The Envious Musician
It’s a common experience: someone you thought of as a peer sees her career take off and you think, “why her and not me?” Or, you achieve a big success or good fortune, and a friend, colleague, or family member begins subtly (or overtly) resenting you. Whether it be envy, or envy’s nasty cousin, jealousy, this negative reaction to others’ successes is part of being human.
The fact that envy’s in all of us doesn’t make it any less dangerous. Envy is a double-edged sword; it can harm the one envied and it most certainly contains the power to destroy the one who is envious.We pretend we’re not envious, try to deny it when we feel it eating away at our happiness, but the famous “green-eyed monster” lives in everyone and it has done much to cause rifts in relationships. With limited opportunities and the fickle nature of success, the arts are particularly rife with it, and it’s in creative professions that envy’s most damaging. This is because envy does more than hurt relationships and careers; it can destroy creativity. As author Theresa Krier notes, in her book Birth Passages,
“Envy is aimed at spoiling the envied one’s creativity in particular, precisely because creativity is felt not to be within oneself.”
Our artistic lives depend on learning to work with envy, both our own and other people’s. It’s never pleasant, but envy can be one of the best ways we learn about our relationships and ourselves, as long as we’re willing to acknowledge it. I don’t pretend to be an expert on managing envy, but years of encountering it (in myself and in others) has led me to seek advice on how to manage it. These tips are the ideas I’ve found most useful:
What to do if you feel envious
“Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
Acknowledge it without blaming anyone else
This is hard. It’s really, really hard. Envy manifests as resentment and it requires us to look beneath our feelings and ask ourselves why we’re feeling this way toward someone. This takes great courage and maturity because when we envy another person, we desperately want our bad feelings to be the other person’s fault, not our own. But until we can stop looking for ways to blame the object of our envy and look in our own mirrors, we have no hope of freeing ourselves from the envy’s grip.
Look at your own dreams and ambitions
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, transformed my understanding of envy when she wrote that envy (or jealousy) is a mask for fear and a map to whatever we want most in life. Knowing I’m envious of a friend or colleague’s success can be motivation to pursue these things for myself, if I’m willing to stop looking at what I resent in the other person and start using my energy to pursue my own dreams.
Embrace Gratitude
The true antidote to envy? Gratitude. When we cease coveting others’ successes and start noticing (and being grateful for) all the good things (big and small) in our lives, the clutch of resentment loosens. The more we’re freed from resentment, the easier it is to forgive ourselves (and, perhaps, the other person) for our feelings. Our world gets bigger and brighter. And, if we get brave enough, we may eventually learn to feel grateful to the object of our envy because their success helped point us enough to our own ambitions.
What to do if others envy you
“Don’t expect praise without envy—until you’re dead.” Joan Rivers
Keep your mouth shut
Nothing you do or say will help an envious person feel better. Nothing. That’s because while your successes may have triggered their envy, they’re actually reacting from their own sense of inadequacy. In these situations, silence is golden—anything and everything you say will most likely be used against you.
Stop feeling guilty
It’s not your fault. You can’t fix it. You can’t right their perceived sense of unfairness. Don’t let them make you feel guilty for being your fabulous, creative self.
Avoid interaction
In the most toxic situations, the wisest course may be to distance ourselves from an envious person. There are fair-weather friends and—as I discovered years ago, when got remarried and was financially able to stop teaching and focus on my writing—foul-weather friends. I learned the hard way that the only way to keep from being torn down by foul-weather friends is to live by Mark Twain’s advice:
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.”
Ultimately, transcending envy’s insidious grip requires us to stop waiting for other people’s behavior to change and to take responsibility for our own feelings. We must choose to admit that another person isn’t to blame when we’re feeling envious, and that we’re not to blame when another envies us. If we can do this, we can learn the lessons envy offers and, eventually, be grateful for what this uncomfortable emotion gives us: a map to our truest dreams and ambitions.