Visualize someone who makes you envious—someone who squats smug as a toad in what is surely your rightful place in the world. Think of them in all their irritating splendor, enjoying the perks and accolades you no doubt deserve. Then . . . wish sincerely that they get even more goodies.
…. In rooting for someone else’s happiness, we tune to a different wavelength. We feel more beneficent, less deprived, more capable of giving. The focus on another person’s satisfaction becomes a lodestone that paradoxically draws us closer to our own. (Isn’t most envy just our own potential disowned? We are jealous of what we ourselves might become.) Seeing the world through another’s eyes (you in me, me in you) makes it feel there’s at least twice as much to go around; not more money or fame or square footage, but what underlies the whole pursuit: more love.
— Marc Ian Barasch in The Compassionate Life