How to Compete Without Envy

A classmate gets the top mark. A colleague is promoted first. A neighbour’s shop is busier than ours. We feel a small sting, and sometimes a quiet hope that it won’t last.

We are told competition is healthy, and often it is. But the sting is something else, and most of us feel both at once. Madhyasth Darshan pulls them apart.

This may sound like saying we shouldn’t try to win, or to be the best at anything. It doesn’t. Striving to grow, and to reach the excellence we see in others, is exactly what the book praises. What it rejects is wanting someone else to fall.

Striving and envy

In Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), Shri A. Nagraj defines them in one sentence. The tendency and effort towards progress is striving (स्पर्धा). The tendency and effort against it is envy (ईर्ष्या). The Paribhasha Sanhita describes envy as a mindset opposed to others’ progress.

And the book names what each brings. Striving gives rise to joy and enthusiasm. Envy and hatred give rise to resentment (अमर्ष). The same success can produce either, depending on how we meet it.

“Striving gives rise to joy and enthusiasm. Envy gives rise to resentment.”

Facing those ahead, and those behind

On the next page, the book goes further, and looks at both directions. Out of an assumed superiority, it says, come three things: contempt for others, violence towards those who are weaker, and envy of others’ development. In their place it sets three others:

• Towards someone less able, giving them proper help, which is generosity, instead of contempt.
• Towards someone further ahead, trying to grow as they have grown, which is striving, instead of envy.
• Towards someone weak, protecting them, which is kindness (दया), instead of violence.

Striving, in this sense, isn’t beating anyone. It is moving towards an excellence we can see in someone else. Elsewhere in the same book, progress (प्रगति) is described as exactly that: movement towards excellence. And Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद) lists respect for excellence among the signs of real ability.

How envy fades

The book also says what dissolves envy. When curiosity and commitment to becoming complete in oneself arise, envy and hatred begin to fade. With full awakening, they go entirely.

That is a practical observation. Envy fixes our attention on someone else’s position. Curiosity about our own growth turns it back, to something we can actually change.

Step 1: Catch the envy

Notice the moment. It is usually small: a flicker of discomfort at good news, a reflex to find fault, a hope that someone will slip. Name it to yourself, without blame. Envy that is named loses much of its grip.

Step 2: Turn it into a question

Ask: what excellence do I see in them? What did they understand, or practise, that I haven’t yet? Then ask whether you want to grow in that direction. If you do, the envy has become striving, and you have a teacher. If you don’t, the envy had no reason to be there.

Step 3: Help someone behind you

Look the other way too. Who is a step behind you, at work, in school, in a craft? The book’s alternative to contempt is generosity: proper help, offered as a matter of course, and accepted only if the other person wants it. Teaching what you know is also one of the surest ways to stop treating your position as something to defend. We look at this kind of nourishing in How to Tell Nourishing from Exploiting.

Step 4: Measure yourself against your own growth

Finally, change the measure. Instead of asking “am I ahead of them?”, ask “am I further on than I was a year ago?” The book’s cure for envy is curiosity and commitment to one’s own growth, and this is what that looks like in practice.

An example

An illustration, not a documented case. Two tailors work in the same market. One begins to attract more customers, and the other starts telling people her stitching won’t last. Business between them sours, and both suffer.

Then the second tailor asks a different question: what is she doing that customers like? He watches, and sees that she finishes seams more neatly and always delivers on the day she promises. He works on both. A year later his shop is busy too. He also starts teaching a young apprentice the finishing he learned. The two tailors begin sending each other the orders they can’t take. That is the whole of the book’s advice, in one market.

Real markets are not always this fair. Someone may be ahead partly through skill and partly through better opportunities, and then the unease is pointing at something real. Learning from them and working to make things fairer can go together. Being ahead in one skill doesn’t make anyone ahead as a person.

And the planet?

A great deal of what we buy is bought to keep up: a bigger house than the neighbours, a newer phone than our colleagues. That is envy’s kind of competition, and it never ends, because there is always someone with more. Striving towards excellence, in skill, understanding or care, asks very little of the earth. We look at the difference between needs and wants in How Much Is Enough?

And our happiness?

Envy is one of the most uncomfortable things to carry, because every success around us becomes a small loss. The book’s account suggests the opposite is available. When others’ excellence becomes something to learn from, every success around us becomes a source of joy and enthusiasm. That is a very different way to live among people. We look at the deeper roots of such feelings in How to Remove the Roots of Conflict.

A protocol to try

Think of one person whose success makes you uneasy. Write down one thing they do well that you would like to do well too.

Then think of one person a step behind you, and offer them one thing you know this week.

Limitations

• Many schools, markets and workplaces reward beating others, not growing. This post looks at what one person can do within them. Changing how they reward people is a larger task.
• Our word “competing” is wider than the book’s स्पर्धा, which means striving towards the excellence we see in others. We use “compete” because it is the word most readers use for that effort.
• Some unease at another’s success is a sign of real unfairness, not envy. It is worth telling the two apart.
• The four steps are our own arrangement, and we haven’t yet tested them.

References

1. Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 62 (progress as movement towards excellence), p. 96 (striving and envy defined; what each brings; envy fades as curiosity and commitment arise), p. 97 (contempt, violence and envy from assumed superiority; generosity, striving and kindness in their place)
2. Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), p. 89 (signs of real ability, including respect for excellence)
3. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, ईर्ष्या (envy), p. 45