Live Your Life Not Theirs!
Do you know people who mimic others? I do. I have seen it all my life.
They have a big truck so I must have one. They have a new toy, so I must go out and get one too.This is a sure fire recipe of how to get into real trouble.
Do you even know what you really like or are you always swayed by advertisements, the neighbors, your friends?
Do you keep up appearances because you don’t want to look like the oddball?
Don’t feel bad, in my time in school being the oddball was never good. Not like today where people are always looking for the odd man out, my experience was not one that was pleasant. Wearing a light blue material belt off some old 50’s outfit as a bow in my hair in the early 80’s was not cool. It was teased hair and short hair at the time that was in style with acid washed jeans and jean jackets. Not the fifties pony tails.
Hand me downs were never cool like today. You were the poor kid if you wore them. You got shunned from hanging around with the cool kids. In high school, it was different because we started rebelling against everything being the same. We were teenagers and that was our job.
But we live in a society of entitlement and envy. We want what the Kardashians have. We want the new boat the neighbor has, and because of credit being so readily available we have the means available to us to get into real trouble that gives us an appearance of abundance and a bank total of $0.
One of the things we had to do was to start asking what we needed and wanted. And we finally figured out, it really wasn’t that much or even close to what the neighbor had.
We even got down to brass tacks and even questioned the simplest of machines in our house.
Just because every house has these appliances does not mean we need those appliances. We are without a dryer and were without a washer for almost a year and we did just fine (we just got a small washer that takes very little energy recently, and still love it). We don’t have a dishwasher, and we get clean dishes alright, we just don't keep a thousand dishes. We don’t have two fridges and the occasional beer we drink is just as cold in one fridge. We don’t have a separate freezer and we just take the stuff out of the boxes and leave them in bags that take up much less room in the freezer that comes with our fridge. Will our house look like the typical house of today? No. Do I care? No.
But it might be actually paid for in the next 5 years of so. When we stopped living like the Jones and started living like the Bishops without a care of what it would look like or even how we thought we should be living, we started seeing the traps created by society.
So if you want to live your own life, the first thing you need to do is to really question what it is you really want in your life. What brings you happiness and joy? Don’t let fear make the decisions for you. Sometimes your fears are so out of place that it skews your perceptions.
I was afraid of getting rid of my washer and dryer like my life would end. In reality, if you have a bucket with soap and water, you can have clean clothes, but the fear of the abnormal or what we consider abnormal scares us so badly that we forget that there are other options to almost everything.
I do what I call “From Scratch” method now. When faced with almost all situations, I try to put aside all I know, have seen, have been taught and try to find a solution based on what I need or what I am willing to do. First things I consider are cost and equally as important is convenience. So as cheaply and cost efficient as possible always gets first choice with us. And nowhere does anyone elses life come into play when making these decisions. We don’t care what you do or have unless it’s a cheaper and easier method than what we have come up with. In that case, we most certainly want what you have. And we only get what we really want and need because to buy or do anything for show is most certainly a total waste of time and money.
So we live our life for us and not theirs (meaning the people you copy). Do you? Have you made a purchase because someone bought one and you thought you wanted one too?
Let me know in the comments.
They have a big truck so I must have one. They have a new toy, so I must go out and get one too.This is a sure fire recipe of how to get into real trouble.
Do you even know what you really like or are you always swayed by advertisements, the neighbors, your friends?
Do you keep up appearances because you don’t want to look like the oddball?
Don’t feel bad, in my time in school being the oddball was never good. Not like today where people are always looking for the odd man out, my experience was not one that was pleasant. Wearing a light blue material belt off some old 50’s outfit as a bow in my hair in the early 80’s was not cool. It was teased hair and short hair at the time that was in style with acid washed jeans and jean jackets. Not the fifties pony tails.
Hand me downs were never cool like today. You were the poor kid if you wore them. You got shunned from hanging around with the cool kids. In high school, it was different because we started rebelling against everything being the same. We were teenagers and that was our job.
But we live in a society of entitlement and envy. We want what the Kardashians have. We want the new boat the neighbor has, and because of credit being so readily available we have the means available to us to get into real trouble that gives us an appearance of abundance and a bank total of $0.
One of the things we had to do was to start asking what we needed and wanted. And we finally figured out, it really wasn’t that much or even close to what the neighbor had.
We even got down to brass tacks and even questioned the simplest of machines in our house.
Just because every house has these appliances does not mean we need those appliances. We are without a dryer and were without a washer for almost a year and we did just fine (we just got a small washer that takes very little energy recently, and still love it). We don’t have a dishwasher, and we get clean dishes alright, we just don't keep a thousand dishes. We don’t have two fridges and the occasional beer we drink is just as cold in one fridge. We don’t have a separate freezer and we just take the stuff out of the boxes and leave them in bags that take up much less room in the freezer that comes with our fridge. Will our house look like the typical house of today? No. Do I care? No.
But it might be actually paid for in the next 5 years of so. When we stopped living like the Jones and started living like the Bishops without a care of what it would look like or even how we thought we should be living, we started seeing the traps created by society.
So if you want to live your own life, the first thing you need to do is to really question what it is you really want in your life. What brings you happiness and joy? Don’t let fear make the decisions for you. Sometimes your fears are so out of place that it skews your perceptions.
I was afraid of getting rid of my washer and dryer like my life would end. In reality, if you have a bucket with soap and water, you can have clean clothes, but the fear of the abnormal or what we consider abnormal scares us so badly that we forget that there are other options to almost everything.
I do what I call “From Scratch” method now. When faced with almost all situations, I try to put aside all I know, have seen, have been taught and try to find a solution based on what I need or what I am willing to do. First things I consider are cost and equally as important is convenience. So as cheaply and cost efficient as possible always gets first choice with us. And nowhere does anyone elses life come into play when making these decisions. We don’t care what you do or have unless it’s a cheaper and easier method than what we have come up with. In that case, we most certainly want what you have. And we only get what we really want and need because to buy or do anything for show is most certainly a total waste of time and money.
So we live our life for us and not theirs (meaning the people you copy). Do you? Have you made a purchase because someone bought one and you thought you wanted one too?
Let me know in the comments.
Comments
Post a Comment