[ahimel]

Speaking as someone who can become insanely jealous over the tiniest thing, I'd say that there's an element of fear in it also, in a lot of cases. (Granted, scarcity and fear often, but not always, go together).

When someone does better than I do, or goes farther than I can, or acquires something I can't have, it opens the door to all my fears of failure and inadequacy. Suddenly everything I've accomplished seems small and trivial. I fear that I'm simply destined to always be pathetic, that my greatest accomplishments will never inspire anyone or change the world in any way.

I'm sure the subjective viewpoint would help this problem a lot - if Steve is the same entity as I am, and that entity has quit its job and attained high levels of enlightenment and weekly writes articles that change the world, then of course I'm (in some sense) a great person. But I don't know that the abundance mindset would help all that much - I don't believe for a second that there's a fixed amount of respect in the world, and that for my coworker to have it takes it from me. I just don't believe that I can ever do anything to get any of that respect - an infinite quantity doesn't guarantee equal distribution.

I also know that there are a lot of people who DO become jealous because of a scarcity mindset -- many people I know take others' success as a personal insult. So it's still a good article, especially from someone who doesn't have personal experience with the problem.