People are always trying to impress other people with their possessions and wealth in an attempt to make everyone like them . Perception often never meets reality. Here is a list of 10 things that never impress smart people like us.
The simple fact is possessions of any kind will never bring us happiness. Most people are happiest when we are with family or making connections with other people. Life is never about collecting stuff, its all about collecting memories.
Great experiences and connections with people are the things we need to pursue in life and none of the things in this list. Never be impresses buy other people having these things.
Fancy Car
I always laugh at people who lease an expensive car. The purpose of a car is to move your from one place to another as safely as possible. Often luxury cars don’t do this very well.
A car is an expense and it often requires additional expenses to maintain it, fuel it, clean it, and insure it. Fancy cars cost more to buy, more to maintain, and usually are not the most functional when transporting people from place to place.
So why do people buy them? They think it improves their image. They think it will impress other people. Sorry to say, for most people, it does.
Most people think “only rich people buy fancy cars”, right? Not true!
Real rich people know value in a car and spend their money wisely. They buy quality cars that are really dependable. Rich wise people take the money left over and invest it so it can make more money.
People should focus their car buying money on quality cars. A car that will last a very long time, require less money in maintenance, and get them from point to point safely and reliably. This is the wise way to buy a car. Don’t be impressed with the fancy sport cars some people drive today or high end luxury cars. Instead, be impressed with Honda’s and Toyota’s that have 300K miles on it, a paid off home, and a well invested retirement account.
Large House
Are you impressed with a large house? I bet you are, most people are because of its grandeur and styling.
The purpose of a house is to keep you safe from the weather and protect your stuff when you are out working for the money to pay for your house and stuff.
The bigger the house, the more money it costs. This means you will need to work harder to pay for it and than fill it with more expensive stuff. Also, bigger homes require mote time maintain and clean. This comes down to more time away form the things you enjoy doing and more time taking care of your over sized house.
So why have a large house that is just taking value from your life? I don’t know. If you can see it in this light, it is not very impressive. Be impressed by smart people who buy the right size house for their family and never try to impress others with lots of wood and paint.
Expensive Vacations
I love a great experience and I will argue it is one of the main purposes in life. Vacations and trips are one of the best ways to gain these experiences.
Do great vacations need to be expensive? I would say no.
Expensive vacations usually cost more due to 2 factors, travel and lodging. Most, but not all of the time, these expenses are not needed.
If you are taking a trip to Disney, will your vacation experience be improved by staying in their best, most expensive housing? Maybe, but will it be worth 4 times the cost of the trip, not likely.
If you are traveling to Hawaii, Caribbean, or taking a cruse, how much will your trip experience be improved if you spend double on your airfare or lodging. I would bet your best experiences will not be spent in the hotel or airport. Most people would focus more on their adventures outside their hotel room and time spent with their family.
I would recommend saving as much money on your high end vacations and take several less expensive trips doubling your experiences instead of your costs. Plus, you don’t have to travel far to have a memory filled adventure.
Fancy Restaurants
Everyone loves great food and eating out. I’ve learned that great food can be found in any restaurant and is not only found in the $100+ plate restaurant. So why do people go there? I have no clue.
We just finished watching the movie “Burnt” and the story is about how the kitchen of a high end restaurant works. It is all about the search for the perfect meal. I loved the ideas of the perfect meal and the goal of surprising the taste buds with new and exciting tastes. I just don’t see the value in it, especially when I can get that experiences for much less.
For me, quality always means more then fancy. For me, quality mean can be found in a local pizza restaurant or a specialist restaurant around the corner. Great dinning is fresh ingredients and a great chef always looking for new ways to express themselves. I know you can find better, high quality, delicious meals for a fraction of the cost and the only thing I care about impressing are my taste buds.
Trendy Clothes
I love style and recommend it all the time on this website. I am also a preppy and brands mean a lot to this style. One very important things to note, some brand names really stand for quality over everything else. The cost per wear on a quality preppy brand is always lower compared to most other brands.
Investing in quality clothes are always a stylish and a smart choice.
Trendy clothes are things that are in temporary in style and are usually discarded after the limited season is over (from a few weeks to a few months). You often pay hundreds for clothes you will wear a few times before it will start to detract from your look.
If you really want to impress your friends, buy classical styles from brands that are known for quality and keep your clothes for many years. This is a great way to make your clothing budget go further and a smart style choice for anyone.
Luxury Watches
I am a watch slut and love the appeal of high quality watches. The watch list below are considered some of the best in the world and have a price tag to match. There is one thing all those watches have in common, they all will tell you the time.
What does a luxury watch bring to your styling game that a lower prices watch doesn’t? Nothing. So the only thing it is advertising to everyone is you cannot manage your money very well.
I happen to own several very high end watches and love all of them. I bought them at a fraction of the full retail costs by buying them used and wear them often. The point is feel free to buy a high end watch but get it for a great deal. This way you are getting a watch that will last, something you love, and something to pass down to your kids later in life.
If you happen to come across a great watch at a great price, then enjoy it. Never pay full retail for one of these. The cost of many of these watches is more then a lot of Americans have invested in their retirement accounts. What is the sense of that.
Better watches to buy are Seiko, Tag-Heuer, Citizen, Invicta, and Orient. I have been buying Timex watches lately. Not because they are quality watches but because I love the way they look and only cost around $20. I know the quality isn’t there but I love the styling and how they go with my outfits. I would expect at least 5 years of enjoyment from a $20 watch and that is a great investment.
Job Title
What does a job title (other then CEO) really say about you. It means you are running really fast in the rat race and you spend most of your time making someone else rich.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having a great job and living that sort of life. But that should not impress anyone. If you volunteer your time to some organization, than in my opinion, that is more impressive then having an executive job title.
I suspect most people work in jobs they hate. They do it because they get trapped in the way society works today. People get a job out of school, spend the money on a fancy lifestyle, make more money, spend more money improving their lifestyle, and eventually they get trapped because they need to continue making a ton money to afford the lifestyle they have created. They are trapped, addicted to their lifestyle.
Find work you love and would do for free and live the life you were meant to live. Forget the job title and fancy lifestyle. Love your life!
Power
People fall in love with power because it comes with the illusion of respect. People want to be respected and often it is a replacement for being loved.
Lets look at this from the simple worker and boss relationship. The boss loves power because they can tell other people what to do. Workers work hard because someday they want to be promoted to boss and then tell other people what to do.
What if you really enjoyed the work, would you want to tell someone else to do it? In this case, you would never want the power to delegate stuff. You will want the pride and enjoyment of doing something you love.
Focus your energy on finding and doing the things you love and enjoy the power you have over your own life. This simple change is all you need to start living a life worth living.
Money
Money is both a blessing and a curse. You can buy your hearts desires with money but in return you will divert your attention from what really matters in life, Friends and Family!
There is a lot of research about how much money it really takes to be happy. Most research say that amount is around $75,000. Anything over that doesn’t bring additional happiness. Why would you be envious of people with really high income or large bank accounts when money is not the key to happiness?
Instead, look into someone’s eyes and see if they are really happy. If they are, then be really happy for them and forget about the money.
Possessions and Collections
Most people like to collect things. Some people collect pennies and other people collect sport cars. It’s the enjoyment it brings the individual that should hold the collections value and not the amount of money it may be worth.
Should you be impressed with someone’s collection? If collecting it required a lot of skill or effort, then I would be impressed on that persons diligence in working on their goals. If the collection just required money to purchase, then there is little to be impressed as there is no skill that went into it’s collecting.
I love collecting leather books, coins, stamps, and other little stuff. My collections have little to no value and brings me joy in the searching and finding. I am starting to shift my collections hobbies to more virtual stuff to avoid the clutter that often comes along with things. I want these items to bring joy and not additional clutter stress.
Conclusion
One of the biggest problems we have in the world is people playing the “Keeping up with the Jones” game. People want what other people have and that is a character flaw that we need to fix in ourselves.
The Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote a book called “The Book of Joy”. One of the lessons I took away from this book is in order to be joyful, you must be generally happy in other people’s success and happiness.
When you are generally happy that someone else has a nice car, job, watch, house, or any of the other things on this list, then you will not feel disappointment if you don’t also have those things too. You will feel happy being you and you can be truly happy for them. Detachment to stuff is one of the biggest keys to happiness and until we can detach ourselves from material processions, we will struggle.
Work on yourself, your detachment to stuff, and being generally happy for other people’s happiness and watch your own joy in life grow. It really is that simple.
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