From the author: Probably everyone is familiar with the feeling when something that someone else has does not give peace, inside, as if cats are scratching, this person becomes alien and unpleasant; Resentment towards him and the whole world grows and thoughts appear: “Why, why is it not like this for me?!” If all this sounds familiar to you, congratulations, you're jealous. How to understand the cause of envy and how to live with it, read my article. Envy is a feeling of irritation and annoyance, dislike and hostility caused by the well-being, success and superiority of another person. Source: http://constructorus.ru/psixologiya/zavist.htmlThis the feeling is usually so unpleasant that we try our best to suppress it so that no one will understand in any way that I am jealous. Parents, the Bible, everyone vied with each other to say that you cannot feel envy. If you feel envy, you are a bad person, you are committing a sin, etc. Like any living person, I also fell under the influence of my environment and tried in every possible way to eradicate envy from my life. And you know, I almost succeeded. Every time I felt that I was starting to envy, I poured out such a stream of logical evidence on myself that envy drowned in them without even having time to take a breath. But then one day, when the waves of fate had carried me far enough from the long-standing decision, I tried it again felt it. At that moment I had everything, and even more: my favorite profession, a wonderful husband, an apartment, a car, and I was on vacation for a whole year and traveled to different countries. And suddenly, looking through photos of a friend from Egypt on social media. The network hit me like heat! I felt intense envy! I couldn’t understand why I was jealous?! She spent six months preparing for this train, went with a stranger, and spent her time quite ordinary, but I was terribly jealous. That day I decided that it was some kind of mistake, an accident, but after that there were other attacks of envy. The envy progressed, as if everything that I had been holding back for many years decided to burst out. And suddenly, I understood. My envy is grief over the opportunities I don't take advantage of. My envy is my true desires, which for some reason I do not pay attention to. My envy is stagnant energy, my resource, which I hold back in order to be convenient for loved ones, good and correct for strangers. By choosing to follow the expectations of others and not pay attention to my needs, I hurt myself, wear out my body, and what else can make me think about the correctness of the path that I choose? How to make me pay attention to myself? What can make me understand that giving up desires is not a joke? Of course! A strong unpleasant feeling that I definitely want to get rid of! Think about how wisely the body acts! Irritation as a tool of envy. Envy is often accompanied by irritation towards the one we envy. (Sometimes we don’t even realize that we envy: gossip, condemnation, complaints about fate, all these are forms of envy). And I came to another understanding of where irritation and rejection of other people come from. For example, I see photos of a friend in Egypt, sailing on a boat, eating ice cream and just relaxing. And at this moment I am sitting in the jungle of Peru, bitten by mosquitoes and not seeing a soul for 3 days. And in fact, I’m angry with myself because I didn’t foresee the whole difficulty of traveling without a travel agency, and it turned out that I adore a relaxing holiday without extreme sports. But I repress my anger towards myself, since it is difficult to admit my mistake. Moreover, the physical tension is very high and I can’t stand the moral one now, which means it’s much easier for me to be angry and envy my friend. There is another form of envy that is more veiled. For example, when I see a person who behaves in a way that I do not allow myself to behave: he says stupid things, shows off, etc. I begin to judge and/or discuss him. Perhaps as a child, my mother scolded me for such behavior or my classmates laughed. And one day I feel likeI froze my desire to manifest myself in this way, splitting it off from myself. And I decided: “I am a person who never shows off or is stupid!” And now, when I see similar behavior in others, I don’t accept it, just as I don’t accept it in myself. Although, by and large, I envy their ability to manifest themselves in this way. It takes honesty and courage to admit this to yourself, and not everyone is ready for this. And as soon as I realized how my irritation appeared and allowed myself to be the way I wanted, it softened towards others and I can manage it.* Allow - this means allowing yourself to be stupid sometimes (boastful, weak, aggressive, slow, etc.) and not reproaching yourself for it. Why is it pointless to suppress envy and other unpleasant feelings? Scientists have long proven that a person has all kinds of qualities and feelings, only some of them in the course of life we ​​do not accept due to circumstances, while others we develop and use for all occasions. We have often noticed that a woman who has been working as a teacher for a long time behaves like a teacher in the family, at a party, etc. Police officers and priests are also a vivid example of how people freeze in their usual roles, cutting off the unnecessary and condemning everyone who behaves differently from them. Who -someone will say that such splitting off is just work on oneself. That the qualities I don't use are not socially adaptive and unnecessary. I think this is the scourge of our society. While thinking about this topic, I came up with a metaphor that envy is like bad breath. We don't want to accept that a person might smell bad. We use chewing gum, turn away, hide it in every possible way. I’m not saying that you need to endure it and do nothing about it. Try to abstract from smells and assessments and simply consider what I write from the point of view of anatomy and physiology. If a person’s breath smells bad, this does not mean that the person is bad; rather, it may indicate a disease. If the internal organs are not functioning properly, an “echo” may be heard from the mouth. This is normal and it cannot be any other way! And in this case, an unpleasant smell is not a reason to be ashamed of yourself, but an indicator of a malfunction of the body. You need to figure out what’s wrong and fix it. How should you treat envy? In my opinion, you need to treat envy in the same way. And one should not be afraid of it, but of what it signals. J. Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, wrote that feelings of envy help clarify true desires. And this is very close to me. That is, if you feel that you have envy towards something or someone, perhaps you are not allowing yourself to do what you really want? Perhaps you are led by society or your fears and deny yourself what is really important to you. Conclusion: My conclusion is this: you shouldn’t be afraid of envy, you don’t need to fight it. Just stop spraying it with deodorant and pretending that it’s not there or that it appeared was an accident. Envy is natural for a person, but you should treat it not as a shortcoming, but as a beacon from the body that is trying to tell you something. If you learn to hear and understand its language, you will receive a powerful resource that will tell you what you really need in this life and what you need to get rid of. Just imagine how your life could change?! I offer several questions for a better understanding of envy, which helped me better understand myself. If you feel envy, do not extinguish it, give it free rein and try to understand what exactly touches you in another? What does he have that you do not allow yourself? What does he use? , what are you refusing? What are you forbidding yourself? What is your envy trying to say? Are there ways to get what you want, what will you have to sacrifice? How will your life change if you achieve the same? Love yourself and remember, you have the right to feel whatever you want and live the way you want! PS This article is more my personal experience, thoughts and observations than a scientific work. I fully admit that there are controversial.