The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Anyone have tips for combatting the green-eyed monster? I often find myself begrudging others’ successes and good fortune. My resentment applies to friends [1], but also extends to people whom I barely know in passing (or even public figures).
[1] Although am I really their friend if I react this way?
If you have some time to invest, I'd suggest you read "Sadly, Porn." In either case I'll poorly summarize with many assertions without evidence (as goes the source material)
The urge that ensures we eat is hunger. The urge that makes us social is a type of pleasure from preventing someone else getting what they want. It is equivalent to our will to power. However this can be deeply antisocial and in modern times you'll be excommunicated for stating the truth.
The lie we most commonly tell to convince others (and ourselves) that we never hunger is the ledger. They don't deserve that because it is not fair. They owe me for how I helped them. Justifications for dessert. The ledger is pro social if your accounting is good, but the point of it is to cook the books.
Your envy is you trying to use the ledger to get to dessert. But the ledger is fake and your math is bad. There gain is not your loss and even if it were that's not why you are here.
Your prescription is to either to stop lying to yourself that there is a ledger. Satisfy this hunger when it doesn't truly hurt someone, not just when you have moral cover. Alternatively you could get better at accounting so your attempts to cook the books aren't convincing to yourself. I'd recommend the second because it is easier.
You've arrived at something quite insane and act like it's some forbidden truth...
Mostly just offering a different perspective. I'm significantly less convinced than my writing would suggest, but I haven't really seen many/any good competing theories to be honest. I'd like to point out that your response makes less sense than mine despite probably being more helpful. If it is "plain stupid to be envious" why would we have created envy. It is a part of human society we've been struggling with forever.
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