Coaching: How Does Envy Serve You?
Social comparisons, feelings of resentment or malice toward others who appear to have more than you do is an important topic for the coaching process. And it’s just as important to remember: appearances are not facts.
Recently, envy has been an ongoing topic of conversation with my coaching clients.
Let’s look at an example of how envy can serve a person’s feelings of low self-worth and then what one can do to combat it.
(Below is a highly condensed session without names or identifying information for the purposes of illustration.)
“It’s so unfair!”
My long-term, ongoing coaching client with severe, life-threatening food allergies burst into tears when talking about how unfair it is that her friends can just point to a country, get on a plane, and go there without concerning themselves about what they will eat.
I pointed out that she could do that as well.
“No, I can’t,” she said, “It’s not that easy.”
I gently replied: “That can be a choice to see it as not easy. You can choose another response.”
I had her attention as her tears stopped and she was actively listening to me.
I asked her: “How does envy serve you?”
“It doesn’t serve me, I want to let go of it but I can’t,” she said.
“Serve” = the self using evidence to prove an erroneous, nonfactual point
Here I gently explained that by “serve” I did not mean this was a conscious choice she was making, that “serve” here means these feelings support some unconscious or preconscious feelings of low self-worth, and gives oneself evidence of these low feelings of self-worth. That “serve” is the self using this evidence again and again to prove these feelings to the self. It’s a complex, complicated cycle of thinking and it can be broken.
I continued: “I believe envy of someone else’s life serves you to feel bad about yourself, to hurt yourself for something you cannot change, a medical diagnosis you’ve had since you were a child. And that hurting yourself is familiar, something you’ve been doing to yourself for a very long time so it’s comfortable.”
She nodded through tears.
“How does that feel to you, what I just said?”
“That sounds right, I haven’t thought of it that way but it’s how I feel.”
I continued: “What if you made a small shift? When you feel envy for someone else's life, you stop, recognize it and instead replace it with: ‘I respect my needs, I like myself, or I love myself and I understand that I am making a choice to keep myself safe.’”
If she can recognize envy in the moment, and identify it, that would be the biggest first step. Replacing it with alternative positive self talk is the next step.
The client agreed to recognize when she was feeling envious of someone, see how that might be serving her in the moment, do her best to make a small mental shift. She’ll report back next we meet.
***
There are scores of improv exercises that play with perspective shifts and those kinds of exercises can help someone, a client or a team, recognize the feelings they are having in the moment about a challenge and play with trying out different perspectives or views of the same challenge.
One exercise that I learned in a continuing education course for social workers is by Jude Treder-Wolff, LCSW, CGP, CPAI. She calls it the “Three-Character Change Game.” A character with a vested interest in things staying just as they are (the Mayor in Jaws); a character with a vested interest in doing the right thing at this point in time (the Sheriff in Jaws); a character with expertise and knowledge about the threat of the status quo and why the change is beneficial (the marine biologist in Jaws).
Here’s a link to the scene in Jaws that perfectly exemplifies the game and these three-perspectives.
In groups of three, players each take one of the roles so there is a “Mayor,” a “Sheriff,” and a “Marine Biologist.” The facilitator makes a suggestion for the group like, asking for a raise, one character wants to move to a new city, getting a first pet, etc. The group is tasked with discussing the change based on their character’s viewpoint in an improvised conversation. As the scene progresses, the facilitator rotates characters so each player takes each role at least once.
If you, or your team, is having a reaction to something, and you feel like you can’t shift out of that viewpoint, but you want to as it’s not serving you, you can play with these shift perspectives in a low-stakes way to try on different aspects of the same challenge and see which feels better.
If you try “Three-Character Change Game,” let me know in the comments!