We are accustomed to considering envy as a feeling discrediting a person, as a kind of soul-corrupting circumstance of an unflattering black color. “Envy is a passive state, and it is not surprising that it subsequently develops into hatred.” Goethe wrote, not even suspecting that he was paving the way for a rather one-sided theory of conspiracy against his own personality, because having completely deprived ourselves of the ability to envy, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to move forward.
So who is this, an individual who believes that he has much less than he could have - an enemy lying in wait around the corner, an unhappy person, or an insufficiently stimulated person?
What is envy
The very word "envy" came from the all-Slavic "see", somewhat modified in an intermediate state into "envy." To see that which you do not have, and that perhaps is not very necessary, but since someone has it, it means that you must have it - this is the most unpleasant definition of envy. There are others who, in the beautiful style of the Russian language, describe the whole baseness of destructive samoyedism, and not one who considers the concept of envy as a variant of the triggering mechanism that provokes accomplishments. However, no - otherwise, if not in a positive way, our classic Pushkin speaks of her: “Envy is the sister of competition, so she’s definitely of a good kind.”
So, an envious person - who is he?
Causes and effects
To understand what envy is hidden at the root of our actions, you just need to recall the mental context of the decision that inspired you to take this or that action. To envy a neighbor’s beautiful car and find a second job to afford no worse is good, but to put your eyes on the colleague’s expensive watch and discuss the origin of such a disproportionate purchase with others, allow yourself to sign the black feeling. It is unlikely that an adequate adult will admit that they were driven by black envy, and certainly taken by surprise they will try to justify themselves in uncontrolled emotions, but are our desires not subject to us?
How envy is born
Each human desire, before reaching an attempt to translate into action, goes through several stages. At the first stage, the soul-piercing “I want the same” can completely dissolve into everyday issues and remain unrealized.
In the second stage, desire is achieved only by repeatedly voicing a "sore" topic or endless flickering before the eyes of the "desired". A person who has a greater degree of intelligence than emotion, and at this stage will be able to yank himself and not enter into discussions with himself "if only, if only."
Another thing is a weak personality, initially an envious person, accustomed to giving freedom to empty fantasies, a sort of “Judas” Porfishka Golovlev. This one will come out in dreams and generals, and he will conquer half the world, but in reality he will draw drafts in the tattered gown of the devils. To deal 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 deep black.
Shades of black are endowed with such unpleasant “final” actions as gossip, petty dirty trickery, false emotionality - all these are vivid indicators of when a feeling of envy is built entirely on a false idea that it will still not be possible to achieve the desired.
Another branch of the third stage of the state of envy is the search for a solution to the realization of a dream. Of course, there can also be negative moments, because to get what you want, you can steal it, take it away, sue it, and beg it, but it will still be a dynamic, albeit in a negative way. Ideally, the pre-action stage should encourage healthy competition, which A. Pushkin voiced in his statement about envious people.
Examples of such envy, translated into action and leading to achievements, can be seen at every step - a politician who has risen from the middle class of society, an entrepreneur who has built a million-dollar business, starting with selling newspapers in the transition, a housewife who wrote a book that has become a bestseller. It’s hard to believe, but each of these undertakings was once nothing more than someone’s “want”, which later became “I can” and only then - “I will do it”.
Black and white
Before conditionally separating such concepts as white envy and black, we make a reservation at once that there is no feeling of envy painted in bright colors. Even if a person achieves something in life not on the basis of his own passion for imitating someone else's success, he is sure to do it in order to provoke this passion among other people or someone specifically. M. Twain characterized this turn of events with his 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 achievements in the life of an individual, and it does not matter if an envious person is by nature or by virtue of isolated circumstances. But I don’t want to sign in a bad feeling when you sincerely believe that you are going your own way with pure intentions! Here the term "white envy" comes to the rescue.
White envy - is it there?
In other words: “I badly need all the best that you have, but since I am a good person, I’m not angry with you because you already have all this, but I don’t.”
Thinking so and remembering that he is a good, envious person, he can even casually admit his “white” feeling - certainly with pathos and a wide smile. But this is not because recognition will be sincere, but because envy is so strong that it is no longer possible to hide it otherwise than to disguise it as admiration for someone else's luck. In general, escaped words of this kind are a very good sign for the interlocutor. Comparing the stormy and inappropriate joy about someone else's success with 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 who draws the right conclusions (“yes, he bought a good car, but that’s because he doesn’t work 8 hours a day like me, but 16”), he won’t rush in front of the lucky one with ambiguous congratulations, and will not discuss the event with others. He will react with restrained sincerity and will try to do everything possible to repeat the triumph of his comrade. Such a factor, if one so desires to award it 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 reveals another important truth very faithfully - being our default “dowry”, just like the ability to laugh or cry, the need to envy is hidden very deeply in the human being. You can learn to control it and even almost completely get rid of it, but at that 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 hard negativity has been brought down on the interlocutor by non-verbal signs. Who does not know - non-verbal in psychology is the language of body movements that is in no way associated with oral speech.
His whole body can work against an envious person, so it is important to compare several signals at once, so as not to take for a bad feeling simple boredom or hostility, which does not always mean that a person is jealous. Another thing is simulated boredom, and hostility is hidden under a smile, but more on that below.
So, they envy you if:
- the interlocutor shows with all his might how bored he is and, while they tell him about someone’s successes, lazily tosses and turns in his chair, glances around and even yawns;
- the interlocutor cannot keep a glance at you - his eyes endlessly “run away” and eventually turn into narrow clicks;
- from the eyebrows or the brow part of the face of the interlocutor, thin folds lay 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 unevenly glued;
- the body of the interlocutor sitting on a chair is tilted in your direction, and the lower part of the torso is unnaturally strained.
Hands are a very significant part of the body in terms of non-verbal communication, but in the case of an envious person, the signs on the face are decrypted much easier. At the moments of maximum outburst of negativity, a person opposite can clench his fists, but he can also hang them lifelessly, so try to focus on undeniable signals, and add additional characters to the existing picture.
How to prevent an envious person from ruining your life
Even knowing from whom one should not accept assurances of a sincere disposition, it is not always possible to completely exclude a given individual from the circle of communication. It may turn out to be a leader or work colleague, close relative, business partner - that is, a person who is aware of your mutual dependence on each other and becomes even more annoying from this.
Involuntarily, having become involved in this game, a person who inspires envy can begin to feel irritation and show all the same unpleasant 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:
- Do not let down your achievements;
- 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 contrast this with icy calm and iron arguments that this is not so;
- never make excuses - black envy is characteristic of that, which makes a person feel inferior, casts doubt on the justice of his victories.
It is best to observe the behavior of people after you share the good news with them, and then the envious person immediately reveals himself. Even if during the conversation he radiated joy, after the conversation his mood worsens, he will become boring, taciturn. And if the object of your pride is visible, for example, new clothes, a child’s toy, expensive kitchen utensils, the envious 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 being controlled by yourself, it’s appropriate to quote the envious people from Bernard Shaw himself that “envy is the best form of recognition of all”. So, you will always stay a cut above the one who tilted his, looking at the fragments of his broken capabilities.
Female envy
For the most part, this feeling among women is turned towards family success or financial well-being, and the woman hardly thinks about the money itself, but desperately dreams of something that it could realize 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 is the main list of reasons for the torment of a woman, although it is far from exhaustive. They can envy the health, beauty, success of children, the ability to keep up with everything.
The main problem of female envy is the influx of impulsive thinking. That is, in those minutes when the unpleasant feeling in her worsens, one can expect anything from an envious person - from the rapid dissolution of gossip behind her back to actions directed against the health or even life of the person to whom the negative is directed.
Often, cooling off after surging hatred, a woman begins to repent of her deeds, less often tries to correct the situation. But this should not serve as a reason for approaching a person who has already shown himself in this way once, since envy, already neglected and having sufficient nourishment, is ineradicable. Allowing an envious person in your environment, you will only give her the opportunity to injure you from close range.
By the way, jealousy on the part of a woman may be unconscious, but here “vigilance” should be vigilant, put under attack. If she notices that her habit of dressing, hair styling, and the manner of communicating find a second embodiment in an outsider, this is an occasion to think. Also, an envious person, not even realizing this, will try in every possible way to prick the “object”, to bring it to emotions.
The best way to get yourself out of the "firing zone" is to not respond to bullets whistling overhead. Women whose attacks are ignored very quickly leave their rivals and switch to someone else.
Male envy
For men, the subject of envy is often external status and the ability to realize all their capabilities through their own means. A man can envy and just money - a frequent occurrence when the amount he has accumulated with difficulty lies in complete inviolability for a long time, as men simply enjoy the feeling of their wealth and suffer cruelly when they are forced to spend it.
The average guy rarely in 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 bounds of visible space reach him like from another world. Most men have a mental bar, beyond which they do not allow themselves to fantasize until they reach it, but when they reach it, they often calm down and reap the fruits of their labors for the rest of their lives.
Large businessmen and politicians are more likely an exception to the rule, therefore there are much fewer of them than holders of small retail outlets or managers of small enterprises. Here the law of the “blind zone” applies - reaching the level set earlier by itself, most men cease to see prospects ahead of themselves, but begin to ennoble and push the boundaries in breadth, expanding the comfort zone, but not violating it.
Charm from envy
The formation of a protective shell around itself, through which the corroding scab of someone else’s negative cannot penetrate, is a task of a psychoemotional plan rather than a mystical one. However, it is not forbidden for anyone to borrow part of the force from the energy space, which can only be connected with sincerely believing in it. For these purposes manipulations on creation of personal talismans are also intended.
The creation of such a man-made amulet not without reason concludes many stages. While a person makes a talisman, he tunes in to the frequency of his own intention to get rid of the problem and, as certain rituals are observed, he nurtures a firm belief that the product resulting from the labors will take it under his protection.
First of all, the material is selected from which the amulet from envious people will be made. To make it as appropriate as possible, let it be a tree suitable for 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 pronunciation of a prayer appropriate for the occasion, (the algiz sign will do). Then the talisman is sewn into a canvas or leather bag and is constantly worn with itself, nourished from the body and giving confidence in protection from evil people.
“Envy was born before us” and will not die with us - this can be continued. 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. So, not to lose faith in one’s strength and to perceive other people's achievements as an opportunity for one’s own growth is the only real way to defeat an envious person both in himself and in a person nearby.