The Problem With Having A Flamboyant Lifestyle
The problem with having a flamboyant lifestyle is you’ll always be trying to keep up.
You’ll be working hard and unnecessarily at maintaining that lifestyle. Life is a series of ups and downs but when you’ve got a flamboyant lifestyle you make the downs a lot difficult than they ordinarily should be.
So how do people end up with a flamboyant lifestyle?
There are generally two ways: 1) There are some people who have it in their genes. They just don’t know how to live small. It’s not a function of how much money they have or presence of someone to impress. They just must live large. 2) This is the category/way must people who live flamboyant lives fit in; external influence; they just can’t stand looking poorer than their friends and work colleagues.
As for those in way number one, there’s relatively little anyone can do to make them change that lifestyle. And they also have a unique advantage. God who has made them that way, has also given them special coping habits and internal lifestyle shock absorbers. They always manage to pull through all the downs in one piece.
It’s those in the way number two who can be successfully persuaded. Luckily, many of them know that they need to adjust their lifestyle but can just seem to make it happen. They are up against something easily underestimated: peer pressure.
When you are a manager at work, it is a lot difficult to take danfo to work while your juniors, especially those who report to you, drive their own cars to work. Then you begin to feel intimidated when your subordinates are doing MBA and PMP and ACCA and NEBOSH and CFA and leaving you behind with your B.Sc. And it doesn’t stop there. You deserve to live in Ikoyi like your friends and fellow club members. Your car suddenly start looking too old. Your clothes need to be fancier and more expensive. You must go to that country too for vacation. You must start living/dressing like you want to be addressed. It’s just a matter of time before your lifestyle blow up. Just a little succumbing to peer pressure here and there.
But what can you do to free yourself from the way number two trap?
You have to find new pressure that will pull you in the opposite direction. Join a group of minimalist online. Millionaires who live simple lives. Have your own big plan that will not make you envy someone else’s material progress. And don’t feed the wrong pressure.
Originally published at www.olafusimichael.com.