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How to kill a customer: the experience of a man with money
Graham Hill lived luxuriously, but after a while realized that in fact things are just taken up his life and time.
Often the passion for consumerism develops a person in times of financial distress. But the situation is straightened, there is prosperity, and you can already buy everything. But whether it will add happiness? The experience of people who are not limited to finance, says "no».
Graham Hill - entrepreneur, quite wealthy man, lived luxuriously, surrounding himself with a bunch of all, he seemed to be necessary, but in fact only absorbed his life and time.
Read excerpts of his arguments:
I live in the studio area of 39 square meters. I sleep on a pull-out bed built into the wall. I have 6 shirts. 10 dishes for salads and other dishes. When guests come to me for dinner, I pull out a folding table. I have no DVD, and current collection of books is 10% of the original.
I've come a long way since the late '90s, when successful Internet startup turned to me the enormous flow of money. Then I bought a huge house, and scored his things, electronics, appliances, gadgets, organized his fleet.
But somehow all this stuff took a life of my own, well, or most of it. Things that I consumed, absorbed, eventually engulfed me. Yes, I have not the most common life scenario, because few people greatly enriched by 30 years, but my script interaction with the things - the most common.
We live in an excess of goods, the world's hypermarkets, huge shopping centers and convenience stores. People of almost any social stratum can surround yourself with things. Em>
There is no any sign indicating that these things make us happy. In fact, I see the opposite picture.
It took me 15 years to get rid of all the non-essential, that I so painstakingly accumulated, and start living a broader, freer, better, having less.
It all started in 1998. Me and my partner have sold our consulting company for the same amount, which, as it seemed to me, I do not earn my entire life.
After receiving this amount, I bought a 4-storey house. Seized opened the possibility to consume, I bought a brand new sectional sofa, a pair of glasses for $ 300 a ton of gadgets and audiophile 5-disc CD-player. And, of course, a black Volvo with remote engine start.
I began work on a new company, and the time at the house was not. Then I hired a guy named Seven, who, he said, worked as an assistant of the Courtney Love. He became my assistant for shopping. His role was to go shopping consumer electronics and accessories with the camera. He photographed the things that, in his opinion, would have liked me, and then I was looking through the photo and choose the things I liked to buy.
However, consumer drug soon ceased to cause euphoria. I lost interest in everything. Brand new Nokia is not excited and did not satisfy me. I started thinking about why improvements in life, which in theory should have made me happier, do not help, but only in the mind creates anxiety.
Life became more difficult. So much for what must follow. Lawn, cleaning, car, insurance, maintenance. Sevena have been a lot of work, and ... in the end, I have a personal assistant for shopping? Who do I turn ?! My house and my things have become my new employers, with them I did not want to be hired.
Everything got worse. I moved to work in New York and rented a large house, which served me as a good reflection of the IT-entrepreneur. The house had to fill in things, and it takes too much time and effort. And yet I have my house in Seattle. Now I have to think of the two houses. When I decided that I would stay in New York, it took a tremendous effort and a lot of overflights back and forth to close the issue with the old house and get rid of all the things that were in it.
Obviously, I was lucky with money, but these problems are common to many.
The study "Life at home in the 21st Century", published last year, shows the life of 32 families from the middle class. The need to take care of his property guaranteed to cause the production of the stress hormone. 75% of households could not park the car in the garage because the garage full of other things.
Our love for things affects almost every aspect of our lives. Grow the size of houses, reduced the average number of occupants in the house. Over 60 years, the space under the one person has increased 3 times. I wonder why? To keep it in even more stuff?
What do we store in the boxes which drag when moving? We do not know until you open. Em>
An interesting trend, although it relates to the United States. Did you know that according to The Natural Resources Defense Council turns out that 40% of the food you buy American, is in the bin?
This implies insatiability consequences on a global scale. Wild consumption is possible due to excessive production, and it destroys our entire ecosystem. Those iPhone, which manufactures Foxconn - they, too, are the cause of the terrible changes in the ecology of the industrial regions of China. Cheap production, spitting on the consequences. Does all this you happier?
There is another point - the social and psychological. Observations Galen Bodenhausen, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, is uniquely associated abnormal consumption and anti-social behavior. The consumer mindset is equally negative for the person, regardless of their income level.
My attitude to life has changed after meeting with Olga. Along with her, I moved to Barcelona. The period of her visa expired, and we lived in a small modest apartment, and were happy. Then we realized that we did not hold in Spain. We packed some clothes, took Toiletries, their laptops and hit the road in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and still many places. I continued to work, but my office is now fit in my backpack. I felt free and totally missed his car and gadgets, left the house.
The relationship with Olga ended, but my life changed forever. It fewer things I travel light. I have more time and more money to spend.
Intuitively, we understand that the best things in life - it's not those "things", and the relationship, experience and achievement of objectives. They are the products of a happy life.
I like physical objects. I studied design, I love gadgets, and clothing, and similar things. But my experience is that from a certain moment the material objects are displaced emotional needs that these objects are, in theory, should support.
I still entrepreneur and now I am developing a compact-designed houses. These houses are so that they supported our lives, not vice versa. Like those 39 square meters, in which I live, the houses do not require large amounts of materials for construction, do not require long-term maintenance costs, allowing the owner to live frugally.
I sleep well, because I know that I do not use more resources than I really need. I have fewer things, but more enjoyment. Few places - a lot of life.
See also:
Throw all nafig
10 lectures, after watching them you will be something to think about
via lifehacker.ru/2014/02/13/kak-ubit-v-sebe-potrebitelya-opyt-cheloveka-s-dengami/
