Envy is one of the most unproductive, insidious habits we allow to take root in our thinking. It consumes attention, distorts perspective, and quietly redirects energy away from the only place it can make a difference: our own work. It fixates on outcomes while ignoring the process that produced them.
It is easy to look at someone else’s success and see only the finished product. The recognition, the wealth, the influence, the apparent ease. What is rarely visible is the long stretch of effort that came before it. The early mornings when no one was watching. The failed attempts that never made it into the story. The discipline required to keep going when the future was uncertain and results were far from guaranteed.
The harvest is always more visible than the planting.
When envy takes hold, it encourages a passive posture. It keeps your attention fixed outward, measuring your position against someone else’s results. That comparison does nothing to move you forward. It creates frustration without offering a path to improvement. It is a loop that leads nowhere. I would argue that it is disastrous for one’s mental health and overall well-being.
A more useful approach is to shift the focus from what someone has to how they got there. Success leaves clues, but only for those willing to study it honestly. That means looking beyond the surface and examining the habits, decisions, and tradeoffs that made the outcome possible. It means recognizing the sustained, deliberate effort over time that went into the successful outcome.
This kind of focus requires humility. It asks you to accept that achievement is rarely accidental and almost never immediate. It also requires responsibility. If you want a similar result, you must be willing to adopt the behaviors that lead to it, even when they are difficult or inconvenient.
There is also a quieter benefit to letting go of envy. It clears mental space. It allows you to concentrate fully on your own path, your own opportunities, and your own standards. Progress becomes a function of your actions rather than your comparisons. Over time, that shift compounds.
Everyone has access to the same fundamental choice. You can spend your energy resenting what others have built, or you can invest that energy in building something of your own. One path leads to stagnation. The other, while demanding, offers the only real chance at growth.
The work is always in the sowing. The results follow from there.
Elliott Broidy is an entrepreneur who has used his extensive experience and talent to found, invest in, and in some cases manage as CEO more than 160 companies over his four-decade career. He has given extensively to support the Jewish community and other causes during his career. He currently is the Co-Chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate which supports the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, an initiative of The Counter Extremism Project.