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People sometimes find themselves feeling envious of other people’s financial success. They see friends or coworkers with the latest and greatest, and they want the same things too.

There are several ways that people often handle financial envy. Two of them don’t result in any real progress or resolution:

1. Telling yourself that the other person is probably drowning in debt and can’t really afford the things they’re buying.

2. Telling yourself that the other person probably had extra advantages in life (parents with money, a better education, being lucky, etc.) that allow them to be more successful.

Those two things may even be true, but where do they leave you? Nowhere positive.

At best, you stay neutral, but most likely you’ll find yourself feeling superior, resentful, or frustrated, because both of those methods imply that there’s nothing you can do (or would want to do) to end up in the same situation as the person you’re envying.

Two other ways of handling envy can result in a positive change:

1. Telling yourself that you’re going to get there too, and using your envy and the examples of others as motivation. In other words, focusing and making a plan to get where you want to be. It’s the “Oh, I want that! What do I need to do to get it?” method.

2. Analyzing the situation objectively. Is it really just luck, or does the person spend 6-8 hours each day working on something that you spend an hour on? People often confuse luck or some mysterious unknown with hard work. Do their advantages (inheritance, upbringing, education) mean that you can’t still succeed? You can’t change your birth, but you CAN change what you do with the rest of your life. Hard work and getting to know the right people can make up for a lot. Or you might discover that you’re actually happy where you are.

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