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What Drives You?

June 30, 2004

Remember the mantra given in the last ezine? I'm in charge here.

Mmm. OK. Well, try asking this: Am I in charge of my spending?

Many (most?) high achievers in business and the professions are huge consumers. One reason, of course, is that they get pleasure from what they buy. This pleasure may compensate (in part, at least) for an unfulfilling career.

But a more primal drive underlies most of the excessive spending: the basic human drive to want the respect, admiration, love, of one's peers. Buying things is a way of advertising that one is worthy of these things.

This is not 21st century psycho-babble. As long ago as 1759, Adam Smith asked:

"To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of the world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and pre-eminence?"

It is not, he said, to supply the necessities of life - "the wages of the meanest laborer can supply them." Rather, it is: 

"... to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation."

Linda Breen Pierce is refreshingly honest in Choosing Simplicity. When she was a lawyer, she writes, "I had enough money to indulge all my material urgings." She spent big on silk suits, expensive vacations, restaurant meals, household help. But the purchases themselves were ultimately not what mattered most:

"The amount of money I earned as an attorney was not important to me for what it could buy, but it was vital to my self-image. My self-esteem seemed to rise in direct proportion to my salary increases. I could feel myself puffing up as I shared with close friends and family the annual salary increases I received... When I surpassed the $100,000 mark and gained a Vice President title, a company car, stock options, and pension benefits, I figured I was a success. I was somebody."

To be somebody. We all want to be somebody. Consumer trappings are a way of displaying to the world that we deserve to be held in high esteem.

But are we helpless in the face of this basic human drive? Have we no option but to let it be channeled into spending, thereby depleting our bank balance and so foreclosing good career alternatives? Let's look at that question in the next ezine.