tl;dr this is one of those times you need to read this through, entirely, to have any chance of it be absorbed

There used to be a blog called Wall Street Playboys (WSP) that was active I think from early 2010s through 2016/2017 (may be wrong). It isn’t around anymore. There are some Twitter/X accounts which talk about the same topics, but I don’t know if it is still the same writers and the quality is half as good. Lastly, there is a Substack which “archives” the posts, but only some of them. I think they put their own twist on them which misses the point, but I’m not sure.

The publication/forum was a blog, targeted generally toward males (but plenty of takeaways for females as well) on general self-improvement. I had come across it in 2015/2016. The (two?) writers had backgrounds on Wall Street, made their money, and were writing about life / improvement / money and other things. I found a few posts informational…some I disagreed with…some were a bit strong in their beliefs/language.

However, there was one post that is one of the most insightful things I’ve read (and I’ve been reading stuff on the internet for 15yrs now) and 4 standard deviations more insightful than anything else they published. It ended up positively influencing my perspective in a very meaningful way.

I cannot do a summary of it justice at all…but I’ll try and convey, in my language, the general idea below. Again, I’m not telling you what to think or feel. This is just another data point to inform your perspective. It has brought me immense value. I hope it does the same to you, but no promises:

A Perspective To Incorporate Into Your Views on Envy and Jealousy

1. For both envy and jealousy, you probably have found that a few times in your life, you will see something that another human has, is, or does, that you don't have, can't do, or aren't…and this causes a negative feeling. This is envy/jealousy.
2. There is one thing you are missing in your perspective that informs this feeling. This specific item or opportunity or experience or quality, that is present with someone else but not yourself, is only one aspect of their person. It is only one part of their holistic being.
3. To believe, or to say, that you're envious of someone who has one thing…is similar to saying “I want the best thing or one thing from a bunch of different people, and nothing else from them. Just that one thing.” This view doesn’t feel fair because it is a prime example of cherry-picking. There are things associated with that person having that part of them, that are not visible on the surface, and so you being envious of them, is saying “You want the ice cream without making it. You want a marathon medal without running it. You want to climb Mount Everest without even putting on snow boots.” You want this one thing without any of the precursors to it. This is not saying that the envy you feel isn’t real, but rather this describes the feeling as being more irrational and unfair.
4. To feel legitimate envy or jealousy that is rational (or fair), you will need to believe or think that “I am envious of their entire person” including all of the positives and negatives that come with being that person. You will also need to be envious of all of it.
   1. Put another way: To rationally feel envious or jealous of someone you should be willing to be completely them (i.e., put yourself in their shoes literally) and be comfortable embracing all aspects of their life, good and bad.
5. Here is how this mental model begins to make your feelings of envy and jealousy more difficult to rationalize and to you not feeling as envious as before. Let's say there are three different examples randomly.
   1. Let's say you see a couple in a friendly, happy relationship, and you want to be that person or have that same thing. But what you don't see is that person or that couple have difficult health problems that aren't easily visible. So to have that healthy relationship in their shoes, you also should be comfortable embracing the health issues that they have.
   2. Let's say you see an individual with a really nice watch or a designer purse. What you don't know is that they are lonely and have no self-confidence, and they use consumerism and materialism to boost their self-worth, and they have no close friends. Associated stress about this means they haven't slept well in the past six months.
   3. Let's say you meet someone who is friendly, calm, content, and has great charisma and a lot of friends but always between jobs and has a lot of financial stress, also impacting their sleep.
6. These examples seem stupid, but this is the point. Most people have good and bad in their life, and you are not an exception. So if you want the good of someone else, it is asking for something that cannot be. That part of them is only present if accompanied by everything else that comes with being that person.
   1. Note: I am not saying that near-perfect people don't exist. There are definitely people who have optimized many aspects of their lives to be in the top 25%, 10%, 5%, or 1% of all human beings in one, two, or more aspects. A few things on this.
      1. That outcome usually is a product of either a mix of luck or effort or both.
      2. You can't control the luck but you can control the effort.
      3. Yes, I know that while more effort does increase the surface area for lucky events to happen, but that's a discussion for another post.
7. But most individuals in the pursuit of optimizing one, two, or three things come at the sacrifice of other aspects that you yourself may value more or less.
8. You might ask yourself: OK, what do I do with all this information? There's a few avenues.
   1. You can view the best of other people as inspiration of what you might prioritize and/or optimize and/or work on.
   2. You start to see these feelings as irrational because it is unfair to cherry-picking certain aspects of other people for you to wish you had yourself, not realizing there are sacrifices and disadvantages and drawbacks hidden below the surface (but that are very real) for them to have or be what you want.
      1. Put another way, it is essentially near impossible/difficult to fully optimize and maximize every single attribute.
      2. Perhaps the feasibility of maximal optimization is inspiring and you go down that road, and potentially boost your life satisfaction/happiness, but I’m certain there will be unsuspecting and hidden drawbacks which you’ll face on that path.
9. I think my favorite example of this is an individual who I know has a lot of money (actual money). A great house. A mix of friends. Great children. But isn't in a good marriage, which is not visible to the rest of the world (easily). This impacts part of their self-confidence/ego, to where they say/do irrational things and aren’t content (and definitely not at peace) because of it.

So while I did not do the best job consolidating what a blog post in 2015 wrote in a more succinct fashion, this was the general message it was getting at.

Personally, I've found that I’m not jealous/envious anymore because when someone might have something that I desire or want, likely have other things that I don’t want to deal with. Or rather, they don’t have other things that I do have, and that I like a lot and value.

There's likely a lot beneath the scenes that for most people are sacrifices I'm not willing to make or things I definitely don't want to deal with (certain forms of effort, guilt, spiritually broken, unhappy, etc). And yes, for completeness, I’ll say that there are people who have optimized everything you personally prioritize, and so either you can a) feel negative emotions toward them, or b) take inspiration to be better yourself.

To close, I have found my feelings of envy or jealousy to have been very minimal and nowadays near zero because those beliefs over time just seem irrational and more importantly, those feelings don't really permeate through me anymore. For my family and very close friends, I have their best interests at heart and the more rich/famous/successful/peaceful they become, that is a win-win. For randoms who have no relevance to me, I literally don’t care.

Perhaps this is also influenced because my tastes in some things are not common and my preferences are at times unique, so there aren’t even people to be envious of in the first place. And lastly, for the remaining 1% I am envious of, I generally say “No worries I’ll get to it later” and that fixes it.