Is one or both of these familiar to you? What triggers the feeling? How do you know when you’re envious? Jealous? Is it your thoughts? Or is it in your body? And are you sure you know the difference when they arise in you?
At whom is your envy or jealousy directed? Those you care about? Colleagues? Strangers?
What’s the difference between your experience of envy and jealousy? Do you feel other emotions simultaneously? Fear? Anger? Insecurity? Hunger? Desire? Sadness? Regret? At whom, or what, are these emotions directed? Are you angry at your partner? At someone s/he has a relationship with? At yourself?
How do you relate to your envy and jealousy? Do you judge it? Think it healthy? Unhealthy? Do you pursue it, creating opportunities to feel it? Do you avoid it? Organize your experience to make it less likely? What are the benefits of your strategy? The costs? Does it work well for you? How? Why?
When your envy or jealousy subsides, what causes it to do so? Seeing the object of your envy suffer loss? Getting what it is you envy? Time? Distance? Perspective?
And your jealousy? Does it disappear when the circumstance giving rise to it disappears? When you end your relationship to the person inspiring your jealousy? When you are victorious in a contest for that person’s affections? Or does it simply require time, distance, perspective?
What are your earlier experiences of envy and jealousy? From your recent past? Your distant past? Your childhood?
And what are your associations with these emotions? What do you think about them?
Finally: is envy inevitable? Is jealousy? Are they inevitable? Part of life? Signs of weakness? To be avoided?
