Do you know the two biggest influences in your life?

If you’re thinking people, then you’re correct. But what specifically about people?

Entire industries have and are making trillions of dollars of revenue on these two pillars.

The two pillars are what other people are doing and what other people have.

These two pillars tap into your human emotions of curiosity and envy. And no matter how much you feed these emotions, they are rarely satisfied.

Think about social media for a moment. The entire industry relies on these two pillars. And the more time you spend on these platforms, the more you’re influenced by what others are doing and what they have.

Advertising is also an obvious candidate for these two pillars. It’s all about showing you what others have and are doing so that you too develop the desire to be like them. Or said another way, monkey sees, monkey do.

You see, one of the definitions of monkey see, monkey do is that it implies the act of imitation, usually with limited knowledge and or concern for the consequences. And this definition is almost a perfect fit for advertising and social media because when you avail yourself to both, you do so with limited knowledge. Very rarely are you privy to the backstory of any individual or products that you’re viewing.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with imitating others, and we all do it to some extent, primarily because we can’t help it. Humans, like primates, use imitation as one of our survival techniques. In fact, in some cases, the more we imitate, the more we are endeared by ‘our tribe.’ But the problem with over imitating is that eventually, you lose touch with who you are because you spend all your energy trying to be everyone else.

Ultimately, you have a choice as to how you want to spend your time. Inherently there’s nothing wrong in spending your time feeding your curiosity and stoking your envy by looking at what other people are doing and what they have. But the more time you spend doing so, the more you’ll desire to be like them, and the result of that is, the less you’ll be who you really are.

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