Everyday we are compare ourselves to each other and feel depressed about the way we look and thus we shop more. Some may shop to match the latest fashion, others with the cool gadgetry.

The term ‘consumer is king’ is actually the most worthless statement ever!! In America, on an average people don’t use 1% of the things they have bought six months ago! ....Taking this into consideration I decided to audit myself, and I was surprised to find.... I have more than 40 formal shirts, 22 casual shirts, 34 tee’s!..... This means that I would wear a shirt only five times in a year if I were to use my resources equally.... I have had four phones the past year including the iphone and the list goes on…. And yet I go shopping every weekend.

And the beauty of it is this is not the way we were 20 years ago, something has changed us dramatically. Studies prove that even without half the stuff we have now, people were happier in the 80’s. What has brought this change is the other thing we do for leisure..TV.... Every week we are exposed to more than 3000 commercials! And every commercial has only one thing to say ...“YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH”, you could be smarter, cooler, prettier,  funnier  with our new product. Imagine 3000 times a week some tells us we are not good enough – that would make anyone go mad!

And the manufacturers play us to their tune whenever they want, most products made today are not meant to last a long time. Fashion is one thing, one fashion item purchase is meant to last anywhere between 3-6 months. I am sure none of you would be caught dead in those boot cut pants which were a big thing in denim a few years ago. Low waist –high waist-boot cut – skinny fits, the fashion is ever changing and keep telling us that we are not good enough.

Did you know that the ipod battery can only be recharged 300 times ! That means if you are a hardcore music fan, you would wear out your ipod in a year and the battery costs you more than the ipod! (personal experience). Well you might say technology is not advanced enough to have better batteries as an argument… Not true my friends. This has been a conscious, well understood movement that has been happening over the past 50 years. This is how they have figured we will become better consumers! The idea is to wear out (or fashion out) a product within a definite time period so that we don’t feel cheated and they have the next thing to keep us excited and the advertisements will do their bit in pushing us over the edge.

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption

 We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.
- Victor Lebow, 1955

So the next time you see an advertisement, think of the message its conveying and the next time you buy a product think of its true value add to you and let us stop this vicious circle of others telling us that we are not good enough!

Stopping all the gyan for now … I’m off to get myself a coke … heard it refreshes better than anything else ;-)