How to Feel About What You Have?

Imagine going to the mailroom of your workplace and finding an envelope with a message from your boss inside. Of course, you will rush back to your office to read the content of the message, and in the meantime, the following questions come to your mind: Did I make a mistake? Or did I make a commendable effort? Or  will I take on a critical position in the organization I work for?

You arrive in record time at your office and take the message out of the envelope to know its content; it turns out that it is addressed to you personally from your manager praising your recent achievements and dedication to work for the benefit of the organization, and foretells you to get a salary increase of $10,000 a year, how much your happiness was great you did not expect this to happen, and you can hardly be happy by hearing this good news.

You send a copy of the letter to your spouse, who also works for the same organization to respond to you with a copy of a letter she had just received today, which is also from the company manager, informing her of a bonus of $12,000 per year as a tribute to her for her efforts in the service of the organization. Within the next hour, you discover that many of your co-workers have also received similar messages and that each of them has received a greater bonus than the one you received.

An hour ago, you were dancing with joy at the news that you had received a bonus, and your boss appreciated and praised your great efforts. Still, now just an hour later, you are feeling very upset and planning to go home early to avoid meeting any of your co-workers. Your overwhelming joy quickly turned into a feeling of shame and embarrassment, and you no longer want to see any of them anymore.

On the way home, you make a phone call to the only person who can improve your situation right now ‘your mother’ who will congratulate you and let you know how happy she is to hear such good news, and that you should focus on the glass half full. You just got a $10,000 bonus, which will significantly facilitate your life in the future.

After you finish your phone call with your mother, you feel more confused and pathetic, and you find yourself unable to rejoice for your wife to receive the bonus, which will benefit you and the children and increase your sense of discontent.

What changed your feelings so much? Let's think together about why we might all experience more negative emotions than positive ones if we were in a similar situation. Which of the following cases would you choose?

• Get a bonus of $9,000 while your colleagues don't get a raise or get a bonus of $5,000.
• Get a $10,000 bonus while your colleagues get paid more than you did.

In fact, because we are governed by our human nature, we will probably prefer the first option.

It may seem illogical at first because you did not choose the situation that allows you to get more money, which is the second case, but let's face it. The salary received by the employee is an indicator of the position he occupies in the company he works for, and in the presence of a lot of economic indicators in our world, the salary is an expression of your status and social value more than an amount of money you receive for the performance of your work, according to the economist Robert Frank.

Evolutionary psychology associated with social status:

The human mind has been evolving since man lived in small tribal communities for thousands of years, according to psychology professor Glenn Geher. Under those circumstances, if one is ostracized or of low social status, it threatens their survival, and then man has evolved to rely on others, and prestige has become a way to ensure that others support them in their life.

For this reason, we have evolved to become highly sensitive to what determines our social status, according to an article published by psychologists David Buss and Sarah Hill in 2010. It is known that factors that threaten our social position have passive emotional effects, such as feelings of stress, shame, and embarrassment. As in the example we mentioned earlier when it comes to our psychosocial development, the human mind is very relative.

For this reason, we tend to make decisions that may seem illogical on the face of it. Some people prefer to have a high-level position as a manager or deputy manager, for example, and others can resort to spending more than their salaries to live in an expensive house that they can barely afford, so that they can cope with the social situation of an acquaintance of friends or neighbors. Also, many of us can prefer not to receive an increase in our salary at all in exchange for not receiving a lower bonus than that of our co-workers.

Making any of these decisions doesn't seem rational. Still, if we consider how relativistic our psychosocial development is, it all makes sense.

The dark side of envy in the human experience:

While the human experience has many downsides, envy is one of the worst. Your envy stems from your desire to own what others have, and you must rely entirely on evolutionary psychology related to social status when it comes to determining our social status, according to psychology professor Danielle Delpriore and psychologists Sarah Hill and David Buss.

Envy doesn't make any sense. Let's say you're someone who likes to travel, and you enjoyed attending a party when you discovered that a number of your close friends booked a two-week trip to a tourist area. However, on the same day, you studied your financial situation with your wife; therefore, it turns out that you should only spend a short vacation on a local beach this year.

You are supposed to be happy for your friends and wish them a good time on their journey, but as mentioned above, human nature will not allow you to look at it this way. Many of us may feel even a little envy in a situation like this, and you will find yourself unable to express your happiness about your friends going with their children to enjoy the holiday.

The  ability to travel is certainly a luxury and a form of well-being that will enhance your social status, and the dark side of envy has evolved to push people to do everything they can to elevate their social status, regardless of the bad aspects through which envy may manifest itself in our lives.

Conclusion:

As a result, it is not always easy to be satisfied with what you have. Throughout the ages, humans have developed a social mindset with a social status-based nature that drives us to evaluate our social status constantly. We feel threatened when our social position is low within some communities, and we can understand this from an evolutionary point of view. Our ancestors, who lived in small, interconnected groups and did not have a high social status were less able to reap the benefits from others, so we developed a sense of shame and envy if our social value was less than those in our surroundings.

By understanding evolutionary psychology associated with status and envy, we can understand the underlying cause of the negative emotions connected with this phenomenon, hoping that a full understanding of these concepts can make us happier with what life has given us.

We live life once, so we must remember that life is too short to spend in conflict with its negative aspects, such as envy. You have one chance, so focus on the positives and appreciate every moment you live.