We live in a materialistic world now that we value our worth according to stuff we own – exclusive of assets! We feel rich if our wardrobes are bursting with clothes and our homes filled with clutter. A person’s outfit and accessories on him/her at a point in time is much more than the money in their account.

Check the smile on a lady’s face when she tells you her boyfriend owns a car or she owns a designer wear – epic! We spend so much (be it sales or clearance) in acquiring stuff even if we may never get to use them. Even to give some away is a problem because we feel our ‘wealth’ will reduce. Our psychological connection to things unconsciously leads us to accumulate stuffs and we end up being hoarders. Some of us begin to hoard so much unnecessary things that clutter overtakes even our sleeping spaces.

Psychologically, our quest for ‘material stuff’ is largely a reaction to inner discontent (you can deceive yourself it has nothing to do with our minds) because we look to/for external things to alleviate our inner emptiness. The sad truth is we’re only gathering junk believing we’re ‘acquiring wealth’. Shoes, fancy jewelleries, hairpieces, clothes et al are not assets in any shape or form.

Materialism certainly can give us some transient feelings of happiness and ego-inflating thrill which definitely wanes after some time (a short period of time actually). See our children behave with new toys and discard them after how many days? We always make frantic efforts to bolster our fragile egos by continuously seeking to acquire more, even to the detriment of our lives and to others. Some people use their money to acquire unnecessary stuff and expect others to bail them out when they need money to even feed.

No matter how much we try to feed this inner depravity with junk, our inner discontent and incompleteness always re-emerges, generating new cravings. The only real way of alleviating this psychological discontent is not by trying to escape it but by trying to heal it. If it’s some people in our lives draining us, we keep them at arm’s length – a drainer may be someone whose main purpose in your life is to compete with you in the department of ‘I own this and own that’; they’re not an inspiration or even someone who has taken that centre point in your life and you can’t kick their backside to breathe fresh air.

Extremely rich people such as billionaires are not significantly happier than people who have enough. In fact, the only thing some rich people have is money – that’s all. They even suffer from higher levels of depression, as true wellbeing does not come from wealth. They don’t even gather junk with their money anyway but they still feel empty.

Materialism NEVER satisfies anyone. Our obsession with acquiring stuff is all worthless and does not produce the happiness or the satisfaction our souls long for. We can empty your account and buy a whole shopping mall to tell the world we’ve ‘arrived’, but we’ll still be unfulfilled and discontent.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t buy (I can ‘see’ some women giving me side eyes); I’m only reiterating the ‘nonsense’ and madness in acquiring unnecessary stuff we don’t need. Telling someone you own the latest shoe and dress doesn’t add a pinch of value to your being and showing off is usually poverty mentality. Buy what you NEED, maybe treat yourself with something nice and use the rest to start building your amazon!

The Amazon started with a drop of water; kick off the habit of buying unnecessarily and see how your ‘Amazon’ will enlarge. Let the shops miss your presence a bit and stop waiting for shops to open for sales and clearance. Let’s get rid of all the clutter in our lives – material wise and brain wise (unnecessary information).