These two types of envy can also be classified as unhealthy and healthy. Black envy manifests as a kind of illness — it serves no purpose and is just a constant state of distress. White envy, on the other hand, is a healthy feeling, because focusing on the actions of others does not become a dull, nagging mental pain, as in the first case, but instead serves as a source of inspiration for new achievements.

Black envy works like a spy — striking one blow after another, taking other people’s successes out of context, generalising them arbitrarily, and, after a disastrous comparison that does not favour its owner, leading them to moral paralysis coupled with a total sense of crushing failure.

If our self-esteem is based solely on comparison, it will become increasingly fragile and thin, collapsing under the succession of other people’s successes, pouring in like an avalanche from all possible — and impossible — social networks. And although it is obvious to most of us that, for the most part, all this success is carefully polished and filtered, it still does not prevent the sly snake of envy from sometimes creeping into our subconscious. Although envy — of any kind — sometimes works like a mental surgeon, performing rather painful but necessary manipulations, pulling out all our true yet carefully hidden desires and unfulfilled needs.

Frankly speaking, getting stuck in destructive thoughts about your own inadequacy is clearly not worth it. But since it is sometimes not so easy to fight such nasty thoughts, it is better not to struggle against them directly. You need to get out of rumination — the process of getting stuck in such thoughts — by consciously shifting your focus from virtual online reality to real life. And here, it is our life values and priorities that serve as the necessary support and guidance to help us determine our own unique path: a path that will lead us out of the sticky swamp of eternal comparisons onto the straight road of calmness and confidence in our own strengths.

When we know our path clearly, the indicator of success is not whether we have caught up with someone else, but whether we are true to our own goals and whether we have strayed from our personal path. In this case, the importance of all these comparisons practically disappears, because our original priorities change significantly. And if you also sometimes shift your focus from what you don’t yet have to what you already have, emphasising the feeling of joy and gratitude for what you have already achieved, then life will take on new, bright, and vivid colours for you!