What’s the antidote to envy?

If you compare yourself with others you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. That line from the Desiderata pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? But envy’s like any other emotion; it isn’t good or bad. In this edition of Doing What Works we help you use envy as fuel to get more of what you want.

Here are your show notes…

Want to hear what Charlie Munger said about envy?

“Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down that hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill a small number of main trails will appear in the snow. And every time a new sled goes down, it will be drawn into preexisting trails, almost like a magnet. In time it becomes more and more difficult to glide down the hill on any other path or in a different direction. Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear, and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.”

How to Be Perfect is billed as “the correct answer to every moral question.”

Do you think everything would be okay if only, say, you won the lottery? Not according to a concept called hedonic adaptation.

Change something or change your attitude about it, but don’t complain.

Aspire to happiness that’s indestructible, that isn’t dependent on the happiness of people in your orbit -- the way Alex Lickerman describes in The Undefeated Mind.

“If you compare yourself with others you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”

“Isolation is the dream killer.” That’s from Barbara Sher.