and pulling them down in your mind or gossiping about them, that actually is keeping all of your energy focused on that person and actually taking you away from living a life that might actually genuinely be on track with all of your values.
Mm-hmm.
So it's a really tricky thing.
And I really deeply want to emphasize how normal it is that we will experience envy, because we're all normal human beings.
And we have to start there by normalizing it's okay that this feeling is here.
It's what we do with it that really matters.
Yeah, because it's like we all know the person and you might be the person, but we all know the person in our life who is, just like always, happy for everyone.
And I always think I love those people.
It's like, God, that's who I want to be.
And it's just amazing when you come across those people who are just like unconditionally genuine and authentically like excited for other people when they do something great um, and it's it's.
It feels rare to meet those people um, at least, who are so outwardly obvious about it.
But um yeah, I guess that when I say that I'm like god that's that's, that's who I want to be yeah yeah, I have an experience this morning.
I think that I think this is I hadn't looked at it as envy before, but I think it's applicable.
I have to drop off my youngest at childcare.
And to do that, there's an option.
I either ride the bike and put him on the back of the bike and drop him off, and then I ride into work, or I drive and drop him with the car.
My wife needed a nicer car today, and so then there was only the other car, which is like nearly 20 years old.
It was grandpa's car.
It was our grandpa's car.
Yeah, it's not a cool, nice car.
It's an old, bit of a bomb.
And I said, which one do you want?
And he's, do you want a ride?
Or he's like, no, I want to go in the car.
And I was like, oh, no, that means I've got to drive it into the office.
And below our building where we are, when I parked the car.
There are so many really nice cars down there, very rich very, very nice cars.
And my immediate thought was, oh, that means I've got to go in there and drive in there.
And if someone else is getting out of their car and I'm getting out of this, I'm going to feel really ashamed.
But he wanted to go in the car, so I'm like, all right.
I couldn't convince him to go on the bike, so I dropped him at childcare.
And then immediately I was like, this car's really dirty.
I'm going to have to clean this car on the way to work, but I'm already going to be late.
And then the whole way there I was like looking, I was sort of trying to think of where are there car washes on the way?
That won't take too long.
Could I go to that one?
And then I started to have this internal battle of like it's going to make you 20 minutes late to work.
You're already 10 minutes late, it'll make you another 20.
And then you're letting down people at work.
Like, where's your priorities here?
And then I thought of someone in my life who I know and respect so much and see as just have so much love and admiration for professionally and personally, and they drive a bomb even though they don't really have to.
Yeah.
And I thought, well, if they could turn up at a thing in their bomb, so can I. Mm-hmm.
And I turned up and then really and luckily, no one was there and I almost got out of the car quickly and ran away from it in the car park and then started walking, because I still am not confident enough to pull that off.
Is that why you showed up in the full disguise for the weekend?
Yeah.
Yeah, but so much of my morning this morning was controlled by this whole journey of like.
How do I navigate this situation?
Yeah.
And I think it all comes from envy and a lack of self-worth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's really hard.
I can hear you know here and there again the energy coming And if we zoom out and have a look at how that might be for anyone when we get really hooked into those stories like how much of life is spent zoomed in on that.
And what does that mean then for the rest of my day or my world?
Like where do I put the energy there or what do I even notice is happening?
It's such a hard thing and it is so understandable that these experiences arise.
So I drove into the car park after you and I saw your car and my first thought I saw was like that is just awesome.
Like it's just to me.
It's so much character and so much like.
Everyone else's cars are just like stupid and yours has got so much character.
And I just, I not for a second would go like, That's not as expensive as other cars.
I just say that and go, that is awesome.
That's my first thought.
Oh, I wish I was there, but I'm not.
I wish I was like, who cares?
But I'm not.
And I think that's the question that shows up for me is the caring part.
So what would it say about you?
Like what does this car, having this car, what does that say about you?
I think it's that an idea I have in my head that someone of my age should have their life together enough to not have to drive an old car and have a dirty car as well.
I think the cleanliness is trying to get it up a level of like, Well, at least they take care of it.
And the idea of it being like dirty and old, it's like this person doesn't have their life together.
You know what you could do?
You could get some of those heritage plates and put it on.
That's good.
Then it's like, oh, he's choosing it.
It's like there's a pride in the heritage plates.
I think what you said in there though, is really spot on, and so round enoughness that I'm not where I should be.
This is the story.
I'm not where I should be.
I should be there.
And so this is kind of this again, this social comparison experience that I'm not there, and I feel really awful about it.
Mm-hmm.
And it might make you feel less than or it might make you feel unworthy.
And from that place, it can feel really immobilising.
And for some people it can cause us to feel uh, a sense of hopelessness or helplessness, that i'll never get there, and then that opens the door to like what's wrong with me, why can't i do this?
And you can see the spiral of, of negative rumination and and there's so much suffering that that occurs in there.
So what on the surface seems like i want to have a nice car actually represents A much deeper, broader sense of worthiness that actually really almost like needs an honoring, or like an honoring and a tuning into.
Because when we do that, I'm curious about what happens then to how I relate to the person that has the thing.
Are you asking a question?
Yeah.
Well, I have some thoughts about it, but I'm just curious.
If I know that this experience here is actually about my worthiness and not about hating you or not liking you, does that change how I want to relate to that person?
If I know that you having this thing is actually really revealing to me a deeper pain for me rather than a bitterness.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
I mean, in this case, for me, it just highlights that I don't actually want that thing.
Like I don't want a really fancy car.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to mind.
I'm like, I'm glad you want it but I don't really want that.
It seems like when you declutter what this is, it's not about the thing.
No, it definitely isn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And actually when you do declutter it, it sounds like you can recognise like oh, I can let that go because that's actually not important to me.
It's more I know very much it's about what I'm lacking and not about what they have.
Yeah.
And it's a sign of me not being where I imagined or hoped or think a person who's got their life together should be.
Yeah.
Like I should at least be clean, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that's such an example, Josh, of actually how envy shows up.
And that is that it is about a sense of lacking and how hard that is when we get exposed to that feeling.
And it can, you know, when we're not listening to it in a really wise and helpful way.
It can make our life feel very narrow.
It can impact our relationships.
It can mean that I'm going to show up like in a really I don't know like maybe, if we're not paying attention, maybe it shows up as like I'm really irritable and snappy with people.
Yeah, like remembering how I was, because I know I was like kind of like sort of joking when you were talking about it Josh, but I just to say that like, when I have those feelings, it is like I, it is really.
And afterwards, like now, I think it's like I don't recognize that person.
Like when I was in there and I'm like feeling like that deep envy for the people in my life who have the really, you know, beautiful homes.
It's like it's silly to say.
I realise it's so silly to say now, like with a rational brain, because it's like I have a fine house.
Like it's not, but it's amazing how blind you can get in those moments and how like just shit you feel about yourself.
It's really – it's so strange because I do not relate to that person.
Yes.
But I know I can easily drop into that person at any point.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, it's much easier to drop into that person I think when –
For me, which talks exactly to what you're talking about.
But when I'm already feeling pretty low or when I'm already feeling in a not great place, then the not enoughness comes through and the envy is much stronger.
But when things are, for whatever reason, I'm feeling really good and on top of things and just thriving, the envy goes away almost completely.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I really don't care anymore.
Yeah, we can relate to it very deeply.
I feel like I've been mostly quiet for this episode because I was literally thinking I don't kind of think of something that I experience envy with in my life and I don't feel like it much at the moment, but I was looking back and Parenting a child on the spectrum.
Yes.
I mean the envy I felt of other parents, until radical acceptance knocked on my door and marched in and I don't have it anymore, but for a long time.
Yeah.
Anywhere I went with those other parents.
So dropping off at school and having to wait half an hour to the child to settle, while the parents would drop and just turn around and go.
I couldn't.
I was so envious of that.
Going to a park and seeing parents just chatting to each other, not having to keep an eye on their kids to make sure.
So much envy for that.
Going to a play centre and being able to sit down and have a coffee and just mind your own business, as opposed to following your child everywhere and then having to be ready to get them out any time.
Dropping off at a – seeing parents drop their kids off at a party and just going.
That would just be unbelievable.
But instead, we're staying the whole time and we're probably going to go soon.
Yeah.
Hearing – I've been asleep like neurodivergent kids, special autistic kids don't sleep properly.
So hearing other parents going, yeah, kids are sleeping fine.
So many points of envy, and it made me irrationally – annoyed at other parents who had done nothing wrong other than just living their own life.
And irritated by them, I'm sure.
So irritated.
And disappointment has definitely put a wedge in some of my friendships.
I didn't say anything.
I didn't.
But there are certain friends, I just went, I don't want to be around that person.
Yeah.
And they didn't do anything wrong.
They just, their life was so easy.
Yes.
It really fucked me off.
Yeah.
And I think that's... Sorry.
No, I think that's true.
Of course it did.
You know, like, of course it did.
And I think...
You know, when it comes to this experience here, it's always again highlighting an unmet need of some kind.
And so in this instance, it may not be enoughness.
It may be like the need for rest or ease, for example.
Mm-hmm.
And so when we talk about envy, it's obviously not just of material things.
Envy can show up in a number of different ways.
Like I'm envious of the ease with which you can live your life.
I'm envious of your time off.
I'm envious of your relationship.
So not jealous, envious.
So I'm envious of...
The healthy relationship that you have, for example.
I'm envious that you have these friendships.
I'm envious of how you cope with things.
So it doesn't have to be just and, in fact, more importantly, to be honest, it's not about material things.
This is really around the sense that I'm really deeply yearning for something and I can't get it.
And so Hugh, in your example it's almost like it activates and triggers this deep longing for ease.
I just thought, the perfect example of how I can get in the way of friendships and the issues it can cause.
I was having dinner like two years ago, maybe three years ago now, right in the thick of when it was really tough for us, with two of our very good friends, Reid and Goon.
And Reid was about to have a baby, hadn't had a kid yet, and both Bryn and I had two or three.
And Reid said to us, anyway, well, it's a couple of weeks away.
What am I in for?
And we sort of laughed, and then Goon said no seriously mate, it's the greatest and happiest thing you'll ever experience.
It's the best thing you'll ever experience.
And I paused for a minute and I said, well, not for everyone.
And they both looked at me a bit like, yep, okay.
And I said, no, but seriously, it's not for everyone.
And then I wouldn't let it go.
And Gwyn said, yeah, but I mean, there's so many incredible moments.
Because Reid's about to have his first child.
And Gwyn's going, yeah, okay.
But Reid lost look forward to it.
And I went, well, you don't know that.
I'm just saying it's not easy for everyone.
And I wouldn't let it go.
I rang him up for five minutes saying –
All the challenges, all the impossible bits, all the bits have been so painful for us.
And every time Goon very rightly tried to say yeah, but we're excited for Reid and there's so much that Reid's going.
Yeah, but you don't know that.
Shut up, Goon.
It's shit.
You can't say that.
You cannot say.
I haven't seen them since.
I haven't been invited.
We haven't caught up since.
Yeah.
Part of me is just so embarrassed for the way I carried on.
But also I'm sure they've caught up since I've no doubt they have.
And I haven't got an invite because why would you like it was.
Yeah.
I just like reached out to have his first job and I spent five minutes saying how bad it was.
Yeah.
So there's a good example for you.
The old negative Nelly approach.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think that is a really, I think it's really honest and I think it's really great that you shared that actually, because I think that that is not an uncommon experience really.
And I think it'll speak to a lot of people that when we experience that, that it makes us feel or act in a bitter way, like
Because there's such an unmet need here of some kind and I don't feel like I've got the resources to meet it.
And so that then kind of pulls you into this helplessness or hopelessness experience.
And so I really deeply want to honour how absolutely valid the arrival of this feeling is.
But we have to catch it because it can be corrosive.
It can mean that we create distance.
I'm also kind of wondering, on the flip side, what it's like for the recipient of someone, that is, the person with the thing.
Oh, yeah.
Should we call Goon?
Yeah.
So you know what is it like to maybe have something that you're proud of and you're also really aware that your friend, for example um, Feels unhappy about it.
Extremely uncomfortable.
I will say that.
Very off-putting.
Yeah.
For me personally... Mm-hmm.
I felt it a bit and I just feel uncomfortable.
I'm just like, I don't.
Yeah.
For example, with my car, I think I have a nicest car.
I try to make it dirty.
I don't.
I like it being dirty because I try to. knocks the chain off it.
Downplay it as much as possible because it's like it's a nice car and when it's dirty.
That feels better to me because I'm uncomfortable with it.
And I think you know I started a business with the pure thing of just wanting to go and do talks at schools and by chance, what I was doing went well and it got quite big and And the person who invents a thing that gets quite big often does quite well from it.
And it's just, it is so uncomfortable at so many points.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
I can imagine.
And I so often will.
Some of the decisions we've made around big decisions with things we will buy has always been about like comfort for our kids and looking after them.
But it also presents comfort. in a way that is not consistent with what Penny and I value.
But like, I don't care.
I want my kids to be comfortable with certain elements of their life, because we've got different needs to other people.
But God, it's uncomfortable so often.
And even now, I've just caught myself trying to justify why I would buy nice things occasionally.
A lot of that is true, but also it just feels very uncomfortable.
And yeah.
Yeah, I think it is really hard.
And It's tricky because there might be actually it might be a relationship that is really important to us where we feel this sense of coldness and it can feel like a bit of a rejection actually.
Yeah, when maybe your best mate is finding it really hard to be happy for you for something that you've done or that you're doing, and that can feel really, really difficult.
Yeah.
Horrible and also I imagine the person and, you know, we all would have done this at certain points no matter what status we're all at but it's, yeah, playing down the achievement we just got or the thing we just did because we know it will,
It will niggle at the person who also wants the same thing.
And so instead of coming, you know, getting over to their house and going like can you believe, I just got this great thing.
That would happen all the time in any industry.
But it's like it's playing it down, not being able to like appear happy.
Embrace the excitement.
Yeah.
I mean, I think like, on the one hand, I think that's also really being sensitive, you know, really being sensitive to other people's experiences, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
But if this is a repeated experience like if you find that there's a friendship, for example, or even a relationship with a sibling, where this is a consistent pattern that I have to downplay every part of my life,
Yeah. or I have to hide things or I can't be my authentic self, like I can't bring a joyfulness.
Like I'll share with you something the other day.
I have this great friend who is kind of in a similar industry to me and she's.
I just know that she would be happy for me with whatever was arising, and I feel like I can truly express my joyfulness at something that might have happened.
And that is so precious.
Like it's so precious, but it also is hard to do, you know, like it's really hard to do.
And so there might be times when it's, you know, that's not going to happen.
But I think you know my genuine point here is that if you find yourself in a relationship where this is happening all the time, then I'd have to really question how the relationship is serving you.
You know, if you have to hide parts of yourself Is that you're living by your values in this relationship.
I'm not sure.
Would it ever be worth talking to the person if it's happening regularly?
Would it be worth talking to them about it?
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I think this is part of the process of working with Envy on both sides, and that is that, you know, is kind of calling it out in a really respectful and genuine way.
So it might be something like I don't know Jenny, I don't know if this is just me, but I've kind of had a sense of a bit of distance between us.
I really value our relationship.
Like, am I off track here?
And so this is kind of like an invitation here to see what's happening.
That's a big step for Jenny to say I'm envious.
It is.
It is a big step.
But it may not have to be that word in particular.
But that's such a good way to go about it, as opposed to coming out and going like, which sounds more accusational confrontational, which is like I'm just getting a sense that you're really envious of where I'm at.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Like that's not going to go great.
No, it's not.
Or conversely that we actually...
Is that we actually withdraw ourselves from the relationship.
That's what often happens.
Is that, like I actually don't want to be around this person because I can't be myself.
Yeah.
Can I ask you about that person who is really good with your sharing stuff?
Yeah.
Are they quite successful?
Like have they done really well?
I mean, I guess it depends how you define really well.
In their mind, would they define they've done really well?
Because I find people who feel like they've done really well are much better at not...
No, she's early in her career.
Yeah.
So, yeah, she's a wonderful person.
You call them bullshit, do you?
No, she's not.
No, quite frankly, it's not because she's like way down the path than me.
Yeah.
It's genuinely, I think, that it's probably to do with worthiness, that there's an enoughness there.
So the enoughness can contain other people doing well.
Yeah.
That's what it is, isn't it?
I was looking at the output of like a success, but what it feeds there it's like the feeling that I'm enough.
The baseline of enoughness.
No matter what they do, it doesn't take away from how I feel about myself.
Like that's what it comes down to all the time.
It's just like self-belief.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that, like, again, I'm exactly enough as I am.
And your achievements actually doesn't change that at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's really big.
Hey, Hugh and Josh, get this.
From the people who brought you the Resilience Project Schools Program comes workplace wellbeing done differently.
That's right.
Yes, Josh?
Is this the tone you want for a Resilience Project ad?
I'm trying to kind of get the excitement up. for the Resilience Project Workplace Program.
Okay, we'll keep going.
Our program is engaging, practical and accessible.
Is that all right?
Yeah, yeah.
That's all true though, isn't it?
It's all very true.
Can I suggest an approach?
Yes, please.
Over to you, Josh.
I feel like it's extremely compelling what the Resilience Project does for kids in schools.
The research is unbelievable.
So that is extremely compelling, and the fact that almost 50 of adults will experience mental ill health in their lifetime.
I'm very excited about it because I've seen the work that's gone into it and I know it's going to have the same impact in workplaces as it does in schools.
Awesome.
That's Hugh van Kylenburg, founder of The Resilience Project.
So to find out more about the Workplace Wellbeing Program, head to theresilienceproject.com.au.
Yeah, this feels difficult to talk about, but I'll try.
But I found that, like with the success of this show and over the last six or seven years yeah, Kids all around the country going bananas right now.
For all the kids listening to the Envy episode.
I've found it a really interesting experience In that I think prior to this I played a role in, certainly in some relationships where I was a for want of a better term and I think it's okay to say this about yourself a bit of a perpetual loser in a lot of situations, and that I had relationships that worked under that premise And that since we've had all this amazing success and things have been going well.
It's been really interesting to see some relationships and it's difficult to talk about because they're real people.
I can think of one or two in particular that I feel like don't work as well now that I have success.
That's so interesting.
And there's a coldness there that I didn't feel beforehand.
It's like I'm not playing that role that I used to play in that relationship.
It's like you've broken the contract, the unspoken contract.
Yeah.
And they enjoyed their position in that hierarchy of the friendship?
I think so, yeah.
I could be wrong.
Maybe I've become – maybe I'm just a different – maybe we're just different people and we've just grown apart.
You have become a bit of an asshole.
Yeah.
But then conversely, I've been –
It's been so amazing and I think of some friends and like some really good friends who have just been so happy for me to see success.
There was one friend that came to our live show and cried and he told me afterwards and his wife said it's like the first time They've been together for like 15 years.
She sent me quite twice.
And one of it was because he was just like so happy that I saw myself the way that he always has.
Oh, wow.
And it was one of the most special things anyone's ever said to me.
And then another friend who flew up to Sydney to watch us at the Opera House and was just so proud.
And it's been a really interesting experience, the way that that's tracked.
And I'm not saying that I like need my friends to tell me, you know, well done.
Sometimes the best friends are the ones that you'd.
You don't get that from it all, but you just know that they're in your camp.
But it's been an interesting experience the way that plays out.
That is an incredible story.
It's so beautiful.
But that whole reflection or insight on that is incredible because I think that –
That's where I can see it resonate with my life is like friendships and with success.
And it really shines a light on the bloody good people is what I've found.
Like, and it's you need to focus on that, not the people who have dropped away and aren't as comfortable or for whatever reason.
It's like look for holes in what you're doing or try and take the piss out of what you're doing.
But yeah, you can get down about that, but you may as well just focus on the people.
Yeah.
Yeah, because there's some really good people who go like they genuinely wanted the best for me all along, and this is proof, and that is so amazing.
That is absolutely amazing.
Yeah.
I do want to add one thing to that though and that is that – You disagree?
What if it?
– in that example of, like focusing on the people that can show up with excitement.
What if, for the other people, it's actually not about you?
Yeah.
What if it's actually about their, like again, their sense of not feeling enough?
Yeah.
And that shows up as coldness or passive aggressive or digs, or what if we look underneath those behaviors and actually question like oh, like that's a them thing?
Yeah.
And what does that mean?
I was thinking a really similar thing.
I wasn't going to say it in that way, but it's like when I think about my example of the envy I brought up earlier with Hamish in my 20s 30s, It's like he – I know that he would have been looking – like he would have – well, I've spoken to him about it obviously, so I know that he noticed that I wasn't celebrating him, But I've got no doubt that he was just able to look at me with compassion and understand why, even though it wasn't ideal.
Yes.
But he was probably.
I haven't actually asked him this, but I'm assuming he was able to and not get annoyed and not ruin the friendship.
And not move away from you.
Not move away.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Because he could.
It's pretty, you know, probably pretty obvious if you actually take the time to think about it.
Yeah.
But the fact that he did means that we're still best friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, this is a huge challenge on both ends, right?
But you know, for all of us, in some ways, it's this communication that.
What would it be like to express?
You know, I think about some of the examples that come up all the time, like struggling to have kids going through a divorce, experiencing grief, like these really normal parts of life.
Envy is going to show up in those experiences, because we've either lost something that we wanted or we can't get what we have.
Um, and you know, in that space, if we're able to communicate to others that I'm actually having a really hard time that, I think, is a really important step.
So when I think about you, know maybe someone going through infertility it might be the.
I've been thinking about you, with me having my one-year-old birthday party.
I've been thinking about you here and I don't know if you're experienced, but I gather this might be really hard.
So we're kind of like really empathizing with the struggle that might be present for someone there and letting them know that I see you, because that's an experience that is often felt in envy is this sense of people aren't seeing how hard this is for me, and so if you can open the door to someone that you think might be possibly having a difficult time, maybe they've withdrawn more, they're not coming to things.
Is there an invitation here to say I could be on the wrong page here, but for me it would probably feel really difficult coming to my one-year-old's party.
I love you.
Is there something that we can do instead?
Or how do we hold on to this relationship so that... envy doesn't actually get in the way.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
Healthier than my, what I was thinking was just ditch them and focus on them.
No, listen like if it's a repeated pattern and they're actually not being nice people.
Of course you have a choice.
No, but the visual I have in my head because there's been a bit of like talking about the hierarchy of friendships or whatever but then in that situation, if you're feeling that it could be envy there because of something like you just said, the visual I have in my head is like reaching your hand down to pick them up and bring them with you.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Kind of what I'm picturing there.
And it's such a lovely, that's such a lovely example of if you feel that somewhere in your life it's not about you.
Yes, this is not about you.
What are they going through?
Yeah.
What can I do?
Yeah, and can I?
You know this need that we all have to feel like we matter and we matter by being seen right.
So when I say to you God, I don't know what this is like for you, but I can imagine it would be really hard to show up to this.
I just want you to know that I'm here for you in some way.
If you don't want to come, I totally get it.
But can we do something else?
It's like holding this relationship here because it's valuable and important and also naming that I can say this is hard.
Like we all want that, I think.
It's also it feels like to state the obvious, but looking at it from the other point of view again, so coming at it from the person who feels envious if you're really envious of someone and, as a result, you're being distant or not wanting to ask them about their life.
And it's so disconnecting because you're then so blind to all of the potential struggles that they're having in their life outside of the thing you're envious of.
And so it's like, because we say that they've got the good car, and you're like, oh God, I'm so envious and it's all about you and the envy of the car and I wish I had that car, not even thinking about the possibility that like, there's other stuff going on in their life outside of the car.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, in fact, one of the questions that can be really helpful to ask ourselves when we feel envy is okay, so I'm really envious of their job.
But Would I want to swap my entire life to have that job?
Yeah, yeah.
Because you're absolutely right.
We only focus on this one part of lacking.
What if we open it up?
Do I want to swap my entire life with them?
And most often we say no.
Yeah.
Most often, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So there's that piece in there.
But also when it comes to working with envy.
You know, one of the most important things again is like to check in with what's this saying about me?
What is this signaling to me about what I need, what I'm lacking, and how do I go about working with that part, rather than the target of the envy over there?
Yeah, absolutely.
I will also note that, when it comes to envy, we're most likely to envy people who are relevant to us, obviously.
So I'm not going to envy I don't know like the table tennis table gold medalist, because that's not an area that I value or is of interest to me.
Yeah.
I remember, I think there's, and I'll butcher this quote, but Alain de Botton.
So he's.
I remember reading something he wrote about envy, and he says it in such an eloquent way, of course, but it was something like similar to what you're saying.
It's like you only envy the people that you relate to.
Yes.
So it's like we don't envy King Charles, even though he's like got all this money, and you know we don't envy him, but we envy the person next door who has far less than King Charles.
Yes.
But it feels weird saying King.
I still want to call him Prince.
But we envy the person who we went to high school with.
Something that I find myself saying a lot, and that is that we only judge in areas where we ourselves have a vulnerability.
Oh yeah so, for example um, let's just say we might have, i don't know body image struggles.
Right, i might find myself judging old mate over there who's put on weight or lost weight.
It's actually a reflection upon the vulnerability that we have for ourselves.
That's so true.
Envy is completely subjective.
Yeah.
It's not an objective thing.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because what I envy is going to be vastly different to say what you envy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the really important things to mention when it comes to envy is understanding that it is a social emotion.
And so that it is arising in the context of our perceived social status.
And what that means is that in any given moment, we are in essence checking whether I belong here, whether I fit in here.
And if you have had experiences, particularly in childhood, of feeling like you don't fit, of feeling like I don't belong here, then that lives with you.
It's a very strongly held experience that we hold often into adulthood and particularly then going into new relationships later or broader social circles.
So when envy arrives, it might genuinely be a signal that I'm not feeling a belonging here, or I feel like I'm not fitting because they have this and I don't have this, for example,
So, yeah, it's important in some ways to declutter what the actual experience is here.
And it may be both.
It may be that I feel like I don't belong and I'm envious of certain things in this social setting.
In other circumstances it may genuinely be.
Actually, I don't want to belong here because I don't in fact want those things.
And this feeling of not fitting in is actually important information about where I feel my people are.
And so that's kind of something just to note there, to declutter.
Is this a question of valuing these relationships, wanting what they have and questions of enoughness?
Or is this a greater question around whether these are relationships I want to pursue and whether I feel a sense of safety and welcoming from this group of people, for example?
I guess it's probably the envy I feel like hits harder when you really want to be accepted.
Yes, exactly.
To state the obvious.
But it's like when it's like a place where it's like, oh, these guys are not my guys.
Yeah.
And so it's like...
But like you don't really feel like they don't belong.
I mean you maybe feel like you don't belong but maybe you don't care about that.
Exactly.
Because it's like I don't really like these guys anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I also think like I felt this a lot as a teenager not so much anymore, but I think a lot of people feel like this.
But I think I've been envious of people's –
Belonging.
Like really envious of looking at a group of people and going wow, that person looks like they belong.
And I'm so envious of that.
Yeah.
Look, I think that's actually very common.
And a lot of popular culture, for example, has really provided a model for what, for example, friendship or belonging looks like.
Gosh.
I think about Sex and the City, this example here of four completely different women that are so connected and so tied and they see each other all the time.
That then becomes like this model for how we understand, for example, female friendship.
We actually know that it can look a myriad of ways, but there's an experience there even of like a parasocial or an imagined envy.
Like I'm envious of what they have.
I'm envious of that group because it highlights a sense here of a yearning for more belonging.
So envy can show up in so many ways.
And I mean I haven't mentioned hugely about social media, but most obviously this is envy on steroids.
And one of my biggest suggestions when it comes to working with envy is that if you notice it's showing up a lot and you're on Instagram or TikTok a lot, Have a look at what's happening there.
And although we can't take ourselves out of our social lives, we can take ourselves away from social media because it's not a demonstration, as we know, of real life, but it's telling us that it is.
So, if you struggle with envy, really think about either who you're following, what you're seeing or taking yourself off in.
I just do it, Josh.
Yeah.
Get rid of the bloody thing.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Yeah.
Love it.
That I don't have Instagram.
I thought you said do it, Josh.
And I was like, I think he is off it.
Do it, Josh.
Can I ask, has it genuinely made a difference?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And interestingly I had to, I think it's I used to be able to check our Imperfects podcast Instagram on my phone without like logging in or having a account.
I could just have a quick look and it would allow me to look at a few things, and it sort of got buggy and stopped.
Stopped me doing that the other day and I had to download the app.
And I download the app and didn't activate my account.
But I have like an account that I can log into that doesn't follow none and doesn't have any posts, that I can just like check things, and I can feel myself starting to get already, after like I've had the app on there for like a day, getting pulled back in and feelings of not enoughness, like immediately on the second I downloaded the app not enoughness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, I've got to delete it again.
But I don't have my.
Yeah it's, I am.
I don't know how much worse my daily experience of life would be if I still had it, but I know it would be a lot worse than what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we're at a point now where that seems pretty obvious.
Yeah, just so much worse in so many ways.
Yeah.
And I can't really say any ways in which it would be better.
No, I agree.
Yeah.
It is pretty wild, isn't it, that it's like –
And we're still in the, and it's not an exact comparison, but it's like kind of similar.
We're still in the mode of human history where everyone's smoking all the time.
They know it's bad, but everyone does it because everyone does it.
We're in the 50s.
We're in the 50s.
It's like smoking inside.
You can smoke anywhere you want on planes.
Mm-hmm.
Even though like yeah, I know there's research that's come out and said it's bad and I know it will shorten my life, but everyone does it.
We're sort of in that period of social media.
I am aware that I think we need some sort of way to work with this when the envy is arriving.
And one of the things I really want to kind of mention here is the notion of a downward comparison.
So we've spoken a lot about upward comparison.
But downward comparison can be a really helpful thing to help us move from that place of like anger resentment bitterness, into more of a gratitude.
Okay.
So we need to be careful how we do this.
But a downward comparison would be well, I don't have that thing and I would really like it, but
Look what my body can do.
And it can do more than these people over here.
Look that I have in a house.
Other people don't have houses.
So we actually compare ourselves with people that are having a harder time than us.
And that can open us up to a gratitude and an awareness of what I do have.
It's a tricky thing because we can also use that to beat ourselves up with.
Yeah.
How do you mean?
So gratitude can be a tricky thing when we say why don't you feel more grateful when you have X Y, Z?
You should feel grateful.
Don't worry about them.
You should feel grateful because you've got a job, you've got a wife, you've got a house, all this sort of stuff.
What is wrong with you?
So can you see how there's like a –
A double-edged sword if we're not paying attention.
I feel like you can do it to the same person that you feel envious of.
Like you can upwards in some areas but then others go, well.
But look at their struggling in this area and I feel a lot of compassion for them in that struggle.
And I'm so grateful that I don't have to deal with that on a day-to-day basis, or I don't have to, I haven't had that thing happen to me, or whatever it is.
And I think it kind of really helps with the thing you envy.
It's similar to what you're saying before about, like I'm paraphrasing but you don't just get the nice car.
You get the nice car and everything else in their life.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
So when we can, if we slow down and again, it always starts with naming what's here.
It's kind of waking up to what the experience is.
Okay, aha, here is Envy.
I recognise it.
And then we've got to be careful.
We don't judge, of course, that we're feeling envious, because that's exactly what will happen.
We'll say, like, what's wrong with you?
I hate how you are.
I hate this part of myself, blah, blah, blah.
We've got to pause enough. to take that part away and just stay with here is envy.
Okay.
And then we can dig into, okay, so this tells me that I feel like I lack something.
What else is it telling me?
So what else is the information about this feeling?
Is it telling me that this is actually a really old, familiar feeling?
And so, for example, with clients, I might even actually use that point to go into doing some like imagery work from childhood.
So this feeling here, how familiar does that feel?
Where do you feel that in the body?
Tell me about a time when you felt like this as a kid.
And then we go bang pretty much often into something early in my history here, probably a repeated experience that has signalled something around my worthiness and not enoughness.
Mm-hmm.
So once again, we're really investigating this feeling.
What is it actually, what's it telling me?
What's the story attached to it?
How familiar does this feel?
And then once we get there, yes, then we can open to a gratitude.
Okay, so this story is here and...
Look what I have been able to create in my life.
Look at my partner here.
Look at my house.
Look at my job, that my body is moving and healthy, and we can offer ourselves an immense gratitude for what it's able to do.
Mm-hmm.
I can hold this envy here.
Yes, it can still be here.
And at the same time, I can have a gratitude.
So I've spoken about this before, the notion of both and.
I can want something and yearn for it.
And I can also be really grateful for what I do have.
And so that's how we learn to live with the feeling rather than be consumed by it.
Well, the radical acceptance episode will be a very good complimentary episode to this.
Yeah.
One of the other great things in terms of working with Envy is actually to move into contribution.
So how do we work with Envy?
We go and contribute.
We go and do volunteer work.
We go and help someone.
We go and make a connection.
So we step out of, basically step out of ourselves and come into the greater good here.
It's a really great way of kind of diffusing from this like really tightly held feeling.
Okay, so that's there.
I'm yearning for this.
We acknowledge, name it, bring compassion, nurture, and then also like, let's get out of here.
You know, go and do something that connects me to my values.
Go and make a contribution in some kind of way.
It takes you out of it.
I may have told this story before, but it feels relevant now.
This isn't trying to brag at all, but I feel like I instinctively did something a very long time ago that fills this bucket.
I was on my way to uni and I was on the train and I noticed this huge crowd of people at Melbourne Park.
The train isn't the brag?
No.
And I realised it was Australian Idol auditions and I thought I'm going to go audition for Australian Idol instead of going to uni.
So I jumped in the queue, huge queue of people, everyone just sort of competitively singing at each other in the queue.
Pretty obnoxious stuff.
Yeah.
All these people with ridiculously good voices and I sort of stayed there for a while and I started to feel really insecure and not good enough and like all these people have a much better voice than me and felt very envious of them.
And I was walking away feeling so low about myself.
Did you do the audition?
No.
No, I didn't go through with it.
No, I think I waited for about two hours and it was like still going on.
And I was kind of not liking being there.
The longer I was there.
It was a combination of like I didn't really like a lot of the people I was around.
And part of that was how a bit of envy about how good they were as singers, but also I just didn't like the vibe of the sort of competitiveness.
So I was walking away feeling really low and then I saw someone's wallet on the ground and I like opened it up and I saw
Yeah, it was someone, and no, this is away from the queue.
So then I'm like, I'm going to try and track this person down.
I spent like an hour trying to, going through the queue, talking to people, couldn't find them.
Is anyone here Guy Sebastian?
And I went into the info.
I told a security person, they're like, we can't take it.
It took me about half an hour to find where you drop it off and gave a note and gave it to the people and left knowing that I'd done my best to try and give that person back their wallet.
And I felt so good and the envy was gone and I kind of left that day feeling great.
Yeah.
And not jealous, resentful, envious.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think what I love about it too is such an example of the fact that you remember that.
You remember that feeling of contribution, of making a difference, a small one maybe, but making a difference.
And, you know, it reminds me there's some amazing research around the value of contribution.
And there's been studies done and I'll have to find the actual reference for this.
But if you offer people, say, $50 and you can go and spend it on, I don't know, yourself.
These are the two options.
You can spend it on yourself or you can go and spend it on somebody else.
Again and again, over and over.
Every time, spending it on someone else creates more feelings of well-being, and you remember it.
So let's just say you had $50.
You're going to go and I'm going to get my nails done or something.
Or I go and say, you go get your nails done for $50.
I'm not going to remember sitting there having my nails done, but I'm going to reap the benefits of like making a contribution.
Knowing that Ryan's getting his nails done.
Yeah.
I'll take this as a bit of a hint, but yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, that's amazing.
So I think that there are lots of ways in which we can work with this feeling that take us away from what feels like tunnel vision sometimes.
Like I'm just so laser beam focused on this feeling that is here and I don't like it and I also am now not maybe liking that person.
Let's zoom out and come into like something that's bigger than myself here because like, in a broader way, you think about enoughness, right?
Yeah.
And therefore, how you want to show up in the world.
You get to the end of your life and you know that maybe I never felt enough, but maybe I made someone else feel like they were enough.
Huge.
Yeah.
Ring the bell.
Huge, huge bell.
Yeah.
So this is this great challenge.
Envy is information.
We've got to tune into the information it's telling us.
Notice what it says about what I'm needing, what I'm lacking.
Offer ourselves the compassion and go and help other people.
Oh God, that is awesome.
Amazing.
In 1999, Dr M was promoted to assistant manager assistant to the manager at the Bourne cinema and not me.
And I was envious, but it's taken all these years, but you are the one who's freed me of that envy.
Is that the reason why you started doing talks?
Because you're like, I feel this envy.
I need to go and do something for someone else.
Start the Resilience Project.
No, I was also very happy to him.
She was a great assistant manager.
That's very kind.
But anyway, all that to say.
Yeah, just amazing, Em.
Just so good.
Again, like we said every time after every one of your episodes, that's going to help so many people.
I hope so.
I think it's going to help a lot of relationships and friendships.
It's amazing.
Excellent.
Thank you, Em.
Thank you for having me.
As always.
Pleasure.
All right.
We'll see you soon.
And we'll see you next time.
