4 Simple Tips to Handle Career Envy

When you hear that your friend is getting a promotion, you may feel happy for him or her, but is it normal if you have a slight urge to feel envious about it? Whether or not your current job is affected by your friend’s promotion, career envy is not actually wrong and is inevitable sometimes. It is humane to feel happy and jealous at the same time. However, this feeling can be toxic to both yourself and your surroundings when you address it the wrong way. Here are some ways to deal with career envy.

Understanding Career Envy

Career envy is a common thinh, especially in today’s era of social media where you can obsess over what is everyone doing at work. Harvard Business Review found that career envy can affect every age group of people in their careers, from an entry-level to big time CEOs. Constant external comparison becomes a real inspiration and a tool to set clear benchmarks for job success for individuals with a strong demand for success. When you frequently compare your career to others, you may resort to bitter feelings of jealousy, enabling someone else's successes to make you feel inferior. According to a recent survey, more than 75% of adults reported being jealous of someone in the previous year. 

While jealousy might motivate some people, it can also harm their chances for success. You might feel that twinge of envy but you should not let it consume the happiness of your own achievement. Alternately, you can turn your envy into motivation that will push you forward. Here are four tips for converting career envy into positive encouragement.

Own the Feeling and Control Yourself

The first thing to do in dealing with career envy is to not be in denial that you are indeed jealous of your friend’s accomplishment. Suppressing the feeling with being all-happy, whereas deep down you feel uneasy with their success, is going to be a time bomb in the end that will create a much bigger mess to deal with later on. It's nearly impossible to urge yourself to feel less envious, but you can manage the shame that commonly follows. 

To avoid jealousy from becoming a recurring problem, you must bear the discomfort by owning your feelings, while refusing to succumb to shame. Remind yourself that, while you can't control your jealousy, you can choose whether or not to lose confidence about it. When you gradually allow yourself to feel jealousy about a situation while preventing shame from amplifying its negative impact, the bitterness will gradually pass.

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Have peace in yourself

So, how should you minimize the bitterness? It all starts with having peace within yourself; slowly and one step at a time. Envy is an intense thing that often makes you want to give in to anger and punch the person right away to vent the emotions. You should be able to regulate yourself before this happens - to create peace in your inner self. It is wise to take a step back before things worsen. Deep breathing exercises are one of the simplest strategies to help you calm down when negative emotions arise. Deep breathing might help you relax and restore your balance. Remember that jealousy is a conflict between your two conflicting selves and no one will be able to make peace but yourself.

Recall Your Struggle

Your friend might get a seemingly better life than yours now, but come to think of it, you now have actually got a better life than your own life in the past. Many people, if not everyone, must have experienced the stress and difficulty in landing a job at one point. The key to addressing negative emotion that stems from jealousy is to recall your past struggle of job-seeking. Remember how exhausting it was to apply, wait, get rejected, or ghosted before you finally got hired for your current job. When you think about it, you have actually done so much in helping yourself to get to this point, even if it is not your peak career yet. The life you are living right now is already one step better than your life during your involuntary unemployment phase. Be proud of yourself. 

Do Something About It

You are allowed to feel jealous at one point, but letting it consume you to the point that you shift focus into always feeling inferior will get you nowhere. Instead of wondering “why” your peers got a promotion or have a better job than yours, find an answer to “how” they did it. Evaluate your professional values and weigh whether it is good enough to upscale your career. You can also talk to your employer about the possibility of promotion and what you can do to get there. This will provide you with some objectives and career plan, so you can be less envious and more resilient on your own lane. Nothing works more magical than turning your pain into power by putting in effort to get to be on the same level as people you are envious of. 

Reach out to more people

If you already have peace in mind and heart, instead of grueling with career envy, you can reach out to more people in your industry. Meeting more people is crucial to build a support network that can help you progress your career. Therefore, you should not feel bad about them because when they are ahead of you, you can network with them. This can also give you benefits such as improving your skills or acquiring new ones.

Sometimes, you notice other people’s achievements and forget your own. It can be the number one reason why you end up feeling jealous of a coworker’s success. You should remember that your path is different from everyone around you – nor would you want it to be the same, because there is a likelihood that you cannot handle a follow up career of their achievements. Own your jealousy, be mature enough to congratulate your friend’s success, and do something about your own. Trust the timing and your effort; the next thing you know will be your friends congratulating you back for your success!

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