What if you signed a non-compete agreement with the world?

Dear World,

We are no longer in competition. From now on, I will make purchases based on my true wants and needs. I will ignore your subtle and overt attempts to convince me to spend my money. I will no longer spend my money in the endless pursuit of your approval. Trying and keep up with you and impress you puts my financial future (and sanity) in jeopardy. Therefore, we are no longer competing. You buy what you want, but I am ignoring you from now on.

Sincerely,

Me

We’ve been convinced that we need to impress other people. We’ve been convinced that we need to buy things in order to do so. Some of that is innate in most humans, but it has been heavily exploited by those that sell things.

Take cars for example. In many places, a car is an essential need. But when we’re competing with the world, we spend too much. We get the latest model with the shiniest (most expensive) paint job and the shiny wheels and the stickers and badges that advertise to the world that “I spent a lot of money”.

There are a lot of other things we can overspend on to try and impress the world. Clothes, cars, houses, vacations that we broadcast on social media, hair, nails, toys, jewelry, phones. They have given us an endless list of things we need. And what do we have once we meet those “needs”? Probably an empty feeling. Probably some debt. Probably some confusion that the happiness we were hoping to purchase didn’t materialize. Probably a realization that the people you were trying to impress don’t care. And maybe a new feeling that you need to spend even more. The feeling doesn’t end when you make that one big purchase.

If you’ve heard this quote, it’s probably coming to mind right now:

We use money we haven’t earned to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.

Once you sign your non-compete agreement with the world, you can start looking inward more. You can start figuring out what really makes you happy. You’ll be at peace with the world once you stop trying to compete with it. So sign today!