The (Strangely Positive) Power of Jealousy
By: Tom Beck
Tags: Emotions, Self, Buddhism, Jealousy, Self Improvement

Don’t Suffer Twice

There’s a famous parable attributed to Buddha about “the second arrow.” It goes like this:

“The Buddha once asked a student, ‘if a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?’ The student replied, ‘it is.’ The Buddha then asked, ‘if the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?’ The student replied again, ‘it is.’ The Buddha then explained, ‘in life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.’”

According to the Buddha, whenever an unfortunate event happens to us, we suffer twice: first, we feel the sting of the bad event in itself; but second, we suffer in our reaction to the event. We suffer in a “why is this happening to me?” manner.

The key to the parable is that the second arrow is optional. We cannot control the first arrow. Bad things will come our way whether we want them to or not. Negative things happen outside of our control. But there is no reason for us to suffer over them.

You suffer the second arrow when you try and search for reasons why. Your rational brain loves explanations, justifications, cause-and-effect. It is always on the hunt to pin causes to reasons. But if you’re not careful, your rational brain will fire a whole rain of second arrows that will hurt you far worse than the initial one.

When you feel the pain of jealousy — let’s say someone else got the job promotion you wanted — your rational brain looks for reasons to justify the negative emotion you feel. “That other person doesn’t deserve it and must have sucked up to get it,” or “the system is rigged, there’s no chance for someone like me to succeed,” or “I must be terrible at my job, and there’s no future for me in this career.”

All of these rationalizations are forms of the second arrow. You cannot completely control whether you do or do not get a specific promotion. But you can manage your reaction to it. To do that requires you to do two things (simple in concept, far more difficult in action):

Recognize when you are firing a second arrow Be nicer to yourself

If you don’t get a promotion at work, you may attribute all sorts of personal negative causes, making you quit your job or move out of an industry that you enjoyed and could have been successful at. The second arrow is so dangerous because it takes a bad situation and makes it personal. “This feels terrible” becomes “I’m terrible.”

As you learn to recognize the second arrow, practice step two: kindness to yourself. This is surprisingly hard to do. We love to beat ourselves up and hold ourselves to impossible standards. The traditional way to reframe it is to view yourself as another person. As a loved one, specifically. Would you tell your best friend that they’re terrible because they didn’t get a promotion? No, of course not. So don’t do it to yourself, either.

The second arrow helps you process the pain of jealousy when it happens and stops resentment from building up. But there’s a way to take it further — to transform jealousy’s poison into a boon for your life.