November 2026

You lost the promotion to someone whose numbers were better. You know it was a fair call. It still bothers you.

A colleague wins over the client you’ve been chasing, based on charm you’re sure you could never replicate. You congratulate yet another LinkedIn connection on a milestone, and privately wonder why everyone else is moving faster than you are.

Most advice tells you to stop. Stop comparing, stop scrolling, focus on your own career journey.

I’d like you to do something less comfortable. I want you to stay with the sting long enough to ask why it’s there. Turn it into the signal that cuts through the noise, to gain clarity about what you want next.

Why “Just Stop” Doesn’t Work

Envy is a painful feeling sparked by seeing someone with a skill, a result, or a position you want for yourself. Sometimes it goes further, and you wish they didn’t have it either. We learn as children that this mix of desire and resentment is shameful, so we hide it and feel guilty about it. Psychology took a more accepting view decades ago.

In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed the concept of “social comparison,” suggesting that people work out where they stand by measuring themselves against others. It’s not petty; it’s how we orient ourselves in a social world.

That tendency now has far more to feed on. Social media gives us constant access to other people’s lives, and we check our full, unedited experience against someone else’s curated version. In the professional sphere, the comparison trap is baked into the structure, as a byproduct of networking, career visibility, and the sheer competitiveness of the workplace.

If comparison is unavoidable, the better question is: What do you do with it?

First, Learn to Read the Envy

When you weigh yourself against someone you perceive as better, more successful, or more capable, you are doing what Festinger called “upward comparison.” It can leave you feeling inferior, or it can make you better. The difference is the question you ask next.

When you catch yourself wondering Why not me?, try What are they doing differently? Study their methods, borrow what works. It’s a useful move. But let’s take it further.

Think about what you don’t envy. A software developer rarely lies awake over a world-class opera singer. They envy the lead engineer who got the keynote invitation. Comparison is rarely about the other person, and almost always about something you care about.

That makes it information. It points to something you want, think you want, or you’ve stopped letting yourself want.

When you envy someone’s visibility, you value influence and voice. When you envy their flexibility, you want control of your time. When you envy how fast they were promoted, you are hungry for growth and proof that your work matters. When you envy their complex projects, you are missing deep craft and intellectual challenge.

Sometimes the signal is sharper than that. If a colleague launches a new project or publishes a thought piece and you feel bitter, ask yourself whether the real thought is I wish I had given myself permission to do that. Envy often marks the ambition you talked yourself out of.

And sometimes, envy is misplaced on symbols. Say a peer recently became a Director. Do you want sixty hours a week of meetings and people management? Or do you want the respect and compensation that might come with the title? Those are different goals, and they lead to different decisions.

Here is what to do when the sting hits.

Name it. Notice the reaction and say what it is. Don’t push it down, and don’t act on it yet.

Isolate the thing. Take the person out of the picture. What exactly are you reacting to? Their presentation style, their relationship with the VP, their public body of work?

Ask what it would cost. What would getting that result require in time, stress, and trade-offs? Are you willing to pay for it? If not, let it go. It was noise, not a signal. If yes, take the next step.

Run one small experiment. If you envy a colleague’s standing as the expert on a topic, don’t try to become one by Friday. Block thirty minutes this week and outline a short talk or draft a thought piece (on a different subject).

Then, Check Who Wrote the Scoreboard

Renée ran a small consultancy, and she kept comparing herself to a former colleague whose career looked effortless online: a promotion every eighteen months, a polished feed, a calendar that seemed to run itself. “I’m behind,” she told me.

I asked her to imagine waking up in that woman’s life on Monday morning. Her face changed. “Calm,” she said. That was the answer. Renée’s work ran on sprints, dropped follow-ups, and an overflowing inbox she was quietly ashamed of. She had been measuring herself by promotion cadence, a standard that was expected in the corporate career she eventually chose to leave. What she wanted was a sustainable way to work, and someone to carry the operational load so she had room to think.

The comparison had been pointing at her values all along.

Once you’re clear on your own values, look at the system around you. Ask whether your envy was shaped by something outside you: a highlight reel, a hierarchy, a definition of success you adopted without consciously choosing.

Don’t internalize a hierarchy because it’s loud. Systems aren’t always fair, and building your sense of worth on external validation means chasing goals that were never yours. Know what you want, Know Yourself (the first of my Five Dimensions of Conscious Leadership), and comparison becomes information instead of a verdict.

Then comes the part most people skip. Once you have clarity about what you want and why, look at what in the system needs to change, and change it in ways that make it better for the people around and behind you. This is what we focus on in the third of my Five Dimensions, Inspire Love: leading with compassion, holding empathy and accountability together, and building a culture where more people are accepted and included.

This month, notice the next sting and let it be your signal. Don’t judge it and don’t argue with it: that’s noise. Ask what it’s telling you.

Looking honestly at what drives you isn’t easy. It takes courage, and self-love. If you’d like a thought partner for this, I built one: The Office Politics Playbook.

A lot of envy points at the same gap: you don’t yet have the visibility, influence, or read on who holds power that the person you’re comparing yourself to seems to have. The Playbook gives you a Power Map and Relationship Inventory to see where you stand, plus scripts for the conversations that move things forward.

​Enroll in The Office Politics Playbook.

Black Friday is later this month, and I’m planning something special for this community. Watch your inbox.

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Sending love and light,

Ginny