Emotional Equations: Jealousy & Envie

Today we will try to define the equations for 2 of the emotions affecting us all, and not only us but the others involved. Envie is one of the most blamed emotions, jealousy is an emotions raising a lot of contradictory discussions, for some people being something needed when you are in love, for others being something inacceptable in a relationship. So let't start.

Source:pixabay

Jealousy = Mistrust/Self-Esteem

We hear a lot about jealous people and the negative effect of this emotion. From a simple fight to murder, from breaking freandships to starting wars, jealousy was present in human history from the beginning.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people considering it an essential part of love as they make the correlation between jealousy and commitment (true especialy for women).

Self-esteem

The denominator of this equation is it's most important part. As you know from maths, a denominator reaching infinity will lead to a result reaching 0. So what we should address first when feeling jealous is our self-esteem and how can we boost it. An useful question here is: Do you feel worthy just the way you are? And the answer should be always yes.
When we don't feel good enough for our partners we will find around others having all those qualities we cannot see in ourselves and we will be sure that our partner sees the same thing.
So, when you start feeling jealous think first what is happening in yourself that causes the lack of self esteem and don't blame your partner or attack a third person.

Mistrust

The nominator of the equation can be worked out also. Some of us tend to be more skeptical about the world and ask people to earn our trust first. Unfortunately, this type is more likely to become jealous. People with a natural tendency to trust people and be confident in life and it's outcomes are the ones feeling less jealous. In the same time, mistrust is also learned. If you used to have partners that betrayed your trust you will be less likely to continue in trusting the current one.
Also, if you used to cheat in the past or to lie to your partner you will tend to see marks of lies and cheating where is none and you will trust less your partener. The beauty of mirroring...
The difference between jealousy and envy is, first, the number of people involved. Jealousy is about you, a partner and a third person. Envy is just about you and another one, not necessarily someone close to you. So jealousy is more personal and can cause more damage than envy.

Envy = (Pride+Vanity)/Kindness

Source:pixabay

First, let's exclude those cases when we use envy with the meaning of admire. When we admire someone we will want to change something in ourserves in order to be more like that person. And this is a good emotion, making us evolve and become better.
The bad type of envy is a combination of 3 feelings that are by themselves not so bad but together a nasty cocktail: pride, vanity and greediness.
In his book, Emotional Equations, Chip Conley chooses a denominator that can save the equation instead of focusing on the bad terms:

Kindness

Being kind and generous will help us encourage the ones around us when they are fortunate instead of wishing them to loose. Kindness will help us in not feeling less when other people have more.
When we manage to remain kind and be happy for others we will find the resources to do better ourselves. When we will try to minimize the success of others we won't be able to learn from it and to apply it in our own lives.

Pride and Vanity

Pride is in itself a good emotion, is the feeling of accomplishing things through our own powers.
Vanity is not necessarily something useful in our day to day life and it's, most of the time, correlated also with a lack of self esteem.

How to use the 2 equations to improve your life?

1. Identify what you can learn from jealousy and envy, about yourself

Is it a lack of self esteem? Is it that you mistrust the world? Do you feel greedy and want more? What does this 'more' looks like, what is your refference and why?

2. Boost your self esteem

This is the partial solution to both envy and jealousy. Self esteem is also a general need through all our live and the most healthy it is, the happier life we'll live.

3. What are you winning?

Ask youself why do you need to manifest this 2 emotions? Why are you jealous? Why do you feel envy?
If the answer is on a positive note: want a more stabile relationship, what to be a better person, what to trust more the ones near you, than the effect of this 2 emotions won't take you near what you desire.

"Learn from your emotions: Jealousy can teach you about what you treasure in your life today. Envy can teach you about your future"