If there’s one thing, just one thing that can pretty much kill any hope you have of a solid financial future, as well as any semblance of a healthy form of self esteem, it’s spending money to impress other people.

Deep down inside, we know it’s not prudent, yet most of us at the very least, feel the urge to do it and I’m not going to even discuss the various psychological reasons why people go on to actually do it.

So how do you stop the urge of spending money to impress other people?

Here’s the thing.

If you’re ALREADY spending money to impress other people, it’s SO hard to stop.

Why?

You base your self esteem and self worth on how others perceive you.

If you stop spending money to buy things to impress other people, you think others will perceive you negatively because of it and since your self esteem and self worth is tied to that, down you go into that deep, dark emotional spiral.

So you try to stop and the usual advice people give to you to do that is to tell you “nobody cares” and it’s pretty much the truth, but still in the back of your mind, there’s that nagging sensation that people do, just a little, judge you on your possessions so that keeps you spending.

So if we’re stuck in the spending money to impress people cycle, how do we get a CLEAN break without sending our self esteem down the toilet?

The answer is so simple that you’ll smack your forehead when you realize it.

It’s this:

To have a DEFINITE PURPOSE for your money that’s HIGHER than your need to impress other people based on your own personal values.

Once you have this, that urge and desire to spend money to impress others is gone.

And I mean COMPLETELY gone.

Here’s a classic example.

I’m sure we’ve all ran into this type of person.

A regular Joe Schmo, driving an average car, maybe a little bit beat up, clothes that aren’t the latest fashion but clean, wearing a watch that looked like it came out of a cereal box.

At best, we assume lower middle class, until we find out that guy is a millionaire.

Financially free. Only has to work if he chooses to do so.

He can wake up on a Monday morning, eat a hearty breakfast at a great cafe, play tennis with his friends at the club, workout at the gym, get a massage, do some volunteer work at his favorite charity, all the meanwhile, the rest of the people who spend their money to impress other people, hating their Mondays because they work at jobs they hate so they can spend money they don’t have to impress people they don’t really know who don’t really give a crap abut what they spend their money on in the first place.

How did he get there?

By having a HIGHER PURPOSE – that of financial freedom so he can do what he truly wants to do in life.

Instead of spending all that money to buy things to impress others that don’t increase in value, he diverted it toward investments or capital for a business or reinvestments for his business, etc.

He had a vision, a HIGHER PURPOSE of how he wanted to live his life and contribute to others. It didn’t bother him one bit what people thought of him. It didn’t really matter if others were impressed by him or not. He had INTERNAL direction that overrode any EXTERNAL direction he got from society, the media, or other people. He knew what he wanted for his life, what kind of service he wanted to be others, the kind of higher purpose he wanted to pursue rather than get caught in the ego trap that ensnares so many.

Once you have a higher purpose, you CRINGE at not only all the money you spent on impressing other people, BUT THE TIME you wasted as well. Time you could’ve spent toward doing much more with your life than striving to appear impressive in the eyes of others.

People who spend their money to impress other people, aside from having some psychological issues, have no other purpose for their money so it naturally goes to that arena.

Those who have a HIGHER purpose take their decisions on where their money goes that much more seriously and as a result, build towards something that they truly value and build their self esteem and self worth, not to mention their net worth as well in the process.

And you’ll find one of life’s many ironic twists playing here as well in that those who have that higher purpose and stick to it financially, naturally don’t care about impressing other people – and in doing so, they become the very people that others are genuinely impressed by.