“Jealousy and envy can teach us, but only if we let them.” – Kayti Christian
If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the past few weeks, you’ve likely seen the American Eagle campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney explaining how genetics work. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” she whispers in the ad, which debuted July 23. “My genes are blue.” A voiceover follows: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
You are also probably just as aware of the good reviews and the jealous and envious responses that have followed… Racism, body shaming, color supremacy, blah, blah blah. Personally I have no use for whiners and idiotic vicious attacks over a simple jean commercial but let’s have at it.
First, I have to remind myself that jealously and envy are normal human responses, even if they often invoke profound shame and feelings of insecurity. The problem is the failure recognition of those human failings and an effort to channel them into something more productive on the personal level. Wouldn’t that make for a wonderful world? Yet, it does not happen – not in today’s climate anyway.
Sometimes it is difficult to separate the two conditions especially since they work hand in hand most of the time. It is possible to feel jealousy and envy simultaneously. One feeling does not have to come before the other neither is one more negative or venomous than the other? Why? Because they can lead to actions that accomplish nothing except to show the world what a complete fool you are for taking your counter-attack to new levels.
Vicious attacks cannot hide behind “personal opinion” and are tantamount to pathological jealousy is a psychological disorder. The attacker was most likely pathological since childhood and managed to either get their way or cause damage which gave them a feeling of satisfaction. Half of the people out there writing comments are pathological and the sad part is even if they are aware they don’t care – it’s a power trip man. They know once it’s out there – it’s out there. They are aggressive and verbally abusive. Period. For them it is a way of life because it is a crutch. They are determined to at least make their life fair despite the fact that life is never fair.
Envy usually is the lesser of the two. A review (Ramachandran VS, Jalal B. The evolutionary psychology of envy and jealousy. Front Psychol. 2017;8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01619) of the evolutionary psychology by of the two feelings found that envy may not be as negative of an emotion as jealousy. It explained that envy can motivate a person to improve their life since envy occurs along the same spectrum of admiration. For instance, a person can be envious of someone’s success but use their envy to motivate them to work harder, copy their efforts and achieve similar success. Just bear in mind, constantly feeling envious can also be detrimental to your emotional and mental well-being. If you always focus on wanting what someone else has, it can have a negative impact on your self esteem and confidence. It can make you feel inadequate and believe you’re not good enough. In addition, you may start to have a negative outlook on life and treat those you are envious of poorly. – Katherine Chan MSc, BSc, PMP
That’s called digging the hole deeper. It is unhealthy if our minds are preoccupied with them so get some help.
It isn’t going to make you look any better in your jeans either.
