How to kill the consumer in yourself: the experience of a person with money

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Often a person develops a passion for materialism during periods of financial trouble. But now the situation has straightened out, there is wealth, and you can already buy everything. But will it add happiness? The experience of people not limited in finances says no.

Graham Hill is an entrepreneur, a well-to-do man, he lived very luxuriously, surrounded by a bunch of everything that he seemed to need, but in fact only consumed his life and time.

Read the excerpts from his discourse.

I live in a 39 square meter studio. I sleep on a pull-out bed built into the wall. I have 6 shirts. 10 caps for salads and other dishes. When guests come to my place for dinner, I take out a folding table. I don't have a DVD and my current book collection is 10% of the original.

I've come a long way since the late 90s, when a successful internet startup turned out to be a huge stream of money for me. Then I bought a giant house and filled it with things, electronics, household appliances, gadgets, organized my own car fleet.

But somehow all this goodness took over my own life, well, or most of it. The things that I consumed, absorbed, eventually consumed me. Yes, I do not have the most common life scenario, because few people get very rich by the age of 30, but my scenario of interacting with things is the most common.

We live in a surplus of goods, in a world of hypermarkets, huge shopping malls and convenience stores. People of almost any social stratum can surround themselves with things.

There is no indication that these things make us happy. In fact, I see the opposite picture.

It took me 15 years to get rid of all the nonessential that I so diligently accumulated, and begin to live wider, freer, better, possessing less.

We have already talked about the most interesting and, probably, one of the most crazy experiments for the brain of a typical consumer - testing hundreds of things. You just take and throw off the shackles of materialism, leaving only what you really need.

It all started in 1998. My partner and I sold our consulting company for money that I thought I would not earn in my entire life.

Having received this amount, I bought a 4-storey house. Seized by the opportunity to consume, I bought a brand new sectional sofa, a pair of $ 300 glasses, a ton of gadgets, and an audiophile 5-disc CD player. And, of course, a black charged Volvo with remote engine start.

I began to actively work on a new company, and there was absolutely no time to go home. Then I hired a guy named Seven, who, according to him, worked as an assistant to Courtney Love herself. He became my shopping assistant. His role consisted of shopping for home appliances, electronics and accessories with a camera. He photographed things that, in his opinion, would appeal to me, after which I looked through the photos of things and chose the ones I liked to buy.

However, the consumer drug soon ceased to cause euphoria. I grew cold to everything. The new Nokia did not excite and satisfy me. I began to think about why the improvements in my life, which in theory should have made me happier, do not help, but only create a sense of anxiety in my head.

Life has become more difficult. So many things to watch out for. Lawn, cleaning, car, insurance, maintenance. Seven had a lot of work to do, and … after all, I have a personal shopping assistant? What have I become? !! My house and my belongings became my new employers, and I didn't want to hire them.

Things got worse. I moved to New York for work and rented a large house that served as a good reflection of me as an IT entrepreneur. The house needed to be filled with things, and it was costly in terms of effort and time. I also have my home in Seattle. Now I have to think of two houses. When I decided that I would stay in New York, it took a tremendous effort and a lot of flights back and forth to close the issue with the old house and get rid of all the things that were in it.

Obviously, I was lucky with money, but similar problems are common to many.

The study "Living at Home in the 21st Century," published last year, shows the lives of 32 middle-class families. Taking care of your belongings is guaranteed to trigger the release of stress hormones. 75% of families were unable to park their car in the garage because the garage was clogged with other things.

Our love of things affects almost every aspect of our lives. The size of houses is growing, the average number of residents per house is decreasing. For 60 years, the space for one person has increased 3 times. I wonder why? To store even more things in it?

What do we store in boxes that we drag when we move? We don't know until we open it.

An interesting trend, although it applies to the United States. Did you know that according to The Natural Resources Defense Council, it turns out that 40% of the food that an American buys ends up in the trash can?

Such insatiability has consequences on a global scale. Wild consumption is possible due to overproduction, which is destroying our entire ecosystem. The iPhones that Foxconn makes are also causing dire changes in the ecology of China's industrial areas. Cheap production, spitting on the consequences. Does all of this make you happier?

There is one more point - socio-psychological. The observations of Galen Bodenhausen, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, unambiguously link consumption and abnormal, antisocial behavior. The consumer mindset is equally negative for a person, regardless of their income level.

My attitude to life changed after meeting Olga. Together with her, I moved to Barcelona. Her visa expired, and we lived in a small, modest apartment, and were happy. Then we realized that nothing keeps us in Spain. We packed some clothes, grabbed toiletries, our laptops and hit the road: Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Toronto and many more places along the way. I continued to work, but my office now fit in my backpack. I felt free and did not miss my car and my gadgets at home.

The relationship with Olga ended, but my life changed forever. There are fewer things in it, I travel light. I have more time and more money to spare.

Intuitively, we understand that the best things in life are not the same “things”, but relationships, experiences and achieving goals. They are products of a happy life.

I like material objects. I studied design, I love gadgets and clothes and stuff like that. But my experience shows that from a certain moment material objects are supplanted by emotional needs, which these objects, in theory, should support.

I am still an entrepreneur and am currently developing smart compact homes. These houses are designed to support our lives, not the other way around. Like the 39 square meters in which I live, these houses do not require a lot of materials for construction, do not require serious maintenance costs, allowing the owner to live more economically.

I sleep well because I know that I am not using more resources than I really need. I have fewer things, but more enjoyment.

Little space - lots of life.