Today I was laying down on the grass in my back yard, looking up at the sky, thinking back to a time I’d felt incomplete. It seems so distant now, like it happened in another life. One that I’d moved on from years go.
In my past life, I remember being skinny and wanting to be bigger and more muscular. Wanting a new sports car, when I already had a great car. Wanting the latest clothes and cell phone, when I had a decent wardrobe and phone to begin with. I remember feeling really incomplete without “the new stuff.”
But even after I attained the new things, the things I “thought” I wanted, I still felt incomplete. So I kept chasing the next new things I was “supposed to have” in order to be happy. Until one day, I realized a big secret that the world didn’t want me to know.
It not external things that make you complete. You alone decide what completes you.
From a young age, society teaches you to be a ravenous consumer. The US economy depends on it, so you are conditioned to believe you need things in order to be happy, and that you should feel a lack if you don’t have lots of “stuff.” Your success is also measured by how much stuff you can amass. Cars, clothes, jewelry, money, houses, etc. become the instrument society uses to measure your worth in this world.
You’re constantly bombarded with ads for new cars, big muscles, big reproductive organs, jewelry, cell phones, and clothes.
If you feel incomplete, the prescription is to buy the things advertised to you.
Have you noticed how great you feel when you go out in new clothes, with a new cell phone, or a new car? You feel better about yourself, you feel more confident and in a more positive mood. Like you have achieved something. Why?
Why would you feel differently after getting these things? Because that’s what society has taught you. But how long do those feelings last? A day, a week, a month at most? After that, you start feeling the void again.
The feeling is short lived because it’s based on external factors and those factors can be manipulated every year. Fashion, cars, trends, diets, etc. all change from one year to the next. Newer clothes, diets, cars, and gadgets appear every year. Thus you are constantly chasing something which you cannot catch. You keep buying things you “think” will make you complete. Chasing an illusion, that will never materialize through material things.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you can feel complete without any of that stuff.
Do not buy into the hype that you see on TV. Do not look to the movie stars, athletes, musicians, or actors to tell you what you need in your life. Instead of buying into the commercials, the movies, and the ads you see, I suggest you look inside yourself. Look deep within yourself and come up with your own standards of what it takes for you to be complete.
External things are just things. Realistically, if you have an old cell phone you will still be able to call another person and talk to them. Or if you have an old car, you can still drive places. And you can still wear the current clothes you have, even if they’re not part of the latest fashion trend. You don’t need more things to feel good about yourself.
Forget all the programming. Have your own standards for yourself and stop caring what other people think. If you are happy with your old car, keep it and don’t make any excuses for it. If you feel you need to change your car, do it, but ask yourself if you are doing it because you’re sick of it breaking down or because you don’t want to be seen in it because it’s old. If it’s the latter, then realize it’s just social conditioning playing tricks on you.
To be complete you need to realize that you have been conditioned to be insecure. You’ve been taught that to feel complete you need to “buy things,” but that’s a lie.
You need to realize that you are fine just the way you are. You are a human being, and you alone hold a special place in the world. There is no other person who looks, thinks, feels, or has the experiences you do. You are unique and complete already.
