Hey friends,

Hello from beautiful Toronto, where I’ll be for the next month visiting family. I may host a meetup with readers sometime in August, so if you’re interested, hit reply and I’ll gauge whether or not to set it up.

In other news, The Inner Compass has been out for just 3 weeks now, and I’m still surprised at the response. It continues to be a Top New Release on Amazon and has sold over 1,500 copies already, which means that it’s traveling by word-of-mouth. It’s wild to see this happening so early, but it really is a function of your support.

There’s a lot more happening with the book that I’ll announce soon, as the enthusiasm for it has led to other opportunities. But in the meantime, I’d like to close the loop on the bonus booklet that I’ve been offering throughout the month.

Today will be the last day to get “A Month of Reflections”, which is a collection of 30 meditations that will help you navigate the fog of uncertainty. If you have a journaling practice (or are looking to start one), it can act as a wonderful companion to bring clarity to your day. I’ve included an introduction that details how to use it, followed by 30 carefully selected reflections that will help you recalibrate (and trust) your intuition.

If you want the booklet, just hit reply to this email and send me a screenshot of your order receipt. I don’t know when I’ll offer it again, so I suggest you order The Inner Compass in any format and send me your receipt today.

Finally, if you’ve already read The Inner Compass, I’d love to know what you thought of it. If you want to let me know personally, just hit reply to share your thoughts. I read every email. And if you want to let others know, then please leave an honest Amazon review (or Goodreads review) that communicates your reflections on it. Every single one helps.

For the rest of today’s newsletter, I wanted to re-share a short essay I published on envy. Readers of The Inner Compass may recognize it in the book’s postscript, but I originally published it on my blog a few years ago. It’s one of my personal favorites that I revisit whenever I find myself struggling with envy, and it has become a popular piece that’s resonated with many others as well. Even Morgan Housel shared a quote from it, which admittedly, made my day.

Morgan Housel @morganhousel "Envy is inversely correlated with self-examination. The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth." @moretothat 12:4 PM • Jul 18, 2024 169 Retweets 942 Likes Read 20 replies

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Here it is in its entirety, and I hope that reading it will provide you with the same clarity I had while writing it. Enjoy.

​The Antidote to Envy​

I recently came across a passage from Krishamurti’s Think On These Things that gave me pause. I rarely highlight entire paragraphs when I read, but this one was so poignant that I had to elevate it from the page and into my memory.

Here it is:

I’ve since re-read this paragraph many times, and there’s one sentence that continues to capture my attention:

Today, I want to talk about what it means to know yourself, and how this results in the elimination of envy.

I’d like to start with an observation: Some people are open about their struggles with envy, while the majority hide it. I’m calling it an observation because I can’t point to a research paper that clearly shows this asymmetry, yet my personal exploration of human nature indicates that this is likely true.

Simply put, envy is one of those complicated emotions that hasn’t had its time in the spotlight yet. Vulnerability came on center stage when Brené Brown gave a popular TED Talk on it, while depression has emerged as something that’s okay to discuss in recent years. Envy, however, hasn’t quite found that comfort zone. Revealing that you’re an envious person won’t yield much sympathy, and is often accompanied by a sense of shame that you feel this way.

But envy is one of the most pervasive problems in today’s world, especially as social media normalizes the successes of others, making you feel like you’re “underperforming” the average when in reality you’re being shown a highlight reel of outliers. You’re always comparing yourself to someone ahead of you, and the goalpost will keep moving because the algorithm ensures that it moves on your behalf. And whenever a hierarchy like this exists, the fingers of envy creep within.

All this results in a conundrum. Envy is running through everyone’s veins, yet no one feels like they could talk about it. No one wants to admit that the success of others makes them feel inadequate, and that this inadequacy dampens their sense of self-worth. Not only is it difficult to admit this to others, but it’s just as hard to admit it to oneself.

But that last word - oneself - is where the solution to this resides.

Ultimately, envy is the result of not knowing who you are. It arises when you outsource your definitions of success to whatever norms you’ve adopted - whether consciously or not. In one person’s case, it might be wealth. In another, it may be social media followers. In another, it could be the size of a home. Regardless of what the barometer is, the fact that you desire it means that you’re looking beyond the contents of your mind and into the collective pool of society. You’re ceasing to look into what makes you uniquely you, and are gazing into the chaos of chasing that which you don’t understand.

One of my favorite Joker lines from The Dark Knight is when he says that people are like dogs chasing cars; they won’t know what to do if they actually catch them. I find that the same thing applies to the chase of success or anything that might make you feel envious. If you got the thing that was the subject of your envy, then what? Is that it? Are you satisfied?

Chances are, you’ll be like the dog having caught the car. There’s simply nothing you could do, except one of two things:

(1) Keep yourself busy by chasing another car, or

(2) Learn that this entire chase is pointless.

#1 is what psychologists refer to as the hedonic treadmill, while #2 is what I refer to as the antidote to envy.

There is an interesting thing that happens when you see how society is organized into a giant game. You see the puppet strings of incentives and the invisible hierarchies that govern the way the pieces move, and this realization is both fascinating and disconcerting. No human being wants to be reduced to an algorithm, but it’s funny how if you get enough of us together, we behave in ways that are just as predictable as the execution of a file.

To see beyond the game is to direct your attention inward instead. Rather than chasing the next car, you’ll explore why you wanted to chase that car in the first place. Because if you explore your own mind’s motives in great detail, you’ll learn more about humankind than playing any game ever will.

The reason why self-understanding leads to the elimination of envy is because when you explore the labyrinth of your mind, you simply have no room to want what another person has. There are more mysteries within the bounds of your own life than any novel can ever express, and this journey will take an entire lifetime to cover.

Remember: You didn’t choose your genes, your parents, your upbringing, your interests. Pretty much everything of consequence is the result of happenstance, and that is where we all begin. We’re equipped with a mind and body that we didn’t choose, yet the temptation is to believe that we know who we are. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the way to get closer to this truth is not to compare yourself to another, but to know what “yourself” even means in the first place.

At its core, self-understanding is a commitment to figuring out why you think the way you think. In my case, writing these kinds of essays is my way of understanding myself. I don’t do it to build an audience or to seek recognition for them. I do it because I want to explore why I struggle with the things I struggle with, and why I love the things I love. Given that I wasn’t the conscious agent that constructed my mind, it’s up to me to figure out what’s really going on underneath the hood of it all. No one can do that but me, and no one can do that for you but you.

Envy is inversely correlated with self-examination. The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth. But the more you delve into who you are, the less you seek from others, and the dissolution of envy begins.

That’s it for today’s newsletter. Was there anything that resonated? Anything that didn’t? I dive deeply into the topic of self-examination in The Inner Compass, so if you enjoyed that piece, you'll love the book.

Lastly, here's a final reminder to order The Inner Compass and get access to the bonus booklet by hitting reply to this email. Just attach your order receipt and I'll send it to you when I check my messages.

Thanks again for all your support. It truly means the world.

-Lawrence Yeo

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