Jealousy Is a Wasted Emotion

We all get jealous, don’t we? Actually, no, not everyone experiences jealousy as an
emotion.

 I don’t get jealous. That’s a weird thing to read, isn’t? Well, it’s a weird thing to
say, too. But it’s true. I don’t experience jealously as an emotion. I experience sadness,
happiness, anger, euphoria, and a plethora of other emotions, but not jealousy.
 Why? Because, unlike many emotions, I can choose to not experience jealousy.
 After years of observing people getting jealous in myriad ways, I understand that
our culture is riddled with jealousy and envy and greed, all of which are by-products of
our competitive, consumer driven culture.
 What’s worse is that it’s far more pernicious than we think. Competition breeds
jealousy, though we often give to prettier labels like “competitive spirit” or “stick-to-itiveness” or “ambition.”
 But the truth is that jealousy leads to certain cultural imperatives—e.g., keeping
up with the Joneses, as it were. Thus, we envy Mr. and Mrs. Jones for their money and
their large house and their luxury cars and their big boat and their weekend retreat and
their fancy vacations and all of their stuff—all of the trappings of our heavily-mediated
society.

But we don’t get jealous solely over material possessions. We also get jealous over 

our relationships. We think our friends don’t spend enough time with us, our lovers 

don’t care about us as much as they should, our customers aren’t loyal enough. It all 

revolves around us. He doesn’t spend enough time with me. She doesn’t care enough 

about me. We think this way because it’s hard to back away from ourselves, it’s hard to 

realize I am not the center of the universe.

 There is good news though. Like our televisions, we can chose to turn it off. We 

can choose to remove jealousy from our emotional arsenal. And like TV, it’s not always 

easy to turn off (it sure seems interesting sometimes, doesn’t it?) But turning off 

jealousy can significantly improve one’s emotional health. Because, at the end of the 

day, jealousy is never useful. Many negative emotions can be useful—pain tells us 

something is wrong, fear tells us to look before we leap, etc.—but jealousy, no matter 

how jealous we get, will never help.

But How?

The easiest way to turn jealousy off is to stop questioning other people’s intentions. We 

often get jealous because we think a person meant one thing by their actions, when they 

meant something totally different. And the truth is that you’ll never know someone’s 

real intent, so it’s a waste of time to question it.

 If you’re struggling with questioning someone’s intent, you can do one of two 

things:

1. Ask them what they meant by their actions/words.

 2. Accept that you will never know their true intent, no matter how much you 

question it.

The bottom line with jealousy: You can turn it off. You can stop questioning other 

people’s intent. A better life is waiting on the other side of jealousy.