Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

Consider a friend. Now imagine if the friend won a professional lottery of some sorts - one example could be that the startup they slaved at had a huge exit and their stock became worth a couple of million $.

How would you want to respond to the friend?

Personally, I would congratulate the friend on his/her success. I want good things to happen to my friends. It doesn’t take away from my own successes, or change anything about what is going on in my own life, so there is no value in tearing people down.

Hopefully this perspective helps in reorienting one’s mindset.

Perhaps he should take his own excellent advice, and compare himself to who he was when he threatened to slap Pankaj Mishra.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/jordan...

>Why is Jordan Peterson so angry? For someone whose whole routine is based on telling men to “toughen up”, the clinical psychologist and author of the bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, who rose to prominence in the UK after his run-in with Cathy Newman on Channel 4, seems to unravel at the slightest provocation. After a brutal but perfectly polite and clinical takedown in the New York Review of Books by Pankaj Mishra, where the rudest thing said about Peterson is that his latest book is packaged for people who have grown up on BuzzFeed listicles, Peterson had a meltdown. He called Mishra a “sanctimonious prick”, an “arrogant racist son of a bitch”, said he would “slap him” if he was in the room, and rounded it up with a final “fuck you”. Somewhere along the tantrum, he tweeted that Mishra was a “dealer in lies and half-truths”. The responses that followed can only be summarised as a mass sideways look to camera.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and...

>Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism, by Pankaj Mishra.

>Closer examination, however, reveals Peterson’s ageless insights as a typical, if not archetypal, product of our own times: right-wing pieties seductively mythologized for our current lost generations.

You realize Vitalik Buterin invented Ethereum when he was 19? The guys who did the Manhattan Project were disgustingly young. Newton invented calculus when he was 21. Hell, Nas released Illmatic when he was 21.

The world has a few winners and lots of losers. Like me, you’re probably a loser. This is just part of the tragicomedy of life. For most of history people were born farmers and died farmers.

The best thing you can do is to focus on being better than yourself yesterday.

Also, envy isn’t a bad thing. If someone has something you don’t, do you want that thing? If yes, envy motivates you to try harder. If no, who cares?

When I see someone more successful than me I do envy them, but I'm happy for them. It's great to see people succeed and do well.

I always like seeing people succeed, use that envy to work harder and do better. Set a goal they have reached and go for it.

Be careful spending your time lamenting them and looking for holes in their success. Don't waste your time like this.

You should check out this book Zen Shorts, it's for kids but has some great lessons.

Here's a quick summary . . .

“The heavy load”, story goes….

Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle.

The younger monk noticed the woman, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the older monk, she just shoved him out of the way and departed.

As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then she didn’t even thank you!”

“I set the woman down hours ago,” the older monk replied. “Why are you still carrying her?”

Now the question goes to you all, “Do you think you have carried it long enough?”

Do keep in mind, a big part of success is your network and luck, so that plays a part. But we can always improve, strive to do better.

So be happy for them and congratulate them unless of course this person is just a daft p--- about their success.

Then I just tell them.

Hey, Good For You.

GFY!

Even if we'll never have Paris, we'll always have tacos!