VER-XV-0078
“I admitted out loud that I'd been jealous, and naming it took its power away.”
Envy does its worst work in the dark, dressed up as criticism or distance so you never have to call it what it is. You called it what it is. The moment you named the jealousy plainly, it stopped steering you from the shadows. Jung's law again: the inner thing you won't make conscious runs your life as fate. You made it conscious.
Your Practice
- Say it plainly to yourself: 'I'm jealous of this, and that's the real feeling.'
- Look underneath it, envy usually points at something you actually want. Name that.
- Turn the energy into a step toward the thing, instead of a jab at the person who has it.
- Keep it conscious. Named envy is information; buried envy is sabotage.
The Architects
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Steve Jobs, BusinessWeek interview 'Steve Jobs: There's Sanity Returning', conducted May 12, 1998 by Andy Reinhardt; published May 25, 1998