Is Self-Envy Your Nemesis?

Photo by pure julia on Unsplash

Self-love has a shadow, and it's called self-envy.

The idea is so absurd, so outrageous, that it may hold some truth, it might even be the most common cause of failure and self-sabotage.

But what is it?

Aristotle defined envy as the "pain at the good fortune of others." So how can one feel pain at our own good fortune?

It's a great joy of parenting to suddenly remember songs and games from our parents when we could not yet speak fluently. And, it's the saddest thing to find oneself mindlessly replay the less happy things done to us as infants. I've been there, and the pain is still raw twenty-plus years later.

It's sad, yet it's an occasion to grow in humility and strengthen the bonds that unite us to our loved ones.

Humility here isn't self-doubt but the ability to find happiness in any moment and any circumstances. 

These negative behaviors that tax our ability to forgive and grow are, according to Rafael E. López-Corvo, remnants of maladapted behaviors imprinted in a young life in the same way that bequeath self-love.

The most beautiful thing in all of this is that when one steps up as parent and guardian of one's confused inner child, it so happens that other people come along to teach us what that inner child needs to hear.

At the bottom of the pandora box called self-envy lays the humility of gratefulness.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this emerging concept.

Joel