There’s no doubt about it. Make no mistake.

We live in a consumerist society.

For those of you unfamiliar with what a consumerist mentality comprises of, it simply entails a mentality where a person equates his/her self worth and personal happiness through the purchase of material goods.

Before I go any further, I want to make something perfectly clear.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying material goods. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I’m not saying that you should sell all your belongings and live in a cardboard box down the street. We have to have a roof over our heads. Most of us need a car to drive to and from work. We need to buy food to eat. We need to buy clothes to wear.

But when the purpose of buying material goods is to create true self worth and personal happiness, it’s not that it's wrong (because who’s to say what’s wrong or right?); it’s that it just doesn’t work.

It just doesn’t.

We’ve been led to believe our whole lives that it does, but it doesn’t.

And most of us don’t realize this simple truth until after the fact.

Here’s a very simple example I’m sure you can relate to in order to illustrate that point.

Think back to when you were a child. Think of the toy you saw on the TV that you really, really wanted. You bugged your parents day and night and told them that THIS was the toy. This was the ONLY toy you would ever need. It would make you the happiest kid on earth. You wouldn’t ask for anything else. You would do your chores for a whole year. You would do even more chores than you were supposed to. You would get straight As in school and mind your manners.

So your parents caved and bought you the toy.

What did you do with that toy a week later?

Case in point, fast forward 15-20 years later it’s the same thing, only you’re not a child anymore. You have the resources to buy things on your own, but the toys you want got a little more expensive. But you buy them anyways on credit even if you don’t have the money in hopes that it will fill a void in your soul, only to be disappointed a week later and to put it back into the figurative closet.

Material goods cannot bring you true self worth and happiness.

We know this as fact.

We hear this. We’ve been told this. Yet, some of us still pursue it. Why?

Because it’s SO easy to fall into the consumerist mentality without even knowing it.

Stop for a second.

Just stop.

And take a close look at your decision making process of buying material goods. Trace the motives back to whatever advertisement you saw it in, whether it be a magazine, television, newspaper ad etc.

What will you find?

First, that advertising is everywhere.

It’s everywhere.

You don’t have to even try. It’s there at home. It’s at work. It’s there while you drive to and from work. It’s there when you go out during the nights and weekends. You cannot escape it. We are literally soaked in it.

Companies are trying to compete for our attention so they advertise wherever they can. The problem is, every other company is doing the same thing. The result?

Clutter. Everywhere.

What’s the solution?

Even more clutter. Even more advertisements. The vicious cycle continues. We cannot escape it.

So we are bombarded by messages daily. What kind of messages?

-Buy this body wash and women will be all over you.

-Buy this 72 inch plasma high definition TV with TIVO and a cable subscription of over 1,000 channels and you’ll be the king.

-Buy this car and you’ll have respect.

We’ve been bombarded by these messages so consistently, that they have soaked in our minds and have taken root. So we obey. We buy because of advertising. We give in.

As a result, we have people working in jobs they hate, hoping to console themselvies through the purchase of material goods because they have been conditioned as such, only to be appeased for a small amount of time, and to repeat the cycle like a drug addict.

What pressures us even more is that since we have “bought in” to this consumerist mentality, we automatically assume that those around us have “bought in” as well, which makes us believe that other people around us are operating under the same frame of thought which gives us further pressure to conform.

So we buy these material goods, hoping that they will elicit that self worth and happiness and respect from others that advertisers have promised, only to find it short lived and unfulfilling a week later.

We think the answer lies in the next hot material good, gadget, car, etc. and the cycle then viciously repeats itself.

We get hooked now.

The consumerism rat race has begun.

What is the problem here?

We’ve been fed by default in this society that our self worth and happiness comes from the outside so we try to base our self worth and happiness externally, rather than internally.

Once you base your self worth and happiness on your own terms, advertising has no hold on you anymore, whatsoever.

It cannot influence you because you have taken away the very “essence” of what it’s trying to promise to give you because you have filled it yourself.

So the key to defeating the consumerist mentality becomes a bit clearer.

It’s not to avoid advertising. We cannot do it. Not in this day and age. And even if we did, that would only be treating the symptoms, not the root problems.

We have to render that advertising ineffective.

How?

By basing our self worth and happiness on our own terms.

Obviously, this will be different from person to person.

One person may find self worth and happiness in helping students learn to read and write.

Another may find it in their religion.

Another may find it helping save the rainforests.

What we will find is that it comes from within. We find work we love to do. We find purpose worth pursuing. We find something that we value higher than the acquisition of material goods that naturally make us feel worthy and happy as a natural byproduct.

People are starving, not in a physical sense, but in terms of human essence, and they’ve mistakenly been led to believe that material possessions are the steak, when in reality, they are the spices (figuratively speaking).

You should find your steak FIRST, THEN the spices will come in handy and make it taste so much better.

So am I saying once you find this “steak” of yours, you should live like a bum and never buy material possessions?

Of course not.

What I am saying is that once you discover whatever it is that makes you happy and feel worthy, then buying material possessions will only serve your purpose or to enhance your life. It won’t be it.

To give a numerical example, let’s say someone’s happiness is a 1 on a scale of 1-10. He thinks that buying material goods will boost him to a 10 so he does. It boosts him pretty high, to a 7, but the effect wears off after time and he goes back to a 1. He repeats the cycle over and over again, feeling the emptiness that consumerist society brings along with it.

But let's say someone has found something higher. They have found their “steak”. Their happiness comes from building houses for homeless people. Their happiness is a 8 on a scale of 1-10. Buying material possessions can then bump them up a point to a 9.

I’m not saying material possessions can’t bring happiness. They do. Who wouldn’t be happy with a new car, wardrobe, gadgets, etc.?

The big difference is whether that is your end game, or whether those possession are there to serve your purpose or to enhance it.

There’s a big difference between someone who is buying material goods in an effort to base his self worth and happiness on them and someone who already has self worth and happiness independent of buying material goods, and buying them to his purpose or to enhance his life. A big difference.

Buying material goods then serve a different purpose. Not to create feelings of self worth and happiness within us, but to serve our primary purpose and to enhance our lives.

Most people do not think for themselves. They let others do it for them.

And this is precisely where advertising capitalizes and feeds itself on.

We need to start thinking for ourselves. What makes us feel worthy and happy?

Instead of letting advertisers give us the answers, saying this hair product or this car or this jacket will give you what you so desperately need, find it on your own. For those of us who don’t think for ourselves, will inevitably let others do the thinking for us.

It’s time to wake up. Self actualize. Find something higher than the pursuit of material goods.

If it’s painting you enjoy, then you will spend your money on paint brushes, canvases, paint, art shows, etc. rather than spending it on the latest DVD, cell phone, car, etc. You see, your money gets spent toward purchasing material items that serve your purpose or to enhance it. It becomes a means to an end, not an ends itself.

Until you find something else, something higher than the purchase of material goods to create those feelings of happiness and self worth internally, you will forever be a slave to the consumerist mentality.

Again, I’m not saying buying material possessions are bad. They’re like spices. They should serve and enhance our life, not to be it. Think about it.

Would you just have spices for dinner?

Or would you have steak, seasoned with spices for dinner?

Most people have been brainwashed into thinking that salt and pepper will give them the nutrition they need. They find it doesn’t so they seek more and as a result, “starve” to death in the sense of leading lives of quiet desperation.

Once you find your steak, you operate on an entirely different frame and you naturally gravitate toward those people who share the same purpose so there is no pressure anymore from people operating under the consumer mentality frame to pressure you into conforming.

So instead of trying to buy our happiness and self worth or worry about what other people think about us, we should focus and decide what we value as an individual, to think for ourselves what will make us happy so we can move toward that. Find it on our own terms and have material goods serve that purpose and to enhance our lives.

When it’s all said and done, we need to stop letting others (advertisers and slaves of the consumerist mentality) think for us, and we need to start thinking for ourselves.

Seek the steak.

And what you’ll realize is that once you find your steak, the whole consumerist mentality gets put in its place.