The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
Sep 15, 2026 · 32 min · 11 segments
Envy has a terrible reputation. But the feeling itself can tell you what you value, where comparison has hooked you, and what you may need to work towards. In this episode, I separate malicious envy…
Jon BrooksHost
You're not going to go around telling people you're close to that you feel envious because what that communicates is you have something that I want for myself and because there's so much emotional charge behind it, either I don't want you to have that thing and therefore I want to take it from you Or I can't be trusted if I have an opportunity to have that thing around you.
So telling someone you're close to that you have envy of them doesn't make you trustworthy.
Although you could argue that by owning it and acknowledging it and being authentic with that feeling, you therefore are trustworthy.
If you think of an evil person in any kind of movie or film, really are they just content? They're like, I don't need anything.
They want to take revenge or they want, if you think of Snow White, you know, the evil queen wants to be the fairest of them all.
And this motif goes across a lot of different villains and we're brought up with this image of envy from a young age.
if I were to ask you to do a drawing or imagine a truly envious person, you probably wouldn't think of someone who's good and kind.
You'd probably think of someone who's like a haggard, old, witch-like figure who kind of is bitter at the world and wants what other people have.
It's always existed, but it's become much more prominent in the age of social media, in the age of the internet, where before you wouldn't have it rubbed in your face so much about how everyone else has it better than you do.
But now you can just go online and very quickly you can see photographs and stories and reels and so on of people... living exciting, adventurous lives.
People that have a cool job, a cool relationship, maybe lots of friends, a certain kind of freedom, the way that they post, whatever it is, and that triggers the envy response in us.
And one of the dangers when it comes to envy is this thing called rationalization.
Rationalization is the mind's ability to come up with logical narratives to explain away emotions.
You're not going to go around telling people you're close to that you feel envious because what that communicates is you have something that I want for myself and because there's so much emotional charge behind it, either I don't want you to have that thing and therefore I want to take it from you Or I can't be trusted if I have an opportunity to have that thing around you.
So telling someone you're close to that you have envy of them doesn't make you trustworthy.
Although you could argue that by owning it and acknowledging it and being authentic with that feeling, you therefore are trustworthy.
If you think of an evil person in any kind of movie or film, really are they just content? They're like, I don't need anything.
They want to take revenge or they want, if you think of Snow White, you know, the evil queen wants to be the fairest of them all.
And this motif goes across a lot of different villains and we're brought up with this image of envy from a young age.
if I were to ask you to do a drawing or imagine a truly envious person, you probably wouldn't think of someone who's good and kind.
You'd probably think of someone who's like a haggard, old, witch-like figure who kind of is bitter at the world and wants what other people have.
It's always existed, but it's become much more prominent in the age of social media, in the age of the internet, where before you wouldn't have it rubbed in your face so much about how everyone else has it better than you do.
But now you can just go online and very quickly you can see photographs and stories and reels and so on of people... living exciting, adventurous lives.
People that have a cool job, a cool relationship, maybe lots of friends, a certain kind of freedom, the way that they post, whatever it is, and that triggers the envy response in us.
And one of the dangers when it comes to envy is this thing called rationalization.
Rationalization is the mind's ability to come up with logical narratives to explain away emotions.
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