I had a recent conversation with a friend who was feeling inadequate compared with other people. He felt bad about himself because he thought others were smarter, more attractive, more popular, etc. The following is adapted from my reply. These thoughts help me a lot as well when I feel envy.

We're all in this together. Isn't it marvelous that there are so many wonderful, talented people in the world? You're one of them, and they are others. When people around us are joyful, healthy, productive, and doing good work, this is a beautiful thing. We can be proud of one another, happy for each other's successes, and inspired to realize that we're each doing our best to reduce suffering in the world. What more could we ask for? At the end of the day, doesn't it feel better to be partners and friends than to feel superior to other people?

Philosophical views dissolving personal identity help here as well.

As I've gotten older, I've begun to do a lot more "manager" work and a lot less "independent contributor" work in the utilitarian sphere. Partly this is because there seem to be higher returns from inspiring and coordinating other people to work on something than from doing it myself. I find that keeping projects on track can have high value relative to doing the detailed work behind those projects, because the management work is "boring" and tends to be neglected, and yet small reminders or suggestions on the direction of a project can matter a lot.

In any event, now that I spend more of my time helping others do good work rather than doing it myself, I've become less possessive of work that is "mine." I still agree with my own opinions more than those of most other people, but when someone else writes an excellent new article or starts a successful new project, I'm proud to see that being done with some fraction of the fervor as if I had done it myself. I'm doing what I can to contribute, but I don't feel inferior when I see other people going beyond where I've gone -- e.g., taking research on wild-animal suffering or veg-outreach calculations to the next level of sophistication. It's a beautiful sight to watch, and I'm glad to be part of it.

When I apply a similar attitude toward the amazing things that people in general accomplish all over the world, it does much to allay irrational feelings of envy. Life is not a competition, because our value doesn't come from being better than others. It comes from working together to contribute to a cause larger than ourselves.

This doesn't mean we don't care about our productivity or effectiveness, but we care about those things because they matter to the animals we're trying to help, not because we need to "win" the game. We're each at different places, with different strengths and talents, so what matters is how well we're doing relative to what our own endowments allow us to accomplish, without burning out or feeling bad about ourselves.

I suppose there might be people who are really motivated by competition and not by altruism. In this case, maybe it's okay to let them stay in their competitive world if it does more for animals. But if, like me, you find the world of competition vicious and degrading, the alternate mindset I'm proposing is available. In any event, since competition isn't always focused on reducing suffering, it can push in orthogonal directions. Sometimes it's just by accident that people compete to be more altruistic than each other.

It sounds like you have an admirable, healthy outlook!

Sometimes it can hurt to admit you were wrong. This is unfortunate, because adopting a more correct position matters if you want to actually help suffering minnows. One can come up with ways to look at the situation that make it seem more acceptable or maybe even positive.

One approach that a friend said he had heard is to think of life as a series of learning opportunities. It's cliche but true to note that even failures teach you something, although it's often better to short-circuit failures if you can by learning from the experience of others.

When someone else makes a good point or teaches me something I didn't know, one way to think of it is, "Oooh. Free advice! People pay consultants for this."

It needn't be about dishonesty, though. It's about emphasis and how you choose to see the reality that's there. Most of us do have things to contribute, and we should be proud of what those are. It doesn't mean we think we're better than other people -- in fact, the whole point of my post was to suggest a way to see how much other people contribute without feeling bad about it.

I agree that dishonesty is almost never a good idea, but "the glass is half empty" and "the glass is half full" are both completely true statements about a half empty/full glass.

Or both completely false de dicto statements about a half full/empty glass