My co-founder at HabitStrong, has one Buddha-like quality I have never seen in anyone – she is absolutely not affected by envy, FOMO, or the disease of comparing ourselves with other people.
She has never cared about how much money her classmates are making. Whenever we hear things like – “Your competitor startup is raising crazy amounts of money” or “XYZ just sold his startup for a thousand crores” – she is totally unaffected. There isn’t even a trace of envy or the feeling of “why did that not happen to me?”
She just focuses on doing her job, ignoring the noise.
So how does one get such equanimity?
While I don’t have a complete answer, one thing I have noticed is that she doesn’t live by relative benchmarks. She wants money to meet her needs, not to compete with anyone or impress other people with fancy possessions.
She has clarity about what she needs and what she doesn’t – what is right and what is wrong – what is meaningful and what is pointless.
When you have an absolute sense of your needs, you then have ground beneath your feet. You then stop living in the world of ‘relative comparison’, FOMO, and envy.
When we don’t have absolute benchmarks, we will want ‘more than that other guy.’ And that won’t happen – someone will always have more than you.
– Rajan