Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Jenny at  Ex-Consumer
Have you felt the crushing disappointment upon realizing you always seem to fall short of achieving the elusive sense of fulfillment you hope is just one more product, service or vacation away? I have.
In the past, I spent my days pining over what I wanted to upgrade. A better car. A bigger house. Granite countertops with a marble tile backsplash. Bamboo floors. A luxury vacation.
It was how I would get through the long days trapped in a corporate cubicle. If I had a goal that led to a perceived reward, then the days staring at windowless gray walls were slightly less painful.
A Turning Point
One day, after a massive company-wide layoff that I somehow escaped, I realized that cubicle living wasn’t for me. I knew that if I had to spend the next 40-plus years trapped in a box with my back to the opening, I would go crazy.
An Unconventional Move
I left my over eight-year career in accounting and finance to open an ice cream shop near my home. The space was open and bright, with an entire wall of windows that flooded the happy space with glorious sunlight.
The best parts of the new endeavor were the opportunities to be creative while concocting new ice cream flavors and interacting with all the pleasant people in my community. After all, everyone is happy when they’re eating ice cream.
An unexpected result of opening the ice cream shop was the waning in my desire to upgrade every facet of my material life. I discovered that when I was engaged in creating, my interest in consuming diminished. But not completely.
Choosing a New Path
The life of the ice cream shop ended shortly after its third birthday — about one year after giving birth to my first son. Retail hours combined with motherhood didn’t work for our family. I decided to return to school to explore a different path.
Soon after my son’s fourth birthday I graduated from a local private business college with a B.S. in eMarketing and a minor in Web Design. The experience of learning how marketing and advertising is used to influence consumers (wait, I’m a consumer!) truly changed my entire perspective on the path my life was taking.
After spending several years studying marketing and advertising techniques, my entire worldview shifted. I began to see everything and everyone as the culmination of the brand influences that define them.
And I soon realized that being awake to the effects of advertising was liberating. After becoming more aware of the advertising influences that had permeated my psyche over the years, I was able to see my life anew.
With a new awareness, I could pick out advertising influences and determine with good accuracy as to the intended effect. Even still, I was awake enough to know that being able to decipher many of the advertising messages I received wasn’t enough to mitigate their influence over me.
Making a Conscious Decision to Limit Media Exposure
Deciding to limit my media exposure was an adjustment at first. I cancelled our cable, stopped magazine subscriptions and starting listening to CDs or audiobooks rather than the radio.
Once the influences that had been convincing me I needed XYZ product to feel pretty, smart, successful, organized, etc. were dimmed to an occasional whisper rather than a constant roar something transformative happened.
I was suddenly immersed in a newly discovered space. Within this space I discovered the aftermath of a lifetime of being programmed by the media I chose to consume.
The Shocking Discovery
Unfortunately, I awakened to a house full of clutter from amassing products that never quite quenched the desire that led me to purchase them. I discovered accumulated debt that enslaved my husband and me to work we may not be passionate about.
The more I became aware of the predicament that had become my life, the more suffocated I felt.
Breaking Free
In less than one year my husband and I paid off over $26,000 in consumer debts and are now living non-mortgage debt free. We lowered our living expenses by cutting unnecessary money drains from our budget (cable, digital home phone, credit card payments, etc.).
We have also recently funded an emergency savings account worth six months of living expenses.
Finally Free
For the first time in my life I’m free from the mindless, empty consumption that defined the first part of my existence.
People often ask me about how to better manage their personal finances or get out of debt, but for me it all started with awakening to the advertising influences that propelled me to buy in the first place.
I’ve always had a strong understanding of how personal finance works, but the advertising messages still persuaded me to purchase and desire things I didn’t need. It wasn’t until I understood that piece of the equation that my mindset really shifted.
What created the shift to a life of less for you? How do you stay motivated to keep going?
Jenny is the author of Wake Up: Break Free from Advertising Influences and also writes about mitigating advertising influences, exploring the world of minimalism and all the life that falls in between on her blog, Ex-Consumer.
Jenny, this post is inspiring and hits the nail on the head. I have been reading Ex-Consumer anonymously for a while and you are one person that inspired me to share my musing with the world.
My wife and I are on a similar journey, avoiding television and all of the traps associated with being a “consumer.” No desire anymore to “keep up with the Smiths.” Keep up the inspired work!
Hi Frank! I’m so glad you enjoyed this post. Thank you so much for letting me know that my blog has inspired you. As you probably know, sometimes blogging feels like talking into the wind, so it’s always great to hear that a reader finds value in what’s shared there.
I’m looking forward to checking out your journey as well!
Courtney – Thank you so much for the opportunity to guest post on Be More with Less!
I love this post. Especially since I’m an accountant. I do have a window with a view of the mountains so it’s not quite as bad as a cubicle:)Thanks so much for sharing your inspiring story!
Hi Michelle,
Yes, a window with a view makes everything more tolerable, doesn’t it? 🙂
Great post. Spot on!
Thanks Beka!
This was so great. I loved hearing your story. I recently got full swing into advertising and now too, see people from the perspective of branding. However, in my own life, I hate being bombarded by society’s messages all of the time. We recently cancelled cable (mainly for customer service reasons), but it has been great to not waste my time watching mindless tv and commercials. Thanks for the fresh words and I’m excited to check out your blog!
Good for you for canceling cable Valerie!
We’ve found it surprising how much we didn’t miss cable after canceling our service over a year ago. What a freeing feeling! It’s amazing how more time we seemed to gain letting go of the hours each evening spent in front of the t.v.
Being a bit older, exploring the advertising industry was a MUST for credibility as a feminist so my husband and I were aware of advertising influences and to this day, when watching a television program that has commercials, we comment to one another on who the target audience for the show must and wonder if we fit in or not. Our kids learned on their own — my son really wanted a particular pair of shoes and we were able to buy them. He promptly challenged his father to a race around the house — his father won. Our son was furious — I mean really angry! Turns out, he’d seen a commercial that said you could run faster than a Puma in these shoes and he was furious he had been lied to. He must have been 6 years old — advertising has never been a problem for him; and our daughter has of course, grown up in our household — but girl scouting actually had (no idea if they still do) an excellent program for girls to study advertising in their favorite magazines, television shows, newspapers, etc. and discuss the unreasonableness of the image being projected or the benefit of a particular product. I was thrilled the girls in our troop went after than activity with zeal!
That is a great story about your son and his Puma shoes Queen Mary. I love it!
I didn’t realize the Girl Scouts had an advertising program like that. I have two sons and the oldest is in Cub Scouts. It would be interesting to see if there is a similar program for cub/boy scouts as well.
My son is pretty knowledgable about advertising and how it influences him, since it’s a common subject discussed in our home. But it would be great to have that message reenforced by other teachers in his life. 🙂
I just wanted to add that giving up television does not have to be cold turkey. We have found that by cancelling cablevision, we have eliminated impulse watching. We have also avoided “getting sucked in” to trashy TV.
We watch television on our own terms, infrequently and without the constant bombardment of commercials. We stream movies or shows on netflix once or twice a week and that is more than enough. .
Great point Frank. We have Netflix also, although we haven’t been using it much since warmer weather has made its way to Ohio. Over the winter months, we would stream an occasional movie or series.
But when we had cable, it was unheard of for us to go a night without watching at least an hour of television. To be honest, I can’t even remember what we watched! It makes me sad to think of all the hours I lost.
Thanks for this post, Jenny. I have a question for both you and Courtney. The paradox for me is that as authors, writers, bloggers, and speakers, we need marketing in order to build a platform to sell books, articles, products, or services. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time promoting my website than actually writing.
Publishers and agents want a writer with a platform. To get a platform, you have to promote, market, even advertise yourself. So the struggle is how to not be the very person we’re trying to avoid?
I completely understand where you’re coming from Gene. I had a hard time deciding how to get my book out there without doing the exact things I don’t agree with.
For me, that meant that I promoted the ebook the day it was released. After that, I added it to the sidebar on my site and trusted that those that are interested will check it out.
I’ve found that I have better luck promoting other writers I believe in and then letting karma run its course. 🙂
I would add that if you are spending more time promoting than writing, it’s time to rethink things. Your very best way of letting people find you is to write useful content. Let your readers spread the word and let your writing connect you.
Yes, Courtney. You said it perfectly.
Agree. I exaggerated a little to make a point. 🙂
Jenny/Courtney,
It’s always inspiring to learn the stories of those who have taken the path less traveled. My work focuses on a tangential path, which helping those who continue to work in the “corporate world” quiet down both their internal and external spaces to become more productive, which drives a greater sense of satisfaction.
My motto is that the aggregated effects of incremental improvement can be life changing. An example of that work is this post – http://wp.me/pvS1W-18C – which talks about the noisiest place on earth … between our ears. I have learned much from Steve Job’s philosophy of “deep simplicity” and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s books on Flow (i.e., how to be “engaged.”) In the end, we have a limited about of time here. This makes time our most valuable resource. We must use it well!
Thanks for participating in helping others awaken to this knowledge.
Hi Paul. I enjoyed your post on quieting the mind by making highly functional to-do lists. I find this to be true in my life as well. I even go through the list after it’s written and purge the items that aren’t essential. For example, window washing can likely wait a week, but paying bills can not.
I too am a huge fan of Steve Job’s work and life philosophy of deep simplicity. Having a cluttered mind is far more damaging than a cluttered environment.
What a great article, Jenny! It’s a really interesting perspective to see other people (and how they live their lives) as a culmination of all the brand influences they’ve been exposed to. I had never thought of it that way!
And, on a personal note, I just had to comment because I also once owned & ran an ice cream store…and sold it when I discovered that “retail hours combined with motherhood” don’t work AT ALL! It was fun for a while, though!
I’m currently minimizing my spending and consumption drastically because I’m leaving my full-time job next week to write and edit full-time as a freelancer. Luckily I don’t buy a lot of “stuff” anyway, though cutting back on eating out is going to be hard! But my kids come first and they need me now, so back home I go. I love knowing what my values and priorities are and honoring them, even when it’s scary and uncomfortable.
Congratulations on breaking free, and I hope your book is an amazing success in a world that NEEDS this message!
What a small world Lynn! You’re the first person I’ve run into that owned an ice cream store and unloaded it after becoming a mother. 🙂
It sounds like we are in very similar places in our lives right now as well. Best of luck on your new writing/editing freelance career path! I’ll be writing about the changes I’m making to my working life next week. Our kids are only little once and we can never get that time back!
This is a great post – I really enjoyed reading it and was nodding most of the way through. Thank you – I have tweeted it cause I think others will find it great too!
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment and Tweet this post Sonya. I’m so glad it resonated with you!
I was forced to make the shift to a “life of less” when I lost my high-paying corporate job. The job was strangling the life out of me, but at least it was paying the bills! I now have a struggling jewelry design business, and I can’t afford my mortgage, much less groceries and utilities.
I quit listening to radio years ago, in favor of CDs or audiobooks, because the programming choices sucked, and the ads were so horribly intrusive. Quit watching ads on TV, too – same reason. Can’t afford newspapers or magazines. So I’m not exposed to much marketing/advertising, which is probably good, since I can’t afford anything anyway.
Money may not buy happiness, but wondering if this is the month you’ll lose your home isn’t the way to go, either. I’ve given up phones, cable, haircuts, mani-pedis, and so much more – not by choice, but by necessity. Cross my fingers everyday that my 12-year old car will keep running.
Congrats on your changes, and your debt freedom. I think it’s interesting that your degree in e-marketing led to your decisions to free yourself from marketing influences!
It sounds like you’ve made some huge life adjustments Sweet Freedom. Hopefully things will start looking up soon.
I wonder if a part-time job would help you to make ends meet until your jewelry business picks up? And I’m a huge fan of selling things you no longer want or need on Craig’s List and eBay. Last year I held a really successful two-day garage sale that helped us pay our debts down faster.
Many people believe that skipping commercials will be enough to avoid advertisements while watching tv. It does help, but unfortunately product placements within tv shows and movies are even more intrusive and convincing than a commercial that people automatically recognize as an advertisement. Just something to be aware of! 🙂
I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic too, and I feel like I’ve always been pretty aware of how advertising affects us all (myself included, of course!). One thing I’ve recently begun doing is unsubscribing from email lists from retailers, as well as all the Groupon/LivingSocial-type sites. You THINK you’re getting good deals so you’re more likely to buy, but it’s still spending money you otherwise wouldn’t spend! I’m better off avoiding the temptation. 🙂 Thanks for the article!
That’s a good point Bre. Sometimes we’re more likely to buy if there is a perceived savings. But, it’s hard to save money if we’re spending on something we wouldn’t have bought had we not seen it on sale!
There are also sneakier forms of advertising that tap our subliminal minds without our awareness. Not to mention the undercover marketing that appears in our lives unknowingly throughout the day. Many companies pay brand ambassadors to talk up, carry or eat a product in a public setting without revealing they’re being paid to do so.
Hey Hun… I’ll use a local (to me) term – ‘bosting’post. (if the HTML link to ‘urban dictionary’ doesn’t work then it means ‘great’ ;-))
For me, it was a bereavement that created the initial shift (you probably know this already). Stumbling across a book on simplification, at the library, changed my mindset on such a lot of things. Momentum built when I started to feel the benefits of what I was doing. Maybe it was distraction initially that made me feel better, just having something to focus on – I can’t say for sure – but 3 years on I’m still benefiting from choosing a simpler path.
Excellent reminder!! I too unsubscribed from magazines and catalogues many years ago, what a life-changing experience! No more pressure to buy/give/perform/support. Life has been freer then, and these days I know that when I am websurfing to shop, it is the equivalent of putting new wants into my mind. I am learning to stop that and recently unsubscribed from a bunch of websites that I thought were useful, but really I’ll find them when next I am actually looking for a specific item I need.
Thanks for this post!