How To Get Rid of Jealousy Forever
“Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?”
You can get rid of jealousy forever when you imagine swapping lives entirely with the other person.
Here’s the trick to get rid of jealousy forever, courtesy of millionaire tech entrepreneur Naval Ravikant:
Imagine swapping lives entirely with the person you are jealous of.
You can’t just cherry-pick the aspect of their life you want. You can’t just pick their wealth, or their good looks, or their social status.
Instead, you have to be willing to give up your life to take over their life completely. You have to give up everything you have (your friends, family, possessions, life experience, etc.) to step into their shoes.
Do you still want to do it? Probably not.
Here’s how Ravikant puts it to Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project podcast:
You can’t cherry-pick the things you envy so much about the other person. You would have to take a 180-degree swap with that person. You would have to take her age, her family history, her struggles, her failures, her medical conditions, her pains, her parents, her friends, everything. And lose everything you have built and leave everyone you love behind. And unless you are totally comfortable with that swap, you shouldn’t be envious.
Try this the next time you feel that familiar feeling of jealousy or envy.
This trick has worked for me to get rid of these feelings for good – maybe it can help you too.
Here’s how one mental trick can stop you from feeling jealous ever again (a thread)
— Thomas (@TWaschenfelder) January 25, 2020
Why does jealousy exist in the first place?
Jealousy is destructive. It’s the root of bad investments, of FOMO (fear of missing out), and, as Munger points out, there’s no upside – only pain.
If jealousy only causes suffering, why does it exist in humans in the first place?
Jealousy is a survival mechanism.
We are evolutionarily wired to want what another person has to increase our chances of survival.
Before we lived in an era of unlimited abundance, we roamed the land looking for food, water, and shelter. And if we found someone else living with an abundance of these resources, our survival instincts kicked in to see how we could go about taking these resources from them.
Sometimes this involved getting them to share by befriending them. Other times, it turned hostile by organizing our tribe for a coup of the other party.
Either way, jealousy is a product of this evolutionary survival instinct.
Social media makes this natural instinct worse.
Social media is nothing more than the digital highlights of another person’s life. When you see these highlights, you are hard-wired to feel jealous. It looks like this other person’s life is much better than yours. This is because while you experience both the ups and downs of your own life, you only see the ups of this other person’s life.
If you saw the real-life behind your favorite Instagram or Twitter personality, you’d be in for a rude awakening. No one shows on social media how much work it takes to build anything worthwhile. Paperwork, conference calls, and emails aren’t sexy. That content doesn’t gain followers (it just drives business).
Instead, you are fed a steady stream of social highlights from other people’s lives. And for your hardwired survival instinct, it’s exhausting.
So try Ravikant’s trick the next time jealousy rears its head. Maybe it will help.
Start now.