Keeping up With the Joneses and How to Fight It
It’s frustrating. We’ve all been there, you’re in your twenties or thirties you get a new home/car/couch/phone and you go to excitedly show your close friends. Maybe you don’t buy things for yourself much, maybe it was a gift, but they don’t look excited when you show them. In fact.. they look a little annoyed?
Three weeks later, they’ve got the same one, probably better if we are being honest. And you’re furious, dammit I worked so hard for that, or maybe I didn’t but it’s niche and there’s no way that’s a coincidence. So, what do you do?
My typical thought process is, leave it alone. It’ll stop, probably, and if it doesn’t then hey, that’s a compliment right? I guess it is technically, but this isn't a solution to your problem and the reality is is that you're most likely contributing to it too. So how do you end the cycle of constantly keeping up with the Joneses? In reality, I don’t have a clear cut answer, I can’t say “do x,y, and z and they’ll stop” because you can’t control how other people act. However, you can change your perspective on the situation, stop yourself from feeding into it, and ‘steer’ them.
I’m so happy for you
Thinking back onto personal experiences, I wasn’t that great of a friend in the situation. Reversed. They got a new ‘x’ and I congratulated them and suddenly I’m talking about what I’m going to do. Take time to truly celebrate their success or ‘new’. Do not take away from their excitement by inputting your own, it’s not the time for that and realistically, you hate it when people do that to you. You reinforce their view that this is in fact a competition, and you’re plotting your next move. You’re feeding into it yourself, even if that’s not how it started.
Oh, that old thing?
Stop. Flashing. Your. ‘New’. While you may be the type of person to not see other’s success as a lack of your own (which I don’t think anyone is that person 100% of the time), you can’t account for how other people perceive you. While this new thing or this goal you’ve recently attained may be a testament to your passion or hard work, others in your life do not see what goes on behind closed doors. They don’t see your cheap meal week in order to afford this item or the late nights you spent to get this project done. And with this, you have a few options. You can either stop ‘flashing’ or, you can be more vulnerable. Obviously, this isn’t something you need to do with people you aren’t close with, but if this is a close friend or family member, you can and should open up about your struggle. I can almost guarantee they’ll be much more supportive of your ‘new’ when you share how you worked towards that. Because when you see someone reap the rewards of their labor, you can’t help but cheer them on.
You are not an influencer.
You do not *need* that flashy new. You do not need to spend $50 organizing your car’s glovebox. Your life is not content for others’ viewing, focus on what is truly important to you and stop living and consuming performatively. Now release the tension you've been holding since starting this paragraph. It is exhausting to live this way, and frankly it is unsustainable. It is easy to fall into the dopamine trap that is shopping and consuming. You find excuses for your purchases: they're little treats, it'll make me so much more organized and efficient, etc. But the reality is is that some of these things are holding you back from more important financial goals. This is coming from someone with an Amazon credit card by the way, I'm not immune to influencers or the dopamine rush you get while watching an "Amazon essentials" video. However, keeping up with the Joneses does not only apply to the people in your life. With modern technology we have expanded our communities in a way we've never seen before in history, and that creates new subconscious competition. I challenge you to watch one of these videos with an analytical eye. Why are they using *that* product over others? Does this even make sense to purchase and use in this way? Does this item serve a ridiculously niche purpose that will only cause it to become clutter later on? Trust me, you'll feel better when this starts to become a habit.