From time immemorial, man has been subject to a huge range of emotions.  Many think and argue that such emotions are very natural.

However, one of the most harmful of such emotions is jealousy.  

What exactly is jealousy?

In very simple terms, it refers to our heart burn with a total negative connotation about someone's success.  We lose our cool and more often than not, go all out of the way to harm the person concerned through some means or the other.  If we happen to work in some job and the same person is also employed alongside, we would do anything to damage the reputation or integrity of the person or even character of the person.

Our television serials in many languages, including Hindi, very actively promote jealousy as a way of life, and we have all the negative consequences shown as if there is no tomorrow.  Every second, some character in the serial is shown doing things that will directly harm the person concerned, without even the slightest guilt.  

We do have a very dangerous situation.  What can we do to overcome this totally negative emotion of jealousy?

Firstly, we should recognize that every single person born in this world, has the right to live and also let live.  If we accept this fact, there will be less tension.  More often than not, luck plays a very small role in our life.  It is impossible to even imagine that someone has become great, because of sheer luck.

Even if someone points out to the success stories of anyone else, based on sheer luck, let us ignore such useless talk.  Only when we understand that there is no substitute to hard work, can we understand that the world is different, and only those who do hard work as a way of life, will always succeed.  Luck may favor them, but the base of their success is always the hard work that they put in, day in and day out.

Some years ago, the blockbuster movie called "Enthrian" in Tamil, made waves throughout the world.  The hero Rajnikant, it later transpired had put in so much hard work.  A particular type of make up could not be disturbed for hours together. It would cause tremendous irritation to the individual, but the hero was able to see through the game.  He had tremendous dedication and commitment.  He had always put in the same kind of hard work.  So, any amount of jealousy about Rajnikant would be futile.  

Secondly, it should be realized that when we indulge in jealousy, and take active part in doing harm to the individual concerned, too much of energy gets wasted, there is so much of anger involved.

We will positively loose track of our own strengths and it is a situation in which we will be found wanting, for all practical purposes. This is a real problem of gigantic proportions.  More often than not, we not realize that we have lost everything in the process.

If only we had been calm, we would not have got into this problem at all.  We should just allow our minds to concentrate our efforts on our own strengths.  We should do tremendous amount of hard work to achieve our goals.Once the mind is preoccupied with a series of goals, we will tend to concentrate only on that and our negative emotions will be under check.

Thirdly, the anger that is involved goes up to even commit murders.  Not only this, we pull others into our own circle of negative emotions and then try to do collective harm to the individual.  More often than not, the persons who are targets of our jealousy go even higher through their own tactics and strategies in life.  They are better informed, they are action-oriented, they are much more motivated and can pull it off in style.  

Only we will be left where we are.  So, the best way is to just concentrate on our strengths and allow events to take their own turn,

Fourthly, we can also plan to achieve our own goals in life, irrespective of what they are --- but this is particularly true of our financial goals.  For example, even if we set aside just Rs.50/- and regularly put this amount into a post office recurring deposit for five years and then renew it for another five years (this is possible), we will end up having more than eight thousand rupees as extra income every month.  

Please note that the yearly commitment is itself just six hundred rupees and this can be obtained through our yearly increment itself.  So, what we need to understand is that we need to work and rework our own plans, instead of falling into the jealousy trap.

Fifthly, we should form a good circle of friends who are always broad minded, never jealous of anyone, but who still live happy lives with whatever they have.  Imagining that only material wealth is so important in life, is just foolishness.

Once we realize this truth, we can live life on our own terms and yet be very happy. 

Let us take one simple example.  We have gone shopping, and we come across a very good quality curtain material.  If we were to buy that for the entire house, our expenditure would be thirty thousand rupees.  Our mind starts jumping to the costly curtain material we had seen in the residence of the person, we are jealous about.  We forget that he is Vice-president (HR) in a famous conglomerate. 

We have two choices.  Go for this material, match his lifestyle, but immediately for a loan to purchase the material, or simply buy cheaper material, that would cost us just six thousand rupees and will fit our budget.

If we go by the first choice, we have fallen into the all familiar trap.  We are still jealous of the other person's success, without even understanding how he got there.

Our mind will go for fresh negative thoughts and the cycle will keep on repeating itself. 

If we go by the second choice, our mind would be free, we would be happy, we will have money in our hands.  We can then go to a temple or a church or a mosque, and allow our mind to settle down.  

The fact of the matter is very simple --- even if you have six houses, you can sleep in only one of them.  And only on one cot.  The rest of the five houses would be locked or rented out, but our enjoyment would come only from the sole house in which we live.  We are blind to these realities and we start feeling jealous of the other person.

Having someone to often remind us of our folly does help.  If we have our wife or a cousin or any other  relative on the right side of things, it does help.  

We need to keep our mind full of positive thoughts and get on with life.  Jealously can, and should, be overcome.