Do Your Belongings Own You?
Don’t make them too important
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You might think you own your goods and chattel rather than the other way around. If you’re so attached to your possessions you’re scared of losing them, though, they have power over you. The threat of material loss might keep you up at night, and you may even place buying goods higher on your to do list than your health and happiness.
Why you might be attached to stuff
People become overly attached to belongings because they associate them with fulfilling emotional needs. They imagine buying a yacht might make them feel important. Or they hope having a beautiful car or the latest expensive gadget will make them popular.
Sometimes inexpensive goods are mentally linked to achieving a desired state of mind too. A whimsical toy — your childhood favorite — may remind you of carefree days when you were young.
While there’s nothing wrong with trying to be happy, accumulating or becoming attached to objects can’t help you achieve your aim. If it could, all millionaires with possession-filled mansions would enjoy terrific mental health. Sitting on treasure like a mythical dragon, though, is never prescribed as a remedy for well-being.
Your stuff, while pleasing and valuable in a practical sense, can’t give you what you crave. If you want to be happy, for instance, you need to cultivate happiness from within. Your belongings will never make you feel good enough if you don’t deal with insecurity either, and your moth-eaten teddy bear from childhood will not make your current reality any better. It could provide a false sense of security. All the time you rely on your stuff to improve your mood, you neglect to try other, more helpful means of injecting happiness into your life.
Should you get rid of your belongings?
In a nutshell, no. Not unless you want to live without them. Belongings are supposed to make life easier, more fun, or pleasant. Their impact is only negative if you continue to believe they are your route to happiness. If you want a healthy relationship with them, put their power to fulfill your needs in perspective.
Consider whether you’ve craved goods before, bought them, and later forgotten about them because they only offered a momentary boost of dopamine. Remember your observations when fresh urges to have more stuff arise. Ask yourself what you hope getting things will do for you. Then think about how to achieve your goal using a method that works instead of amassing possessions.
If you’re desperate to buy the latest popular phone, for instance, consider whether you genuinely love technology, or want to boost your self-esteem. You may be a bona fide technophile, but if you aren’t, save your money and invest in your well-being another way. Learn a fresh skill or challenge yourself to stretch out of your comfort zone by a different means. As a result, your confidence will increase more than if you purchase a state-of-the-art material goodie.
Belongings aren’t bad for you; they’re just stuff. Keep them by all means. However, remember they can’t fulfill your emotional needs. Only you can do that via self-development.
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Copyright © 2019 Bridget Webber. All rights reserved
