Jealousy Shows You Secret Admirers
Jealousy is one of the seven deadly sins. It is a deep resentment that a person feels towards another person who has something that he wants. It can be like wealth, power, beauty and much more. It is a load that is sometimes difficult to avoid but that no one wants to feel. To feel jealous means to feel small, and to secretly admire someone.
Every day we experience situations where we can not stop comparing ourselves with others. A brother who seems to get more attention from our parents. An employee who makes more money than we do. A neighbor who has a better car than us. Comparisons become painful if we feel that we have pulled the shortest straw.
Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, claims that “jealousy is something ugly that can ruin your life. If you are jealous, it is very difficult for you to appreciate what is good in life. You will worry about what others think of you. ”
Studies on jealousy
Researchers have tried to understand how jealousy works in the brain. Studies have also been done on the pleasure that the person feels when the object of jealousy falls apart.
Last year, two studies were conducted by Nicole E. Henniger and Christine R. Harris that were published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology . Almost 900 people between the ages of 18 and 80 participated in these studies. They were asked if they had felt jealous of anyone and if they still feel this today.
Around 80% of respondents under the age of 30 said they had felt this in the past year, while the figure for those over 50 was 59%. Another conclusion was drawn from the study and that was that the feeling does not depend on gender as men and women experience this equally.
A study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Radiology in Japan was published in the journal Science , where they described brain images of people who were asked to see themselves as the protagonist in a social drama with other people who were more or less successful.
When the subject compared himself to someone he envied, the regions of the brain related to physical pain were activated. If he was given the chance to imagine that the successful person failed, the brain’s reward circuits were activated.
To be envied or to admire
Sometimes we talk about healthy envy or admiration, and if we can really focus positively on our desire, envy can be a stimulus for improvement because it creates a goal for us. We can envy the abilities of others and this can make us better ourselves.
But if envy turns into a negative desire towards the other person, this can turn into frustration and insecurity, something that will give us a distorted image that will hold us back from becoming better people.
We can turn envy into admiration when we consider the other person with our hearts and emotional intelligence, when we are happy for his success, abilities and opportunities.
