Do you feel like there’s never any break? From Monday until Friday you work your forty hours. For many of us, we work more than forty hours in order to make enough money to buy the things that we think we “need.” Then, the weekend hits. You have to catch up on all of the errands, house chores and other activities that you couldn’t do during the week because you were so busy making money in order to buy “stuff.” By Sunday night, you’re exhausted, and chances are you didn’t even really get to enjoy all that “stuff” that you bought. There were no breaks in there for you, and now it’s time to start the cycle all over again on Monday! You’re stressed out just thinking about it, let alone living it.
While being a postconsumer means different things to different people, an important part of the program, obviously, is learning to understand that “stuff” doesn’t lead to happiness and finding the satisfaction of enough is what will really lead you to a place where you’re not constantly having to participate in the rat race just to get a bigger piece of cheese. One of the biggest benefits of learning to adopt a postconsumer mindset is that you’ll start to see that you don’t need to participate in that rat race because you don’t need as much money and “stuff” as you think you do. That’s not to say that you’ll decide (or that we’ll suggest) that you go off and live as a monk on a mountain. What it does mean is that you’ll see there’s much more to life than just acquiring things and earning the money to pay for acquiring those things.
The end result of that mindset change will be that you won’t feel the need to push yourself through week after week of tearing your mind and body down just to gain material goods. When that happens, you’ll find yourself learning to take breaks during the week and to truly enjoy your weekends (or whatever schedule you have). You’ll learn that time is a valuable thing, particularly when you’re filling that time with activities that make you satisfied. Of course, you’ll need to find the things that make you satisfied, but that’s another journey altogether! In the meantime, start the process of becoming a postconsumer and learn to let go of your dependence on the idea of stuff to make you happy!
