Imagine that you’re living in a modest sized home in the middle of an extremely high-end neighborhood. Your house is a mere 1,200 square feet which is comfortably liveable and you make full use of every square foot.
Your neighbors, on the other hand, all have 3,000 square foot homes at the minimum. They drive better cars than you, they have kids in private schools, and they have bigger TVs than you. They’re better looking than you, too. You hate them.
Don’t you feel like a piece of crap? Doesn’t your inability to live your life as big as these people really get you down? Don’t you just want MORE? If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of these questions then this article was probably written for you!
Recently, I received an email from a reader who feels like she’s not getting enough out of life, while people around her are balling out of control. This seemingly unfortunate reader has been plagued with a mind rotting disease that psychologists have deemed the “mere-exposure effect”.
Here’s what she had to say:
“I’m just baffled of how others make it. We have an income of $180K a year. We have a friend who is a podiatrist and lives in a $600K house, 2 kids in private schools ($12k/yr/child) and drives 2 Mercedes SUVs. I’m not trying to sound like we’re “keeping up with Joneses” but I just really want to know how they are able to manage it as I too want to learn and have their lifestyle. I sometimes think that I’m missing a “secret” to financial success when I see my friends around me have such a lavish lifestyle.”
Similarly, Erin from Red Debted Stepchild had this to say:
“The thing that kills me is the peer pressure to buy stupid shit. I’ve actually lusted after things I don’t give a shit about just because other people had them. Like I’m a child or something. A swift kick in my own ass fixes it though :)”
While Erin has taken charge of her own finances, she admits that there are a few times that she becomes weak to peer pressure — that she is affected by the exposure of a bigger, better lifestyle. She responds like any good financially-minded First Class citizen should and destroys the negative thoughts that others tried to brainwash her with.
Our emailing friend doesn’t quite have the same values though. She is impressed with her neighbor’s ability to put his kids through private school and envies his ability to have such nice new SUVs in the driveway. She wants to learn, and live the lifestyle of her podiatrist friend. She wants the $600k house. She wants MORE.
While I’m not going to say that she is wrong in wanting these things, I think that she is putting herself at risk by living in the area that she is in. When I lived in a nicer neighborhood, where people drove nicer cars, and had better lawns, I have to admit that it had an effect on me as well.
I started to want things that I never would have wanted in my previous dwelling.
Before we moved to the big house (which is now our income property), we lived in an extremely small 500 sq ft apartment. The apartment was in a beach town that was constantly hit with hurricanes and tropical storms. No one drove nice vehicles, because no one wanted to see their nice cars destroyed by the weather or seagull shit.
Then we moved a few states North to Maryland, where all of the houses are bigger, and the land is way more expensive. It’s also a place where people drive vehicles with a lot bigger price tags and where private schools exist. Moving to this area felt a lot like a lifestyle upgrade, but I was mistaken.
Instead of feeling like things were better in a bigger, newer house, we started to get uncomfortable with our surroundings — and even more uncomfortable with our enormous mortgage. “$1950 in this area isn’t bad at all” is what other people told us. We made a decision to find a smaller place in a quiet neighborhood.
At our new house we’re surrounded by decent blue collar workers who have lived in their current residences for multiple decades. They drive sturdy vehicles (nothing newer than 2005). Their lawns are decent, but far from well-manicured. And everyone is generally very happy. This is mainly due to the fact that no one in our neighborhood is advertising an unsustainable lifestyle to one another.
One of the strongest forms of advertisement is word-of-mouth. It’s a free form of advertisement for the capitalist firms, and coming from your best friend or brother it can motivate you far more than print or visual ads. Then, there’s an entirely different form of advertising, called “real life”. An advertisement called “looking out the window”. What can motivate you to want a new Mercedes more than for your neighbor to park one in their driveway?
I have a friend that works for Audi. He drives an old jalopy, but he’s very interested in a newer model A3 that’s coming out later this year. He lives and breathes Audi, yet he doesn’t drive one. BUT HE WANTS TO! What kind of car do you think he’d be interested in if he worked for BMW?
Anything and everything that you’re exposed to on a consistent basis will help to shape your mind around that particular topic. If you immerse yourself in literature about building a small, eco-friendly dwelling in a regular fashion, you’re going to be interested in building one eventually. Conversely, if you’re interested in the high-end, big-life, cigar-aficionado, yacht-racing lifestyle you’re going to want that type of lifestyle for yourself (even if you’re the broke-est dude on the block).
Decide what type of lifestyle you want
This is where you get to decide what type of lifestyle you want to lead. Everything up to this point in your life has shaped your mind to want a particular category of things. But, you have the ability to change what you want at any given time. You don’t have to be obsessed with shoes, or clothes, or cars, or sports. These are choices, not facts.
By reading Cosmo or Jalopnik or Sports Illustrated, you’re letting yourself become attached to a certain standard of living that is complementary of the Middle Class. But, you’ve made the decision to live a First Class life, so you’re going to need to set your priorities straight by reforming your interests.
You don’t have to stop wanting things. You should just focus on the things that will actually benefit you in life. Unfortunately, there isn’t very much added benefit to having a Corvette, new Christian Louboutin shoes (the ones with the bright red soles) or the newest iPhone or even watching the Super Bowl. There is plenty of added benefit in reading finance and lifestyle blogs or self-help books, cooking home made meals, or hanging out with your family.
If you’re living in a hellhole like our previous neighborhood where everyone is obsessed with outdoing each other then you may need to change your living arrangement. If you’re living in an upscale area, or a neighborhood where everybody drives fancy cars, think about moving to a lower Middle Class area. It isn’t gross to have a 1,500 square foot (or less) house. It isn’t gross to have older cars, or pre-owned clothes.
Another thing that I have found that helps is to change the media type that you subscribe to. Upgrade your streaming music player to the ad-free version so you don’t have to listen to godawful commercials. Log onto your Facebook account and remove all product “likes” so your wall isn’t covered in Katy Perry singles, or Roombas. Go through your email and unsubscribe to EVERYTHING that comes from companies that sell stuff. You don’t have to do this all at once. Every time a solicited email comes in, JA-BLAM, unsubscribe to it. And install an ad-blocking plugin on your Internet browser. I may lose ad revenue but I also don’t give a fuck about the lost pennies (I care more about you).
The last thing that you should do is to expose yourself frequently to things that you wouldn’t normally be exposed to that would have a positive impact on your life. The thought of a Goodwill store may make your skin crawl, but make it a point to browse their wears once a week. Eventually, Goodwill shopping will be second nature. The same can be said about going to the library, cooking new and exciting meals at home, and traveling to non-tourist trap areas. Add donating, fundraising, or volunteering to this list, and you will have an extremely fulfilling life.
It’s hard to imagine that external factors that we can’t control have such a heavy impact on our decision making. It’s harder to imagine that we can actually do something to change the stuff that our brains think that they care about, but we’re the pilots. We can steer our brains toward any interests that we think would benefit our lives.
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Images from Flickr: Nestor’s Blurrylife and feldpress
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