The Pros And Cons Of Jealousy

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"Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all." -Joseph Epstein Envy, emotion not coincidentally considered as a deadly sin by Christians. “It is a feeling common to all times and peoples (Burton).” There are many examples that prove envy had bothered people since the beginning of the time. “Early humans who feared that they will trigger the envy of the gods, Hera’s envy for Aphrodite that caused the Trojan war, Cain’s envy for his brother Abel etc. (Burton).” Everybody wonders “Why do we feel that horrible feeling?” and “Can we control it?” “Envy is a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success,…show more content…
“Jealousy is the pain caused by the fear of losing our advantages to others, and therefore less evil (Burton).” Encyclopedia of Adolescence states that compared to resentment, jealousy and greed, envy holds the promise of potentially being a positive force (Levesque). “Psychologists classify envy in two ways: malicious and benign. With benign envy, you are motivated by another person's success and strive to emulate it. With malicious envy, you want to cut the advantaged person down so you look better by comparison (Wallace).” The series of experiments showed that envy makes us better workers, Wallace states: “Not only can envy motivate us to reach for higher goals, it may even give us the cognitive push to get there…show more content…
It is really damaging and unpleasant to us, and for the environment where we live and work in. Envy is connected to a lot of diseases, mainly because of stress and anger it causes. It is keen to control them. Beth Holloway from Rochester Medical Center brings some steps that could help us to somehow manage this emotion. She says that we should focus on things we did wrong and think about how can we improve ourselves to be better than people we envy(Holloway). We should think in a way: “Is it possible that other people are envious of myself?”, make a list of your achievements, think positive(Holloway). Exercise regularly and have a healthy diet to get rid of your frustrations(Holloway). Talking with a therapist or counselor is great help to sort out this feeling(Holloway). Holloway advises: “Once you get the confidence to move forward with your own goals, you will most likely be less worried about what is happening with someone
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