"Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts."

- Jean Vanier

The Most Stupid of Vices

By Alexander Green

Economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway recently conducted a survey where they asked participants if they would rather earn $50,000 a year while other people made $25,000, or earn $100,000 a year while others got $250,000.

Sit down for this one. The majority of participants selected the first option. They would rather make twice as much as others, even if that meant earning half as much as they could have with the second option.

This is completely nuts, of course. Yet other findings by Solnick and Hemenway confirmed the envious nature of contemporary culture. People said, for instance, that they would rather be average-looking in a community where no one is considered attractive than merely good-looking in the company of stunners.

When it came to education, parents said they would rather have an average child in a crowd of dunces than a smart child in a class full of brilliant students.

What is going on here? In his book The Mind of the Market, Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer writes, "Our sense of happiness tends to be based on positional and relative rankings compared to what others have."

There's one problem, however. That doesn't work.

As the philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out, "Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed."

Of all the dissatisfactions we face, surely none is more menial than envy. It denies us contentment, is a waste of time, and is an insult to ourselves. Worst of all, it's completely self-imposed.

"Envy is the most stupid of vices," wrote Honore de Balzac, "for there is no single advantage to be gained from it."

Face it. We all know people who are smarter, fitter, richer, funnier, more talented, or better looking. But so what?

Thinking this way only keeps you from appreciating your own uniqueness and self-worth, things that, not incidentally, do lead to greater happiness. Especially when combined with a strong sense of purpose.

As Shermer writes, "Feeling ennobled is a pleasurable emotion that arises out of this deepest sense of purpose. Although there are countless activities people engage in to satisfy this deep-seated need, the research shows that there are four means by which we can bootstrap ourselves toward happiness through purposeful action." These include:

1. Deep love and family commitment

2. Meaningful work and career

3. Social and political involvement

4. Transcendency and spirituality

Note that psychologists have yet to discover a route to happiness by comparing oneself to others. (Although it never hurts to measure yourself against your own ideals.)

Concentrating on your own fortunes - and improving those of others - is guaranteed to generate more satisfaction than sizing up the Joneses. Besides, if you knew everything the other guy was dealing with, you might prefer your own circumstances anyway.

In other words, don't begrudge the other guy his blessings. Count your own, instead. As Mark Twain said, "Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead."

[Ed. Note: Alexander Green is Chairman of Investment U and Investment Director of The Oxford Club. Although he still writes investment commentary for both publications, he now tackles some of life's more difficult challenges in his free, twice-weekly e-letter Spiritual Wealth. Learn how to grapple with the big questions in your life by signing up here.]

Why I Drive a Stick

By Judith Strauss, ETR's Senior Editor

I'd left the lights on, and my car was dead in the company parking lot. "If you have jumper cables, I'll give you jump," said one of my fellow workers.

"No. I don't have cables. But maybe you could just give me a push-start."

"That only works with a manual transmission," he said (with a bit of a smirk).

"This is a manual."

"No kidding!"

Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, "Okay. Get in, step on the clutch, and put it in second."

Minutes later, I was on my way.

Growing up in Chicago, there was no need for me to drive at all. Buses and subways were convenient and cheap. But then I moved to Idaho, where public transportation was nonexistent and nothing was in walking distance. So I had to learn. And the person who volunteered to teach me had a VW bug with a manual transmission.

That was a long time ago - but I still choose to drive a stick. Why?

• It's mechanically simpler than an automatic - which means there's less maintenance and less that can go wrong. (At least that's the argument I bought into way back when, though I'm told it's no longer as much of a consideration.) Plus, if something does go wrong, it tends to be cheaper to fix.

• It's cheaper up front, by about $1,000 on a new car. And it's more fuel efficient, which becomes more of an issue every year.

• It has better acceleration - helpful when merging into highway traffic or passing.

• It gives you control over the gears - good to have when negotiating a steep hill or curve, especially if the road is icy or wet.

• Though the vast majority of cars in the U.S. have automatic transmissions, the rest of the world likes manuals. So if you expect to do any overseas traveling that will involve a rental car, being able to drive stick is a good skill to have.

Those are all my logical reasons. But there's one more: the look on a man's face when he finds out I can drive this thing. You'd think I'd just stepped out of a phone booth with my hands on my hips - in red, white, and blue spandex, knee-high boots, and carrying a whip.

Where to Put Your Protein Bars

By Jon Benson

My friend Tom Venuto calls protein bars "candy bars in disguise." Despite this, some people actually recommend protein bars to people trying to lose weight. In fact, the protein bar could be helping you get fatter.

In a study published in The Medical Science Monitor, 20 adults were instructed to eat the following on five separate days: white bread (all carbs, all worthless), a low-carb Atkins Advantage Bar, a medium-carb Balance Bar, a high-carb Power Bar, and a skinless chicken breast (no carbs at all).

The white bread, which elevated their insulin levels sky-high, was used as a baseline comparison. And guess what? The high-carb bar raised their insulin to nearly three-quarters the level of the white bread. The medium-carb bar didn't fare much better, raising their insulin to about one-third the level of the white bread. The low-carb bar? About one-quarter the level of the white bread. In short, all the bars increased insulin levels, as any food would, but in proportion to the amount of carbohydrate they contain. The chicken? Almost twice under the insulin response of white bread.

When attempting to lose body fat, you want to keep your insulin levels at a trickle. Lower levels of insulin in the blood equate to higher levels of glucagon, your body's fat-mobilizing hormone. You burn more fat when insulin is kept in check. This is the reason low-carb dieting works so well for so many people: the lower the carbs, the lower the insulin response.

Researchers tried to blame the insulin spike from the Balance Bar (which contains good fats) on its combination of protein and carbs. That was rather silly, considering the Balance Bar is full of sugar. (Now you know why these bars taste so good. They're Snickers candy with less carbs.)

When dieting to lose body fat, throw your protein bars in the garbage and stick to real food. Load up on lean meats and veggies. These foods not only produce the lowest levels of insulin, but also the highest level of TEF (thermogenic effect of food). The higher the TEF, the greater the amount of energy the body requires to digest and process the food. In short, you're using more calories just by eating the stuff.

Now that is good diet food!

It's Good to Know: The Vocal Joystick

University of Washington researchers have developed software that converts sounds into controlled movements of a cursor on a computer screen. They hope the device will allow people with disabilities to surf the Web and use other computer software.

With the Vocal Joystick, the user voices different vowel sounds to move the cursor in different directions. Louder sounds make the cursor move faster. And "k" and "ch" sounds replace the click of a mouse button. The technology could also be adapted to control electric wheelchairs and robotic arms, say the researchers.

(Source: Physorg.com)

Word to the Wise: Gamine

A "gamine" (gam-EEN) - from the French for a child who wanders the streets - is a playfully mischievous girl or young woman.

Example (as used by Joe Brown in the Washington Post): "And the whole world is whacked out with fear of nuclear doom, except for Claire, a French gamine who is 'living her own nightmare' and waking up in lots of strange places."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2345, 05-02-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.