Do Things For Yourself, Not To Impress Other People

So I went out and bought my big ass TV: 52” LCD. Yeah, 52” is far bigger than I really needed, but purely awesome on a cosmic scale. Planet Earth at 1080p is almost as good as watching the lions take down the elephant live.

I then spent the next two weeks building a stand: solid wood, connected by biscuits so absolutely no sign of any nails. I stained it and dumped five coats of polyurethane on it. I am pretty proud.

Ultimately though, I thought I’d impress people with it. But somehow, people were more impressed with my TV stand than the actual TV.

This sort of led me to realize that part of the reason I got my TV was to impress other people—and that’s just retarded.

I should have bought the TV for myself. If people like it, then good for them, if not, then why do I care. If people don’t even notice the TV, then I’m no loss.

I realized that if I buy things and improve myself for the sake of impressing other people, then that’ll just leave me empty inside. If I do things for the sake of getting complements, which in turn will make me feel good (and possibly improve my confidence), then how will I feel when I stop receiving complements? Answer: my confidence and self worth will go down.

Now, on the other hand, if I buy things and improve myself because I want to and I do it with complete disregard for the potential complements, then when those complements don’t come I don’t lose self worth.

Moreover, if someone buys things to impress other people, it will show as value seeking, and that mentality is a major demonstration of lower value.