The Wrong Around Us The Wrong Within Us
Imagine for a moment that you walk into someone’s house for the first time.
You notice their furniture, the books they have on their shelves, the color of paint they chose for their walls.
Now, try to look for things that show personality cues. The real wood iPhone cover, the pink scarf hanging over the lampshade just in front of the over sized plush chair, which harbors an obese cat named captain weeniepants.
If you look hard enough, you may even be able to profile this person to a T.
My point, is that someone else (many others) already have.
And they’ve done so without ever even meeting this person.
Everything within our current environment was sold to us psychologically, one way or another.
When I was in real estate investing, I made an offer on a property that had the potential of earning a gross sum of $100K. The offer was all cash and basically no contingencies.
That’s an absurd offer for a $350K house and, but what’s evene more absurd is losing the deal to another buyer offering the same price but with the need for financing.
When the offer was turned down, I felt as though I had lost something.
I spent the rest of the day driving around town moping, thinking of how awful it was to lose such a potential opportunity.
That’s when I noticed a BMW M3 for sale at a local dealership.
Within no more than an hour, I was calling my wife to tell her we needed to drive back to the dealership and pick up our new car.
I paid all cash.
Now, let’s bring this back full circle.
Why did I purchase a car like that the way I did?
It was purely psychological.
Somewhere along the line I was programmed to act like that. Whether it was by someone else, or myself, it was still my responsibility to know this difference and act accordingly.
This is how most of us live.
We purchase things by either A. getting suckered into them through slick marketing and persuasion tactics, or B. we sucker ourselves into them based based on who we think we are, should be, or want to be.
This is why my purchase was influenced by my own feelings of insecurity, loss, and failure.
The turned down offer created a void inside of me which, was purely based on the feeling of failure.
I then filled that void as quickly as I could by spending money on something else.
So now, when you wake up tomorrow and go about your normal routine, look around your house.
I mean, take a REAL GOOD LOOK.
Think about why the stuff around you is a part of your life.
The magazine subscriptions, the coffee pot, the color of your microwave, the apps on your phone, the movies in your collection, the computer you use, and the desk, table, or milk crates it sits upon.
Look at all of those things and consider this.
“What decisions did you make (or not make) to allow these things into your life?”
Did you you influence yourself for the greater good? Or did someone else con you into owning what you own?
How do you eat? Do you drink diet soda because it’s less calories than a regular soda? Or have you come to your senses to realize you’re simply exchanging one poison for another?
Finale.
After only three days of driving my new M3 around town, the Realtor of the deal we lost called back and said the other buyer backed out (Couldn’t get financing, of course.) and the house was ours.
That was the same year the real estate market crashed and my path towards chapter 11 bankruptcy began.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time we start paying more attention to what’s going wrong around us, so less goes wrong within us.
Image Credit Kevin Utting
