Envy leads to unhappiness in your life, practice the opposite

Before I start explaining this, watch the video below. It’s a clip from an interview with Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet’s right hand man before he passed away)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZCfNAl6DWE
Here’s a challenge for you. “Choose to not suffer from envy”. Yes, you can do it. It’s a simple choice to change your thoughts. It will be hard at first, but practice and you will get it over time. Also be wary of surrounding yourself with envious people, because they will definitely have an effect on the way you think and make it hard to rid yourself of envy.
Think of it this way. Unless you are the number 1 richest person in the world, someone else will always have more money than you. So if you suffer from envy, you will always be unhappy because someone else has more than you. Even if you are the number 1 richest person out there, there are things that money can’t buy, like real friends, true happiness and good family relationships. So if you are THE richest one, you can still be envious of other people who have those things that you don’t. Getting rich won’t solve your envy problem, so might as well just work on fixing it now. Let yourself be happy and work towards wealth with a calm, peaceful, better focused mind.
So what’s the opposite of envy? Personally I think of it as gratitude. Being grateful for what I have compared to what people historically and even today are suffering through.
Whenever I start going through a rough time, I personally think of the Chinese or Muslim people in the 13th century who were trapped inside cities under siege by the Mongols. Genghis Khan had surrounded the cities with far superior armies. There is no escape. Any reinforcements coming for you were destroyed. You’re slowly starving to death next to your buddy who has an arrow through his left lung and is coughing up blood. Often the Mongols did not take any prisoners. When they get in, they’ll kill every man, woman and child. Even the cats and dogs get butchered. The women if they’re lucky will be sold into slavery or be put to use in a harem. But the men, they’re doomed.
There is a written report from the Muslim emissary of the Khwarazmian Empire on the way to visit China. He wrote that the found a snowy mountain but as they got closer, realized that it was a hill of skulls and bones. He also wrote that road and ground became greasy from the fat of decaying human bodies so much so that they had to abandon the road.
Now that is a shit situation. When I’m feeling bad, I compare myself to those ancient Chinese and Muslim people. Then I think, “Man, I’m doing quite well. I’m much safer compared to them. I have food, water, a bed to sleep on and a roof over my head to keep the rain out. Hell, I’m doing really freakin good! I have so much to be grateful for. I’ve been practicing this gratitude comparison method for years, but I have to say, it really didn’t work for me at first. I had to actively focus my thoughts and even then barely feel any better. But slowly over time, I became a happier person and so can you.
No matter how bad I have it, someone else out there in the world right now and millions of people throughout history have had it way worse than me. I could have been drafted to fight in a war that I don’t believe in. Or I could be scrounging around nearly naked in Africa in the scorching heat trying to make sure that my family has enough food and water to survive the next three days. Instead of being envious of my neighbor or someone on social media or the news who has more money than me, I choose to practice gratitude that I’m in a better situation that many others. I choose to be happy and so can you 🙂