Envy is No Fun

Competition is great. Inspiration is great. Anger can be great. A desire to win can be great. Frustration that others are getting what you’re not can be great. Envy is never great.

Envy is when some combo of the above moves to the next stage. The stage where the ill-fortune of others makes you happier in and of itself. It’s not about achieving something directly yourself, but about someone else failing. When the success of others, even if it doesn’t harm you directly, makes you less happy, you have an envy issue.

And it will eat you up. It will taint everything. You will become a monster. And you will have no fun.

You can tell yourself envy is motivation, but it’s not. It’s demotivating and destructive. It channels mental and emotional energy away from your own progress and towards the regress of others. It breeds the worst kind of day-dreaming. It shuts off the powerful perspective of possibility.

If you can find a way to reverse envy – to feel happier at the success of others – you’ll be unstoppable and have tons of fun.

*I reserve the right to wish sports-ill on my sports-enemies. That’s why I play the game of fandom. It’s a little world where all the irrational, tribalistic tendencies can be indulged without real-world harm. (Hopefully)