When you see a celebrity driving their ridiculously expensive car, wearing clothes that cost thousands, and jewelry that costs more than you make in a year, do you feel envious of them?  Do you feel that they don’t deserve it?  Maybe even that you deserve it more than they do, with your hard work and long hours?  Well, that’s all from a faulty mindset, one that is centered in lack, in scarcity.

You only envy something you feel that you can’t have.  That’s why you don’t feel envy for someone who is wearing clothes cheaper than yours… unless of course it’s a limited thing, and you can’t get them.  See how it’s similar?  You don’t feel envious unless you feel like you can’t have what they have.

You also don’t have that feeling that they don’t deserve it unless you feel like you can’t have it.  How often have you looked at someone making less money than you and felt like they don’t deserve it (unless it’s you that has to pay them… that changes things a little, but it’s STILL only because you have a scarcity mindset)?  It’s pretty difficult to think of a time you’ve ever had any negative thoughts about what someone has when it’s of less value than what you have of the same type.  If you have a Lambourghini, you don’t worry about whether someone deserves a Mercedes.

It works that way for all areas of your life.  If you think you can have something if you want it, then you don’t envy someone else who has it.  If you have a great relationship, you don’t envy someone else with a lovely wife (unless you feel your wife isn’t lovely, which is a pretty solid indication that you DON’T have a great relationship).   Possessions, relationships, finances, spirituality, respect… whatever it is, you don’t envy someone else having it unless you feel like you can’t have it.

It’s heavily related to the temptation of the forbidden fruit.  In that case you want it because you can’t have it.  In this case you don’t want someone else to have it because you can’t have it.  Which, of course, brings us to the title, the secret of killing envy.

The secret to killing envy is to change your mindset.  Since you don’t envy someone for something you can have, if you change your mindset to believe that you can achieve (and have) anything, then envy goes away.  If you feel like it’s simply a matter of not wanting it, rather than not being able to have it, you don’t grow attached to it.  You don’t really care if someone else has it… you could have it if you wanted, it’s just not worth the effort it would require.

Change your mindset… accept that you can have anything, do anything, be anything, it’s just a matter of weighing the costs of having, doing, or being versus the benefits of the same.  Then envy will wither on the vine, dying a deservedly obscure and unimportant death.