When I was in the third grade, I watched Jenny Tripp with great reverence every single day, keeping exact track of one thing: her outfits. And by my count, Jenny Tripp never \u2014 and I mean never \u2014 wore the same thing twice our entire third-grade year. Maybe she had three turtlenecks, but one had little dancing snowmen, another had flying unicorns and the other had rainbow Care Bears. I am telling you: She never repeated a single garment. Not. One. Time. And I would know because I was a laser beam when it came to Jenny Tripp\u2019s wardrobe. Watching her and her garment factory of a closet caused something inside me to believe, truly, that this was the pinnacle of living.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0
Jenny Tripp was the same girl who brought a lunch of crab to our class field trip to the Padres game when the rest of us had sweaty sandwiches. She had natural ringlets and was also the girl whose grandparents had an entire authentic bear rug, including the intact head, spread out across the entryway of their massive mansion perched on a mountain. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a word, Jenny Tripp was rich. And I didn\u2019t want her crab or her mansion or her bearskin rug. But I for sure wanted her closet.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0
This was my first taste of envy. Fixating on someone else\u2019s abundance in a way that creates nothing but personal lack. \u00a0
\u00a0
Here\u2019s how we do this in adulthood, and it\u2019s oddly not dissimilar to how it looks in the third grade.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step One:
Nitpick every area of your life, including but not limited to your minivan\u2019s cleanliness, your partner\u2019s social skills, your reading habits, your wall decor, your water intake, your countertops, the overall look of your feet, the overall look of your partner\u2019s feet, your pores, your hair density, your nail beds, your dog\u2019s capacity for obedience, your kids\u2019 capacity for obedience, your ability to keep plants alive, your last family vacation that wasn\u2019t a vacation, what\u2019s underneath and in the cracks of all of your furniture, how much you pray, your use of chemical-ridden household cleaning products, the number of unanswered emails or texts you currently possess, your handwriting, your partner\u2019s heart for polar bears, your grout and the exact color of your teeth.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step Two:
Scrutinize \u2014 being sure to make a lot of sweeping and grandiose assumptions \u2014 every area of everyone else\u2019s life (see aforementioned list), making direct comparisons of what you know about yourself to what you don\u2019t know and can\u2019t see about them.
If you are looking for a foolproof way to ruin your joy, equanimity, fulfillment and contentment in life, this strategy works every time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Love does not envy, it says in 1 Corinthians 13. It\u2019s right there, plain and (not so) simple. Envy has no place in a life of love. I think this is because when we envy others, we are \u2014 at the core \u2014 incredibly unloving to ourselves. Punishing, even. Envy encourages us to get super impatient with our own limits, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and realities, and then whispers in our ear that if we were different, we would be better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being envious is also a way we are incredibly unfair and unloving to others, turning them into caricatures of ease and perfection instead of real, messy, fleshy humans. Or worse, envy breeds contempt in us because we believe others are trying to make us feel bad about our humble station of repeat outfit wearing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0
Jenny Tripp, if you\u2019re reading this, please know this has nothing to do with you. You did nothing to make me envy you. You just skipped into school with everything I ever wanted to be and have, and my jealous heart did the rest. Please accept my sincerest apologies if I was ever snarky to you. My 8-year-old self had yet to learn the invaluable lesson of day-three hair and yoga pants.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was in the third grade, I watched Jenny Tripp with great reverence every single day, keeping exact track of one thing: her outfits. And by my count, Jenny Tripp never \u2014 and I mean never \u2014 wore the same thing twice our entire third-grade year. Maybe she had three turtlenecks, but one had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":35381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Envy: The Impact of Comparison on Self-Esteem %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%","_seopress_titles_desc":"Uncover how envy can shape perceptions and experiences through a nostalgic tale of fashion and admiration.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"102","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"envy","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relationships","category-wellness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2.18-blog-image.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35382,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35380\/revisions\/35382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}