Add some bling to your self-esteem? Study reveals delusion of social status drives sales of expensive products

Friday, December 28, 2012 by: Mike Bundrant
Tags: self-esteem, social status, product marketing

(NaturalNews) Imagine: In order for people to feel good about themselves, they believe they need to purchase a product that you happen to sell.

Would you take their money?

There they are, lined up by the millions, furtively eyeballing your showcase of shiny objects that will allow them to hold their heads up high.

You have two choices. You can take the money and laugh all the way to the bank. Or, you can free them of the delusion that your products will give them self-worth.

Which choice would you make?

Corporate America does much more than take the money

Corporate America continues to feed the "status and self-worth delusion" they created in the first place. The intentional tactic of associating brands with celebrities, socialites and sexuality sends a message to sheeple that buying a certain automobile, timepiece, or piece of clothing means you are above the rest.

Western culture is built around this impressive delusion. Buying into the propaganda, of course, does not mean you are better than anyone else. It means you are an emotional slave of corporate marketers.

Philip Mazzocco, lead author of a study at Ohio State University said, referring the tendency to rely on products for social status, "It is a basic psychological tendency that we all share when we're feeling inferior in some part of our life."

The study made also made several comparisons between ethnic groups.

The massive delusion of materialism is not a natural tendency. It is actually a sophisticated psychological trick

The corporate power structure has labored long and hard to manufacture a desire for fulfillment based on things that can never fulfill. Thinking that any product will give you real fulfillment is a never-ending delusion.

You get the product and feel great about yourself and your progress in life. Within a short while, the feeling wears off and your emotional void returns. Then, you need to search for the next product to fill the void. The corporate fat cats who now own you will soon give you directions for which product to buy next as you navigate the black hole of your life.

This is how addictions work, whether for food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, pornography or bad relationships.

The plain truth is that you attempt to fulfill your emotional needs with things that can never fulfill your emotional needs

People who understand this, like psychotherapist Peter Michaelson, refer to this scenario as an unhealthy attachment. We get attached (addicted) to things that are unhealthy and refuse to let them go, as if we got some sort of strange pleasure from the painful cycle. Perhaps it is like pushing on a bruise. It hurts, but there is something about it that people cannot resist.

This shocking truth is one that will set you free. When you realize that by filling your emotional void with that which can never fulfill, and have kind of known this for some time but somehow did not care, then you are beginning to see the problem that makers of unfulfilling products DO NOT want you to see.

Who wants to admit they are attached to feeling chronically deprived and unfulfilled?

Who would ever accept the realization that they are addicted to things that make them miserable in the end, therefore concluding they are addicted to misery?

People who want to be free are those who acknowledge their unhealthy attachments.

About the author:
Watch the free video The AHA! Process: An End to Self-Sabotage and discover the lost keys to personal transformation and emotional well-being that have been suppressed by mainstream mental health for decades.

The information in this video has been called the missing link in mental health and personal development. In a world full of shallow, quick-fix techniques, second rate psychology and pharmaceutical takeovers, real solutions have become nearly impossible to find. Click here to watch the presentation that will turn your world upside down.

Mike Bundrant is co-founder of the iNLP Center and host of Mental Health Exposed, a Natural News Radio program.

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