Dealing With Jealous Folks

You may say that it is natural for others to feel jealous over your success or your earnings. Though you are true, their resentment towards you may make you uneasy. The problem with people is that they will have a low opinion about you if your life is just average and not spectacular enough. On the contrary, if you lead an affluent life or if you have achieved success in your endeavors, they will feel jealous. The question now is: Are there ways to handle these jealous folks? The following points may help. 

Experts advise that it is better to avoid telling people what you earn. But what about your lifestyle? It may make people know that you are wealthy. Let us first look at the first point, i.e. answering people who ask you how much your salary is. If you are an entrepreneur, people may be very much curious to know if you make enough money for your sustenance or if you earn substantially. If the earnings are just average, these jealous people are happy. If the earnings are substantial, they envy from inside.

We can see a similar attitude in the case of students as well. If a student scores high marks, others feel jealous. If the scores are just average, others are happy. In fact, those who have a jealous attitude nurture a secret hope that others do not earn well, are not wealthy, do not score good marks in the examinations, and so on. Even when they see their entrepreneur-friends or relatives succeed, they secretly wish for their failure. If you are a successful person, these jealous people may even go to the extent of denigrating your success in your career or in your ventures. To put it differently, these folks have a feeling akin or similar to a carnal pleasure when they see the failures of others.

So, what should you say when someone asks you how much you earn? You can just give a non-committal reply that your earnings are just average. You should learn the knack of diverting the topic so that they will not continue to harp on the question. By adopting this strategy, you can escape rubbing your success in their faces.

These jealous people should remember the words of Max Ehrmann, who wrote, “There will always be those greater and less than you” in his poem “Desiderata.” Whether these people remember these wise words or not, you have to learn to handle their attitude. 

What are the strategies experts suggest?

1. Let your association be only with positive-minded people. Only negative-minded people have an inferiority complex when they see successful friends and relatives and this complex is the reason for their jealousy.. 

2. Avoid showing off or doing things that make your success obviously visible because they are likely to trigger jealous thoughts in the minds of others. Never, never purchase luxurious items when they are around. 

3. Be careful while talking to such people because they can understand statements that hint that you are affluent.

Though these steps cannot guarantee 100% success in keeping at bay the resentment of these people, you can certainly reduce the impact significantly.