We are accustomed to considering envy as a feeling that discredits a person, as a kind of soul-corrupting circumstance of an impartial black color. “Envy is a passive state, and it is not surprising that later it develops into hatred.” - wrote Goethe, not even suspecting that he was laying the foundation for a rather one-sided conspiracy theory against his own personality, because by completely depriving ourselves of the ability to envy, we deprive ourselves of the ability to move forward.
So who is the individual who thinks he has much less than he could have, the enemy lurking around the corner, the unfortunate person or the under-stimulated individual?
What is envy
The word “envy” itself comes from the common Slavic “see”, somewhat modified in an intermediate state into “envy”. Seeing what you don’t have, and what, perhaps, is not really necessary, but since someone has it, then you must have it too - this is the most impartial definition of envy. There are others in fine styleof the Russian language, describing all the baseness of pernicious self-criticism, and not a single one considering the concept of envy as a variant of a trigger mechanism that provokes accomplishments. However, no - otherwise, if not in a positive way, our classic Pushkin says about it: “Envy is the sister of competition, so it is definitely of a good kind.”
So, who is the envious person?
Cause and effect
To understand what kind of envy is hiding at the root of our actions, you just need to remember the mental context of the decision that prompted you to take this or that action. To envy your neighbor’s beautiful car and find a second job to afford yourself no worse is good, but to look at a colleague’s expensive watch and behind his back discuss the origin of such a disproportionate purchase with others – allow yourself to sign in a black feeling. It is unlikely that an adequate adult will admit that he was driven by black envy, and certainly taken by surprise will try to justify himself in uncontrollable emotions, but are our desires so beyond our control?
How envy is born
Every human desire goes through several stages before it reaches an attempt to become a reality. At the first stage, the soul-stirring “I want the same ones” can disappear without a trace in everyday matters and remain unfulfilled.
At the second stage, desire is achieved only with repeated voicing of the “sick” topic or endless flashing before the eyes of the “desired”. A person who has more reason than emotions, and at this stagewill be able to pull himself up and not engage in reasoning with himself “if only, yes if only.”
Another thing is a weak personality, initially an envious person, accustomed to giving freedom to empty fantasies, a sort of "Jewish" Porfishka Golovlev. This one will come out in dreams and become a general, and conquer half the world, but in reality he will draw devils in the fields in a tattered robe. Dealing with such a person is not so much dangerous as unpleasant. Actually, the embodied hypocritical fantasy is already a transition to the third, extreme stage of envy, which cannot be called anything other than deeply black.
Shades of black are also endowed with such unpleasant "final" actions as gossip, petty dirty tricks, false emotionality - all these are clear indicators of when the feeling of envy is built entirely on a false idea that it will not be possible to achieve the desired anyway.
Another branch of the third stage of the state of envy is the search for a solution for the realization of a dream. Of course, there may be negative aspects here too, because in order to get what you want, you can steal it, and take it away, and sue, and beg, but it will still be a dynamic, albeit in a negative way. Ideally, the pre-action stage should encourage he althy competition, which A. S. Pushkin voiced in his statement about envious people.
Examples of this kind of envy translated into action and led to achievement can be seen at every turn - a politician who has risen from the middle class of society, an entrepreneur who has built a million-dollar business starting from selling newspapers in the transition, a housewife who has written a book, which becamebestseller. It’s hard to believe, but each of these undertakings was once nothing more than someone’s “I want”, which then became “I can” and only then – “I will do it.”
Black and white
Before we conditionally separate such concepts as white envy and black envy, let us make a reservation right away that there is no envy painted in light colors. Even if a person achieves something in life not out of his own passion for imitating someone else's success, he will definitely do it in order to arouse this passion in other people or someone in particular. M. Twain described this turn of events with his inherent directness: “If in order to achieve love, a person is ready for a lot, then in order to arouse envy, he will do anything.”
So, envy is the main engine of almost any achievement in the life of an individual, and it doesn't matter if the person is envious by nature or due to isolated circumstances. But you really don’t want to sign a bad feeling when you sincerely believe that you are walking your own path with pure intentions! This is where the term “white envy” comes in.
White envy - is there any?
In other words: "I badly need all the best you have, but since I'm a good person, I'm not angry with you because you already have it all and I don't."
Thinking so and remembering that he is a good, envious person, he can casually even confess his "white" feeling - without fail with pathos and a wide smile. But this is not because the confession will be sincere, but because envy is so strongthat it is no longer possible to hide it otherwise than disguise it as a reverence for someone else's luck. In general, escaping words of this kind are a very good sign for the interlocutor. Comparing the violent and inappropriate joy over someone else's success with the sign language, which will be discussed later, an intelligent person will understand that it is better to stay away from such a "well-wisher".
An envious person, but at the same time drawing the right conclusions ("yes, he bought a good car, but that's because he works not 8 hours a day, like me, but 16"), will not rush to cross the lucky one with congratulations of an ambiguous nature, and will not discuss the event with others. He will react with restrained sincerity and will try his best to repeat the triumph of his comrade. Such a factor, if you really want to reward him with a stamp, can be called “white envy.”
How to recognize an envious person by gestures
"Envy was born before us" - an old folk wisdom that very correctly reveals another important truth - being our "dowry" by default, just like the ability to laugh or cry, the need to envy is hidden in human essence very deeply. You can learn to control it and even almost completely get rid of it, but at the moment when the insidious feeling has already taken possession of you, it is almost impossible to control it. It is easy to recognize an envious person just at the moment when all his harsh negativity is brought down on the interlocutor by non-verbal signs. Who does not know - non-verbal in psychology is called body language, in no wayassociated with oral speech.
The whole body can work against an envious person, so it is important to compare several signals at once, so as not to mistake simple boredom or hostility for a bad feeling, which do not always mean that a person is envious. Another thing is boredom that is feigned, and hostility is hidden under a smile, but more on that below.
So, you are envied if:
- the interlocutor does his best to show how bored he is and, while he is being told about someone else's success, lazily tosses and turns in his chair, looks around and even yawns;
- the interlocutor cannot keep his eyes on you - his eyes endlessly "run away" and eventually turn into narrow slits;
- from the eyebrows or the brow part of the interlocutor's face lay thin folds to the back of the nose - such a mimic picture means the highest degree of contempt and embarrassment at the same time;
- the person opposite smiles, but in such a way that the smile seems to be stretched over the face or glued unevenly;
- The body of the interlocutor sitting on the chair is tilted towards you, and the lower part of the torso is unnaturally tense.
Hands are a very revealing part of the body in terms of non-verbal communication, but in the case of an envious person, the signs on the face are much easier to decipher. At the moments of the maximum outburst of negativity, the person opposite can clench his fists, or he can hang them lifelessly, so try to focus on undeniable signals, and add additional signs to the already existing picture.
How not to give the enviousruin your life
Even knowing from whom one should not accept assurances of a sincere disposition, it is not always possible to completely exclude this individual from the social circle. It can be a manager or work colleague, a close relative, a business partner - that is, a person who is aware of your mutual dependence on each other and becomes even more annoying from this.
Involuntarily, being involved in this game, a person who inspires envy may begin to experience irritation and show all the same impartial behavioral traits as envious people. How to protect yourself from this? First of all, do not allow yourself to be manipulated, that is, do not accept the imposed rules of the game:
- don't let your achievements be belittled;
- do not respond to reproaches, nit-picking and petty remarks, even if they come from superiors;
- in any situation in which the quality of your work is publicly questioned, be able to counter this with icy calm and iron arguments that this is not so;
- never make excuses - black envy is characteristic of what makes a person feel inferior, casts doubt on the justice of his victories.
It is best to observe people's behavior after you have shared the good news with them, and then the envious person will immediately reveal himself. Even if during the conversation he radiated joy, after the conversation his mood will worsen, he will become boring, taciturn. And if the object of your pride is obvious, for example, new clothes, a toya child, expensive kitchen utensils, an envious person will try to “not notice” him as much as possible, showing with all his appearance that such phenomena are familiar to him.
At the end of the subtopic on how to prevent someone else's insolvency from controlling you, it is appropriate to quote about envious people from Bernard Shaw himself, that "envy is the best form of recognition of all possible." This means that you will always remain head and shoulders above the one who tilted his, looking at the fragments of his broken possibilities.
Female envy
For the most part, this feeling in women is turned towards family success or financial well-being, and the woman hardly thinks about money itself, but desperately dreams of what she could sell for the missing amounts. The successful marriage of a friend, the birth of children in a strange family, a significant purchase in the life of someone from the environment - this is the main list of reasons for a woman's mental torment, although it is far from exhaustive. They can envy he alth, beauty, the success of children, the ability to do everything.
The main problem of female envy is the influx of impulsive thinking. That is, in those moments when an unpleasant feeling in her intensifies, you can expect anything from an envious woman - from the rapid spreading of gossip behind her back to actions directed against the he alth or even life of the one to whom the negative is directed.
Often, having cooled down after the surging hatred, a woman begins to repent of her deed, less often tries to correct the situation. But this should not serve as a reason for the approach of a person who has already once shown himself to be similar.way, since envy, already launched and having sufficient nourishment, is ineradicable. Allowing an envious person into your environment will only give her the opportunity to injure you from close range.
By the way, envy on the part of a woman may be unconscious, but here the vigilance should be shown by the “lucky woman” exposed to the blow. If she notices that her habit of dressing, styling her hair, her manner of communicating find a second embodiment in an outsider, this is already a reason to think. Also, the envious woman, without even realizing it, will try in every possible way to prick the “object”, bring her to emotions.
The best way to get yourself out of the "fire zone" is not to react to the bullets whistling overhead. Women whose attacks are ignored leave their rivals very quickly and switch to someone else.
Male envy
For a man, the object of envy is often external status and the ability to realize all his abilities through his own means. A man can envy just money - a common occurrence when the amount he has accumulated with difficulty lies completely intact for a long time, as men simply enjoy the feeling of their we alth and suffer severely when they are forced to spend it.
The average guy rarely in his dreams allows himself to step over more than one or two steps of the social level, since the life and successes of people who are beyond the visible space reach him as if from another world. Most men have a mental plankbeyond which they do not allow themselves to fantasize until they reach it, but even having reached it, they often calm down on this and reap the fruits of their labors for the rest of their lives.
Big businessmen and politicians are rather an exception to the rule, so there are far fewer of them than owners of small retail outlets or managers of small industries. The law of the “blind zone” applies here - having reached the level previously set for themselves, most men stop seeing prospects ahead of them, but begin to ennoble and push the boundaries in breadth, expanding the comfort zone, but not transgressing it.
Guard against envy
Forming a protective shell around oneself, through which the corrosive scab of someone else's negativity cannot break through, is a task, rather, of a psycho-emotional plan than a mystical one. However, no one is forbidden to borrow part of the power from the energy space, to which you can connect only by sincerely believing in it. For these purposes, manipulations are intended to create personal talismans.
The creation of such a man-made amulet does not without reason involve many stages. While a person is making an amulet, he tunes in to the frequency of his own intention to get rid of the problem, and as he observes certain rituals, he seems to grow in himself a firm belief that the resulting product will take him under its protection.
First of all, the material is selected from which the amulet from envious people will be made. To make it as fit for purpose as possible, let it bea tree that suits you according to the Druid horoscope or a stone according to the zodiac relationship. If the material is plastic, runic symbols are applied to it, with the simultaneous pronunciation of a prayer suitable for the occasion (the “algiz” sign is suitable). Then the talisman is sewn into a canvas or leather bag and is constantly worn with oneself, nourished from the body and giving confidence in being protected from bad people.
"Envy was born before us" and will not die with us - so we can continue. So in the fight against this invisible enemy, it is better not to forget that each of us can be on one or the other side of this feeling. This means that not to lose faith in your own strengths and to perceive other people's achievements as an opportunity for your own growth is the only real way to defeat the envious person both in yourself and in the person next to you.
