Accepting People & Their Ideas

I have been pondering about this topic ever since I was kid.Earlier I used to think it's just me who envy others, may be I am too bad or thats how god has made me and many more craps like this, I am sure many of us felt the same way.
Recently I came across some articles and especially after going through AOL(http://us.artofliving.org/) where realized how really mind works and the importance of keeping it checked and how to do so. I tried thinking little differently. Try experimenting this on yourself;

Have you ever noticed this when you are low or feeling really miserable and if at that time your close friend comes with real wonderful news about himself,you FORCED yourself to speak good and FAKE out your happiness with his news, though internally you might be envious and feeling miserable.
Now if you reverse this situation and say you are very happy for some of your achievements,and if you receive the same news now your happiness will be doubled. you will feel good not just outwardly but internally as well.

Infact some of these things happens with us every day, just imagine how many of us are genuinely appreciative of our co-workers effort, sometime even though we know a colleague of ours might have already solved certain issues, instead of asking his help or appreciating his effort we try to solve the same issue and thinking I can do better. A part of the problem lies with the culture in which we are living, where innovators are rewarded but taking other helps are thought to be followers, and the other reason could be we feel threatened of our existence and losing social standing.

These things are not just limited to individuals but percolate down to corporate levels, history is littered with how personal bias and envy killed some of the most promising development within the company, what happened within Xerox further substantiate my thought ,back in 1970's Xerox research center at Paulo Alto came up with the concept of copy, paste, integrated GUI, and many more things we take for granted in to-days PC's but was a distant dream then. Infact they came up with a prototype model of morden day PC as well, one that can fit within a desk-top( A big thing at that time)but the company, though invested on initial experiments but never commercialized it and among some of the factors were it was killed by internal competation and envy. How sad, the fruits are now enjoyed by MSFT, IBM and others, and till to-day we know Xerox as just copier.

Recently a study conducted in University of Chicago revealed some of the simple self affirming exercise, in which attendees were asked to list some of their accomplishment and also were asked to describe value that they cherish. This helped them erase their sense of being threatened. After this exercise they felt more comfortable accepting co-workers great idea. May be this is one way to start accepting people, knowing your qualities and taking effort to improve yourself.