The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Beyond Envy
Like most humans, you will tend to deny that you ever experience
envy, at least strong enough to act on. You are simply not being honest
with yourself. As described above, you are only conscious of the
indignation or resentment you feel that covers up the initial pangs of
envy. You need to overcome the natural resistance to seeing the
emotion as it first stirs within you.
We all compare ourselves with others; we all feel unsettled by those
who are superior in some area that we esteem; and we all react to this
by feeling some form of envy. (It is wired into our nature; studies have
shown that monkeys feel envy.) You can begin with a simple
experiment: next time you hear or read about the sudden success of
someone in your field, notice the inevitable feeling of wanting the same
(the pang) and the subsequent hostility, however vague, toward the
person you envy. It happens quickly and you can easily miss the

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transition, but try to catch it. It is natural to go through this emotional
sequence and there should be no guilt attached. Monitoring yourself
and seeing more such instances will only help you in the slow process
of moving beyond envy.
Let us be realistic, however, and realize that it is almost impossible
to rid ourselves of the compulsion to compare ourselves with others. It
is too ingrained in our nature as a social animal. Instead, what we must
aspire to is to slowly transform our comparing inclination into
something positive, productive, and prosocial. The following are five
simple exercises to help you in achieving this.
Move closer to what you envy.
Envy thrives on relative closeness—in a
corporate environment where people see each other every day, in a
family, in a neighborhood, in any group of peers. But people tend to
hide their problems and to put their best face forward. We only see and
hear of their triumphs, their new relationships, their brilliant ideas
that will land them a gold mine. If we moved closer—if we saw the
quarrels that go on behind closed doors or the horrible boss that goes
with that new job—we would have less reason to feel envy. Nothing is
ever so perfect as it seems, and often we would see that we are
mistaken if we only looked closely enough. Spend time with that family
you envy and wish you had as your own, and you will begin to reassess
your opinion.
If you envy people with greater fame and attention, remind yourself
that with such attention comes a lot of hostility and scrutiny that is
quite painful. Wealthy people are often miserable. Read any account of
the last ten years of the life of Aristotle Onassis (1906–1975), one of the
wealthiest men in history, married to the glamorous Jacqueline
Kennedy, and you will see that his wealth brought him endless
nightmares, including the most spoiled and unloving of children.
The process of moving closer is twofold: on the one hand, try to
actually look behind the glittering façades people present, and on the
other hand, simply imagine the inevitable disadvantages that go along
with their position. This is not the same as leveling them down. You
are not diminishing the achievements of those who are great. You are
mitigating the envy you might feel for things in people’s personal lives.