A Hug for Money-Envy

Putting money in its place (no, not the bank)

Few blows to the ego are as strong as envy and jealousy.

Another month-end, another hug! (Albeit not on the last Friday as planned - embracing some imperfection!)

During the course of a regular day, if even a slight uncomfortable stir of money-envy does not disturb the calm waters of your mind, please write an article and share! But for everyone else like myself, the constant deluge of “hey look at me and my wealth, and look at you and your life” is enough to steal our attention from the mundane fried egg we are having at a run-down cafe while a Ferrari with formidably intense regal vibes passes us by. To hell with clichés about ‘money isn't everything, what about the lovely people in your life?’ - at that moment, the allure and gravitational pull of envy-laden fantasising is way too strong to care about basic stuff like important relationships.

For all afflicted by this malaise, here is a balm for money-envy’s common psychological sores - hopefully helping you put money in perspective.

Three Common Money-Envy Sores

1. They Must Be SO Happy!

Here is my therapist-hat-on perspective on this kind of happiness-envy: EVERYONE IS ONE THOUGHT AWAY FROM FEELING LIKE SH*T.

Let me explain. No matter who you are, where you are, what you have, and who you are with, the above cognitive law is at work. One of the pioneers of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and an all-around lovely dude, Dr. David Burns says that depressive feelings need two elements: 1. A negative thought. 2. A 100% belief in that negative thought. Boom, that is IT. Imagine Jeff Bezos having (and believing) the thought “Oh actually I am not a good person because most of my employees hate me” - Bezos’ mental health = %^$%$£.

So, we are all in the same boat. No amount of money makes anyone immune to these mental mechanics. The tragic suicides of immensely rich people are an emotionally jarring reminder of this fact - a reminder expressed to the point of being a platitude, but rarely understood unless lived through. Probably why Jim Carrey wishes everyone was rich and famous, so that a shortcut to this realisation could be achieved.

The next time envy makes you ruminate on why the rich are so happy, compassionately remember that they are one thought away from complete chaos, just like you and me. Hopefully, this attitude would engender a sense of the human family, and not reinforce the ‘us-and-them’ mentality. As Baba Ram Dass said: “We are all just walking each other home”.

2. Business-Owners Rock, My 9-to-5 Sucks

“9-to-5 is for losers” - said a YouTube ad on my screen, while a well-dressed man celebrated the virtues of dissing employed human beings, all the while selling a course on making ‘crazy money’. And a friend recently praised Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, a “memoir” pushing a shaming attitude towards the “poor” and giving financial advice, the credibility of which is at best shaky, with no proof of a ‘rich dad’ ever existing.

Point being, it is hard to not envy wealthy entrepreneurs, rich digital nomads, bitcoin millionaires, and the Zuckerbergs of the world when you are being condescendingly slapped around with job-insulting vitriol in every nook and cranny of popular culture. To illustrate the generally un-questioned acceptance of this philosophy, I am reminded of a funny little video where a paparazzi approaches the super-rich Jerry Seinfeld - who is just parking his bicycle somewhere in NY - and says to him “You don't need to work anymore”, to which Jerry replies: “Yes I do. What is your idea of life? Doing nothing?”. I believe here, Seinfeld succinctly captures the essence of the laughable narrative that pushes us to essentially retire with ‘financial independence’ as a foetus if we are to really be considered “successful”.

A smile-inducing solace for me amidst this kind of Robert-Kiyosaki-esque noise of “Be like my rich dad! Do not be a poor worthless worker!”, has been to realise the comically tragic consequences the world would suffer if (as an extreme example to make a point) everyone adopted this myopic and naive philosophy of life where owning businesses/assets and retiring was everyone’s ambition. Imagine - if every single person is a billionaire-business-owner or trader of stocks, who is doing the work? Billions in wealth, but wealth which can buy zilch.

A World of 8.1 Billion Wealthy Professional Traders: If every person is trading stocks, who is actually creating the goods/services which make the stocks valuable?

I have often imagined a satire in my mind that goes something like this: Kiyosaki visits a doctor for his son’s surgery, and is met by the doctor’s assistant who says: “Sorry Mr. Kiyosaki, Dr. Werks TuMtch just retired after reading your insanely insightful book. He owns property now and gets paid rent. He realised how enlightening it was to see the 9-to-5 paediatric care he was providing as a meaningless trading of his precious time for money. Of course, you would understand this better than anyone else sir. He sends his regards instead of medical advice.”

“Hmm. Perhaps I didn’t think this through. And I do not like people asking me who my rich dad was.” (P.S. Kiyosaki fans, I am sure he has good things to say as well.)

There has been such a shift in the “self-help-motivational-guru” space over the years. Once, where people like Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn would encourage individuals to find the value in what they were doing and see the great things about their jobs, the web is now full of “life coaches” who preach the gospel of “quit your 9-to-5, you absolute loser!”.

All-m-sayin’ is, when you are distressed about the thought that a bitcoin trader has 10,000x more money than you and that that is what you should be doing instead of a job, remember, that even if you just answered a call on a help-line today, you added more value to the world than the bitcoin trader ever did by moving bits around in a virtual environment, with nothing created, nothing done.

3. Worth-Envy: Wealthier People Are Just Better

It does not help our envy-sores when Google, Wikipedia, and Forbes list famous people along with their NET WORTH.

Net. Worth. What an interesting usage of ‘worth’. It connotes a misguided sense of finality of worth-judgement. Its like saying, “hey man, all said and done, this is the number you are worth. We finally have a measuring scale for human worth. And you are kind of a small inconsequential number mate”. Admittedly, that is not the overt message, but our cavemen-brains attuned to socio-hierarchical thinking can not help but feel threatened and envious of people who have a higher “worth-number” than us.

A rather obvious (but seldom well-articulated) aspect of this worth-oriented-envy, is that of how arbitrary it is. Dr. David Burns once had a patient suffering from such worthlessness and envy - the patient had just never hit a number which would translate to worthiness. David asked him what that number was, to which he replied, 60,000 USD a year in salary. Next, David asked him: “So that means, anyone earning 59,999.99 USD per year, is worthless?”. This was a moment of enlightenment for the patient, and, I hope it communicates a flavour of the distorted sense of reality and definitional-arbitrariness of worth at play when we envy someone with more money, as if they have more human-worth somehow. Extrapolated to its logical end, it would simply imply a hierarchy of human value, with the most valuable human at the top with the most money. How does that sound? What exactly, precisely, is “off” about such a world-view?

I’d love it if you, lovely reader, spent a couple of minutes pondering on this - I predict it would help provide a little playful mental hug when you are at your high-school reunion and you find that John Drinks-A-Lot Jones, who used to spend most of his time getting high, is “worth” $7,000,000 more than you.

What are Your Money-Envy Sores?

I have probably just scratched the surface in terms of how money-envy can manifest and cause pain. Let me know in the comments about your experiences (and perhaps some tips on what has helped!).

Until next month, let us stay in touch through messages and comments!

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