Relative income as a key factor to maximizing emotional satisfaction during the Steemit experience

If we ask random people what would it take to make their job more fulfilling, most would say something like "a higher income". Right? Yet what they answer is wrong. Apparently happiness is less related to absolute income per se. In fact it is all about relative income to one's co-workers and peers. 

Someone who works at an office with several co-workers and earns 1000$ while the others earn 800$, will in most cases be happier that way compared to a scenario where he receives 1500$ and his co-workers 2000$. 

In the first scenario he would feel as "king" while in the second scenario he would feel "unappreciated" and "lesser-than", with his ego and feeling of self-worth getting hurt. Subconsciously the worker will perceive their wage as an extension of their own self-worth and self-value. Predictably it will make one angry or sad that others, who he deems "worse", get paid more. 

I remember working in a big and very well-funded organization where the average salary was around 3000 euros (for local standards that was a lot). Now this organization had one guy that worked around 10 hours per day, covering logistic support for the office workers. He would carry equipment, boxes, he would setup desks and chairs, fix minor mechanical and electric stuff, etc etc. He was very busy all the time and he had quite some pressure for what he was doing. At the time he was getting paid around 1800 euro - when most jobs of this type wouldn't pay more than 600. Yet he was threatening to quit because he "couldn't take it anymore". He didn't quit (for the brief period that I was there) but I could tell that his frustration wasn't a result of his workload or other workers attitude. Besides most people were nice to him. He just couldn't stand the fact that all these office workers were "sitting on their asses all day long", getting insane amounts of money compared to what he perceived as his (real) work. He couldn't stand the fact that he was the "lowest" possible type of employee (besides the janitors), doing all the work and getting paid so much less. Even if he rationalized the fact that he would be getting at most 1/3rd if he went elsewhere, he was still seriously entertaining the thought of quitting.

Now the relevance with Steem is that a lot of people don't have such a problem that others are making money, nor are they necessarily "envious" of others making money. But they do sublimely feel that their self-worth is threatened when they don't get what they perceive is right for them. Someone might be making 300$ and feel "unhappy" because someone else made 30.000$. Yet if he was making 200$ and others were making 100$, he would be much happier due to his skills being "recognized" as superior.

One could say that the solution to the problem would be to spread author rewards in a more even fashion as to reduce chaotic gaps. Not only it would be more beneficial for the platform (more content creators incentivized = more and better content for everyone = more attractive platform for readers) but it would also create a smaller psychological "trigger" for people's confidence and self-worth.

Yet, even that, would just be a half-measure: Ultimately the solution is in developing a greater degree of self-awareness as individuals. Developing the awareness of how our mind plays tricks on us and how we sublimely correlate income as an extension of our ego. If we know the inner processing of our mind we can then better understand and control our reactions. This is one of the key aspects to maximizing our experience on Steemit.