191. Capitalism Thrives on Your Dissatisfaction
Do you ever notice how beautiful women in magazines never seem to have any pores?
Or how your favorite influencer's posts, while gorgeous, often leave you feeling bad about your own life?
Or how ads keep promising you that if you just buy this purse, this lipstick, this trip to Costa Rica, then you'll feel amazing and your life will finally be on track?
Capitalism benefits when you feel bad about yourself.
Although sometimes it might register more as *desire* than as negative emotion.
It might be a sensation of “I need that” rather than one of “I feel less than.”
But don’t get it twisted - capitalism wants you to feel less than. So that you buy something. Or overwork in an effort to feel better about yourself.
Capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction (and as such, it’s incentivized to keep you feeling bad about yourself, your job, your body, and on and on).
That’s why it’s a radical (and political) act to cultivate satisfaction instead.
And when you make this fundamental shift, so much in your life transforms.
Because you step off the dissatisfaction treadmill and when you do, you have so much more time, money, energy, and focus to use in any way you damn well want to.
Ready to make that change? Be sure to catch this week’s episode of Satisfied AF.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How capitalism sets you up to feel constantly dissatisfied.
The roles of marketing, social media, and news cycles in cultivating your dissatisfaction.
Why it’s a radical shift to build your satisfying AF life instead.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. Before we get into this week’s topic, I wanted to do a shout out for Erin who sent me a wonderful, lovely email with so much good stuff in it. First, she told me how much she appreciated last week’s podcast and how helpful the content and ideas in that episode have been to her.
And then she also mentioned we did a single one-off coaching call last year, if I had to guess, probably as part of the fundraiser that I did for RIP Medical Debt. And she said she’s doing much better on the topic that we coached on, but also that she’s continued to relisten to that coaching and it’s giving value in lots of other areas of her life as well.
And one, I’m so glad to hear that. And two, I’m not surprised because that is one of the benefits of coaching. It’s kind of the gift that keeps on giving because one of the things we work on in coaching is the thought patterns and behavior patterns that are at play.
And a lot of times, if you have thought or behavior patterns at play in one area of your life, you may have it in another area too. So if you even do like one coaching call, then you may be able to relisten to that single coaching and have lots of benefits in many different areas of your life. And I’m so glad, Erin, to hear that you’re reaping lots of rewards from that one session.
I do also just want to mention, like I love hearing from listeners. It really made my day when I got that email from Erin. So if you want to tell me something about a podcast episode you’ve heard, I would love to hear from you. If you have questions about anything I teach, you can email me or you can also tag me on Instagram or send me a DM there. I love to be in conversation with my listeners.
And I also just want to take a minute to say, thank you for being a listener. Without listeners, a podcast is really just me sitting in a room alone, having conversations by myself. So I’m so grateful to everyone who tunes in and listens. And I hope you’re applying everything I teach here. I mean, it doesn’t even have to be everything, that’s very all or nothing. I hope you’re taking some things to apply and seeing big and small transformations in your own life from this work.
And if you really enjoy the podcast, I would be so appreciative if you would take a moment to follow, rate, and review, or if you would share this podcast on your social media or with your friends. It means so much to me. I would love to get this podcast in front of even more people and help them create more satisfaction in their lives, their careers, their relationships, and as they work to achieve their goals.
Okay, so thank you again, Erin, so much for that email. Really, it did mean so much to me. And let’s jump into this week’s topic, which is capitalism and dissatisfaction.
Okay, so a lot of times on the podcast I talk about the social conditioning that you’ve received from your parents, from your peers, from media you’ve consumed. And all of that is very real. The messaging you absorbed as a child about what it means to be a good person and how you’re supposed to live your life, that all has a huge impact on you today.
And some of that stuff, may be things you want to keep that you really love, values that you align with. And some of it may be stuff that you really hate, and it doesn’t actually align with you living the kind of life you want to live and achieving the kind of things you want to achieve.
But on top of the socialization you received from the human beings in your life, there’s also the socialization you received from growing up in a capitalist culture, if you did. I realize that not everyone did, but I did. And I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably did grow up in a capitalist society.
So I’ve been thinking and talking a lot with my partner. We’re redesigning my website and as we make edits to that, I’m realizing I want to talk more about the impacts of growing up in capitalism and existing within a capitalist culture and how those relate to creating a satisfying AF life and specifically to obstacles you may face.
So one thing that’s really important to know is if you grew up in a capitalist culture, you’ve literally been socialized since the moment you were born to be dissatisfied because capitalism benefits when people spend money and when people go out and pursue things and when people work and cultivate economic value. So those are the things that capitalism is going to really encourage you to do.
So the first thing I want you to understand is that capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction. Now that might seem wild. Like why would capitalism thrive on your personal dissatisfaction? But there’s a few reasons. The reason one that capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction is that when people are dissatisfied, they often spend money.
They spend money to buy things, to try to increase their satisfaction. And that could look all kinds of different ways. It could look like going out and buying a new outfit. It could look like booking an adventurous, delightful vacation. It could look like getting a new pair of shoes. It could look like buying a new house.
There’s all kinds of things that you might end up going and buying from a sense of feeling dissatisfied, feeling not enough, feeling too much, feeling any kind of way that’s not satisfied. These can all lead to you going out and buying things, right? So consumption.
And thing two is a lot of times when people feel dissatisfied, the other thing that they may do besides buying something is work. They may go out and do a job to get money because they want to be more successful in a financial way, which is going to, of course, tie back to number one, because when you have more money, then of course you can spend it on more things.
But you’re also generating value for the economy when you work, so it impacts how the capitalist culture is going. And whether it’s like failing or thriving depends a lot on how you’re feeling. Not just you singularly, of course, it’s all of us together, right? But capitalism directly benefits when you feel dissatisfied.
And I think this is really interesting to know, because I think there’s a lot of people out there who just generally feel a vague sense of malaise, a vague sense of unease, a vague sense of like unsettled or what’s the point, or when it gets extreme kind of like also despair. But I think for a lot of us, it’s kind of more mild than that. And I think a lot of us take that personally. We’re like, oh, there must be something wrong with me or like, maybe I need something. But I think it’s important to also realize that this is manufactured, right?
So there’s a bunch of different stuff at play here. There is also some stuff at play that’s just about being a human being. I’ve talked many times on the podcast about negativity bias, right? So that’s also at play. But negativity bias plus capitalism is also going to have a different outcome, right? Because the negativity bias on its own does one thing, but negativity bias, when you combine it with a culture that benefits directly when you overwork and overspend, then that negativity bias is going to send you in kind of a more specific direction.
And then there’s other things at play. There is also marketing, right? So capitalism is kind of like the way the culture works financially. And there’s a lot of different pieces of that. And to be clear, I think there are probably different ways that capitalism could look if it were in different societies, if there were different kinds of regulations, stuff like that.
But the way capitalism looks in the culture that I live in, which is the United States, and a lot of other cultures that I’ve witnessed, I think there are not the factors involved that would need to be involved for it to be more beneficial for people. And I do think it really does thrive on people feeling bad and feeling disappointed, dissatisfied, and unhappy in their life. So that’s kind of the frame that we’re going to talk about this through.
So one thing to understand is that capitalist economies are fundamentally driven by a principle of perpetual growth, right? Everything is always supposed to be getting bigger and more and going further. And I think that’s really interesting because I think in a lot of ways like that just doesn’t work because there’s not always more that we can do or more that we can go to.
And I think any system where success means it always has to keep increasing is probably a problematic system. And I don’t think it’s in balance and in harmony necessarily with nature, with human beings, with the need to rest, with the need for downtime, things like that. But it is important to understand that that is one of the components of a capitalist culture or of a capitalist economy.
So since capitalism is fundamentally driven by the principle of perpetual growth, there’s this constant need in a capitalist economy for things to increase, right? Production needs to increase, but also consumption needs to increase and it has to keep getting bigger and keep getting bigger and keep getting bigger.
And that’s really interesting because if people already have a bunch of things, like how do you get them to then buy more things? You need them to believe that they need more things in order to be happy, in order to be successful, in order to be okay. And it’s kind of like this treadmill or even escalator, right, that keeps increasing. And I think that’s really scary and really dangerous.
So how does capitalism accomplish that, right? This is where I’m tying it back to how capitalism thrives directly on your dissatisfaction because dissatisfied people, like I said before, are more likely to buy new products and services, looking for these products and services to alleviate their discontent. And that’s going to drive sales and stimulate economic growth, which some people think is pretty great, but your personal experience of it’s probably going to be pretty terrible.
Because of the way the system is set up, you’re going to keep buying, keep purchasing, keep overworking, but you’re not actually going to get to a place where you feel better. You’re not actually going to get to a place where you feel satisfied because the system’s not set up for that.
Now, like we said, there’s two components, right? There’s spending more, buying more, over-consuming, but there’s also overwork and over-productivity. And if you live in Western culture, you’ve probably noticed the obsession with productivity.
Dissatisfaction with wherever you are, right? Where your money is, where your career is, what your relationships are like, that kind of dissatisfaction, that kind of like, I need something more, something bigger, something better, as much as it leads to over-consumption can also lead to overworking in the pursuit of a better life. So looking to be more productive.
And it’s interesting because this overworking doesn’t just happen in the workplace. You may also find this happening in your hobbies where you’re like, oh, I just need to be better at this so I can feel productive. So I can feel good about myself.
And I think from the point of view of the capitalist economy that’s probably going to benefit employers. It may also circle back to benefiting vendors as if you are doing something where you’re trying to be highly productive and you’re buying tools for that, then you’re also stimulating the economy in that way.
But here’s the thing, if it was going to work, I would be like, okay, like we’re putting in all this time, we’re putting in all this money, we’re putting in all this effort, but we’re getting somewhere. But we’re not getting anywhere. And I think that’s what I really want you to take away from this podcast, is you’re not getting anywhere. This system isn’t set up so like if you just buy enough stuff, you’ll actually feel satisfied.
The promise of the marketing is that if you buy enough stuff, you’ll feel satisfied. But the system benefits from your dissatisfaction, so it’s not incentivized to satisfy you. And the same thing with productivity. The promise of productivity is like, if I just get enough done, then I’m going to feel good.
But y’all, I have coached dozens if not hundreds of people who were concerned about their productivity, and no matter how productive they were, none of them felt good about it. They always wanted to be even more productive or there was something not working still and there was such a sense of dissatisfaction.
Like I’ve coached multiple people who are like the most productive, most effective employee in their entire organization where they work and it still doesn’t feel good enough. So that’s what I want you to really see, is if you are out there trying to hustle and overwork and earn your satisfaction, or if you’re trying to buy your satisfaction by getting all the latest gadgets and the latest outfits, I have no judgment about that. I have done these things also.
But what I want this episode to point out to you is that it doesn’t work. The system is not set up to actually allow you to be satisfied because that would take you out of the system, and the system is benefiting from your dissatisfaction and your participation.
Let’s take a minute to also circle back to the other kind of socialization, right? So there’s the socialization of our small family. There’s the socialization of our peer group. We live in a world where we’re even more connected than we ever have been before, and we’re getting more connected all the time. So there’s also that kind of socialization. And then there’s the general beliefs in our culture.
And in a lot of ways, a lot of these normalize consumer culture, they normalize productivity culture, right? So there’s messaging probably, depending on how you grew up and what your family actually said to you, because this isn’t true for all people. But for most people, there were at least some inputs of like, it’s normal to want to acquire wealth. It’s normal to want to acquire nice things. It’s normal to want to reach a point of achievement in your career.
And I want to be clear. I’m not judging any of that. I want to have nice things. I want to have nice clothes that fit me and feel good on my body. I want to eat really nice food. I want to have a lot of success in my career, but what I want to point out is there has to be a different way of doing it because inside of the overconsumption, overwork system, there is no end point.
It’s a little bit like an addiction cycle. So a few years ago, I got really interested in addiction and the brain and I read a bunch of books about it because that’s the kind of stuff I do for fun. And it’s this idea of never enough. Actually, I think that was the name of one of the books, was like never enough. And it’s about how different substances, and it can be activities too, hook into the brain.
And it’s like, we feel this drive and compulsion to keep doing them, but they are not satisfying. They are not satiating. And there is not a point at which we’re like, ah, that was a good amount. So the key way that addiction shows up, from what I understand it, right?
I’m not an addiction expert, but from what I understand from reading all these books and what I’ve seen with myself and what I’ve observed with others, I do think the overconsumption and overwork functions a lot like an addiction because it’s a compulsive behavior that you then need to participate in more and more of and that ultimately never actually leads to satisfaction or to feeling good about yourself. And it actually usually leads directly to feeling bad about yourself and wondering why you did that.
So I don’t want to pathologize spending and working. I just want you to kind of have this understanding of, oh, maybe there’s something wrong or something not working with this system if it pushes me to do more and more of something and it doesn’t actually feel good in the long run. And it doesn’t actually help me create contentment, create satisfaction, create delight. It’s kind of more like, oh, I just have to do this because the promise is if I do this, I’m okay, but then I don’t actually feel okay.
So that’s just something to think about. And look at yourself and your own patterns in your life. How are you spending your money and how are you working? Like, does it feel frenetic? Does it feel driven by like, then I’ll finally be happy or then I’ll finally feel good about myself? Or is it calm? Is it thoughtful? Is it values aligned?
And listen, I get it, it takes a lot more effort to become thoughtful and values aligned. And our culture also really prizes speed and urgency and doing it and getting there and pushing through. So I do realize that this may feel kind of weird or alien. It may feel really difficult. We’re not going to try to make a zero to 60 change.
I just want to drop these seeds in for you to be able to think about like, oh, I’ve been indoctrinated since I was in utero to be dissatisfied. So if I’m struggling to cultivate a lasting sense of satisfaction in my life, maybe there’s a reason for that, right? And maybe the reason is bigger than me.
And yes, in coaching, we often work on individual solutions because that is a point at which we do have a lot of control. But we are also talking about systemic issues that are beyond you. But usually in order to impact the systemic issues, we may need to work on our individual self and get our individual self to a place where we can then work on the systemic issues.
Okay, let’s talk about marketing. So I don’t think marketing is inherently bad or evil. I don’t think marketers are inherently bad. I just want to point out to you that one of the things marketing can do is work really hard to create a desire where there was none, and work really hard to create an idea of status where there was none. Marketing can work really hard to create a sense of like, oh, I need this for something you actually don’t need at all.
Now, I think marketing can also be a beautiful thing. As a coach, I do marketing as well, I have a business. I think marketing can also be educational. Like content marketing in specific is like, hey, I’m going to teach people things for free, and people who want more of that thing can come and work with me or come and buy my product or come and have my service.
And that’s something I do in my business. I try really hard to make a lot of ways to learn from me and get value from this business that don’t cost you any money. And it is also marketing because if you like it and have really good experience with it, you may tell somebody else about it, or you may come and hire me. And I love that. And that’s fine too, because like it is a business and a business needs to make money to survive.
And I also exist in a capitalist culture, just like everyone else. So I’m going to point out some of the things about the structure and also I live within it, which means I need to earn money to pay my bills and to survive in this structure, in this system of capitalism.
So marketing is a powerful tool that can speak both to, I think your conscious mind, but also to your subconscious mind. And something that happens a lot is that marketing can kind of create a desire associatively. Like, oh, this person bought this product and now they feel great. If you want to feel great, you should buy this product and that will help you feel great.
And so the interesting thing about marketing is some of it is like, oh yeah, this service or product may actually solve your problem and then you too may feel great. But a lot of marketing is storytelling that is like, oh, look at this sexy, beautiful person. She bought this perfume. If you too want to be sexy and beautiful, you should buy this perfume.
But as you know if you’re a human being who’s been alive and bought some stuff, a lot of times when you buy the thing you’re like, oh, I don’t feel sexy and beautiful now. I feel like a person with an expensive bottle of fragrant water.
So marketing is interesting because not everything that is marketed can actually do what it says it can do. That sounds very silly that I have to point that out, but I think this is what’s true. Sometimes marketing is like, this thing can do this and it can. A lot of times marketing is like, this thing will do this for you, but it doesn’t because what marketing is doing is telling a story about this other person got this and feels this way. But usually that thing is kind of an inside job.
If you want to feel sexy and beautiful, there may be some things you can do to your outside to make your outside match more of what your vision of sexy and beautiful is. But if you want the mental story of feeling sexy and beautiful, that is the kind of thing coaching helps with because then you need to think thoughts about how you’re sexy and beautiful. And you need to cultivate the belief that you’re sexy and beautiful. And you need to live into the embodiment of what sexiness and beauty mean to you.
And very rarely, I’m not going to say never, but very rarely is fragrant water spritzed on your outfit going to do all of that work for you. That being said, like sometimes there are very effective shortcuts. But I think the thing with marketing is marketing wants you to believe that everything has a shortcut and a lot of stuff doesn’t for a lot of people.
For a lot of people to actually create the change that they want is going to require slow, laborious effort. And that’s not what marketing ever talks about because that’s not a sexy and fun sell.
Even in the coaching industry, I’ve heard other coaches tell me like, don’t sell them on the journey. Don’t sell them on what it’s actually going to take to get there. Sell them on where you’re going to go. And I can see the value in that because people need to believe in their ability to get to a different life. People need to be able to believe in their ability to create delicious relationships and build a career that feels amazing and achieve their goals in a yummy or less stressful way.
And also, I want to be honest that that transition will require work. And so I talk about that a lot on the podcast and give you lots of ways you can start doing that work yourself and lots of ways you can have an enjoyable experience of doing that work because, yes, I’m going to participate in marketing and also you can market responsibly. And that’s what I want to do.
But it’s important to know that a lot of marketing isn’t like that. A lot of marketing is just, buy this thing and you’ll feel amazing. And then the service or product isn’t actually able to cash that check. What’s really interesting is then within this system though, within capitalism, a lot of people are then urged by additional marketing to go buy more things or to go work harder to create more money.
And so it’s like, even when we buy something and it’s not able to do the thing we thought it would do, fascinatingly, that often doesn’t slow us down or stop us. Then we look around going like, well, maybe I bought the wrong thing. Maybe there’s something else.
And again, I don’t think this is our fault that we do this or that we are this way. I think it’s because we’ve been indoctrinated from babyhood that this is how you solve problems and this is how you create satisfaction and this is how you become successful and this is how you get things done. But we have to slow down long enough to realize that that’s not working and that we need another way in order to get out from under that.
Okay, and as if all of that weren’t enough, we also live in the age of social media. And let’s be honest, social media platforms significantly amplify dissatisfaction. These platforms are designed to keep you engaged, to keep you clicking, to keep you scrolling. And some of that is through things like, oh, if you get some likes, then you get a dopamine spike.
And then the more dopamine you get, the more you want to do that thing, which by the way, y’all, that’s exactly how addiction functions. When you read the books about it and learn the science about it, it’s when your brain gets artificial bursts of dopamine, it’s going to want to do that thing over and over. And the people who design social media, they know that.
And besides that, the things we see on social media, right, this highly curated content about what people are doing, like here’s the pic of their gorgeous meal. And here’s the pic of their vacation. And here’s them drinking champagne to celebrate that they wrote their book. It directly feeds comparison, which makes you feel bad about yourself.
And it’s interesting because the way that happens also is that they are comparing your internal experience of yourself, which is complete with ups and downs and negative emotions and problems and long-term things you still haven’t figured it out yet. And you’re comparing it to their highlight reel of like, here are the four things that I want everyone in the world to know about me, which probably has very little to do with the complete truth of their internal experience.
And then on top of that we have influencer culture, which influencers are sponsored by brands and they’re showcasing these seemingly perfect lives, bodies, meals, like all these things. And again, designed to make you feel bad so that you buy things. And designed to make you feel like, oh, if I only buy these things, then I too can be like this influencer and I too can have this incredible life without revealing all the kind of, first of all, super intense work that I believe goes on behind the scenes.
Because as a person who uses social media for my business, when I see what influencers put out, I’m like that kind of content is probably taking so much behind the scenes work. And I think what they’re selling there is like effortlessness, but the reality is probably very effortful. But of course they don’t want to tell you that because they want you to think that if you buy this dress, your life is going to be spectacular and satisfying. And we’ve all bought the dress and it doesn’t work that way.
And it’s interesting because so many people are aware that social media makes them feel bad, and yet so many of us refuse to stop using it. And you know what? I understand that interesting dynamic because I’m in that category too. Like I’m on social media and I use it for my business, but I also use it personally.
And I do have this interesting thing in my brain where I’m like, oh, how do I want to engage with this? Because sometimes I find things on social media that are so fun and silly and interesting. And other times I’m just mindlessly scrolling and being bombarded with these highlight reels of other people’s lives and being bombarded with all these ads about like, you should buy this thing.
And the way that they’re able to curate ads because of the information they have about us on social media also makes it, I think, even more kind of insidious because they almost know, they know what our concerns are. They know what’s bothering us, they know what we’re worried about through analyzing our data, but it can be kind of creepy, right?
And so I want to be clear, I’m not saying get off of social media and disengage from all marketing and escape capitalism. Because if you’re living in a capitalist society, unless you, I don’t know, move to somewhere that’s different, you’re probably not really actually going to be able to fully escape. What I want you to do is just have a more informed relationship.
I want you to have a more informed relationship with social media. I want you to have a more informed relationship with marketing. I want you to have a more informed relationship with capitalism. And I want you to understand that if you actually want to feel satisfied in a lasting, sustainable way, you’re going to have to cultivate a bit of a new way of being because these ways of being you’ve been taught and indoctrinated with since birth, they’re not going to get you there. They’re going to get you somewhere, but they’re not going to get you to that destination. Not ever.
Let’s also talk about news and media, because I think that is an important thing to consider in our culture and in capitalism. Especially because, first of all, news and media, there’s so much sensationalization. There’s so much focus on conflict and crisis. And this is because this is what people will read and click on and engage with, right?
But I think that gives a really skewed view of what the world is like. And then on top of that, there’s ad revenue, right? If you’re engaging with a news source, you’re getting bombarded with ads, whether you’re doing it online, whether you’re doing it with a physical paper, whether you’re watching TV. Ads are everywhere and ads are marketing, right?
And even things that aren’t marketing kind of are marketing. Like news has ads in it. The ads are like the actual technical, like someone’s advertising to you, someone’s paying money so they can try to get you to buy something. But even just the way we talk is a bit of marketing of like, I have an idea and I want to convince you of it. That’s kind of a form of marketing.
So it’s a little bit like everything you’re coming into contact with all the time is a little bit of marketing. And the marketing is all designed for something specific, right? Things like news, they’re designed to inform you somewhat, but they’re also not just designed to inform you and be neutral about it. They’re designed to inform you in whatever way you’re going to find most engaging so that they can get the most engagement so that they can get the biggest ad revenue so that they can make money, right?
And also even socialization is kind of a form of marketing, right? There’s the literal marketing of like, this brand wants you to buy this handbag. Again, nothing against handbags, just understanding they’re not like this bag can carry things. I mean, occasionally there is marketing like that. But usually they’re like, you’ll feel flawless and perfect and you’ll feel like you won’t have any pores on your face if you carry the sandbag. And the handbag is not delivering that.
But also socialization is a form of marketing of like, this is what it means to live a good life. This is how you’ll be happy, both from like someone who wants to sell you a handbag, but also to like your parents or your peers or the people you went to school with or like this is how you accomplish something. That’s also a form of marketing. So that’s just something to keep in mind.
Okay, so let’s review. Capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction. And we’ve talked about two ways that’s true. And then I’m going to mention a third too. So one is that idea of continuous growth. The more dissatisfied you are, and the more you tie that dissatisfaction to things and consumerism, the more you’re going to go out and buy things to try to cultivate a sense of satisfaction or to try to numb out from the sense of dissatisfaction you have.
The second one is work productivity. Another thing that people are socialized with is like if you feel bad about yourself, work harder. If you’re dissatisfied, be productive and create this different life for yourself. And so that also benefits capitalism because it boosts the economy.
If you work in an organization for someone else, like you’re making money and adding value for that company. If you’re boosting productivity, even in some kind of private endeavor, that might still boost the economy in some ways, even if there’s not a direct financial correlation.
But there’s another important factor that I want to talk about, which is that a dissatisfied distracted people is not a people who organizes and creates change and builds new systems. So capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction because your dissatisfaction causes you to spend money, because your dissatisfaction causes you to overwork, but also because your dissatisfaction keeps you separate from other people.
It keeps you disconnected and it keeps you from realizing all the systemic problems and then going to work on those. If your brain is convinced that what it needs in order to feel good is a new pair of shoes, it’s going to do whatever it has to do to get that new pair of shoes. But when you back up and slow down and have enough awareness, you’re like, wait a minute, no pair of shoes has actually ever fixed the dissatisfaction before. Maybe there’s another problem here.
And when you get some of that attention back, when you get some of your time back, when you get your money back because you’re not constantly consuming and spending, then you can look around and go like, wait a minute, what do I want the world to be like? And what changes could I make? And what impacts could I have?
A dissatisfied people is less likely to organize, less likely to demand systemic change, and more likely to focus on themselves and try to make themselves feel better. So I also think there’s a really interesting radical political angle to this of when you become a person who knows how to cultivate your own satisfaction, who knows how to feel good about yourself no matter what you’ve bought and no matter how hard you’ve worked, you also become a person who is so powerful.
And I want to be clear, it’s like when you learn how to become satisfied and to build a life that feels satisfying to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean then you’re like, ah, and then you lay on the couch. It probably means you look around at the world and you’re like, I know I’m good enough. I know I have enough. I also have really big dreams and visions for what the world could be like, and I’m going to work on those.
I think it’s also a little bit shifting where your dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction is. If you feel personally dissatisfied and you’re trying to fix that through spending and working and hustling, then capitalism thrives on that. But if you are able to cultivate a sense of satisfaction in your relationship with yourself, in your relationship with your community, your significant other, and in your career, then you’re able to widen your focus and look at things like, where is society at large deeply dissatisfying? And you have energy and time and money, often, to then spend on that.
So in a lot of ways, this podcast is very broad, very far reaching. We’re talking about a lot of different things, but I think if there was one main takeaway for you, it’s that culture is not set up for you to feel satisfied. And if you’re struggling to feel satisfied, you’re not alone. It’s not your fault. And it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong.
And developing the capacity to feel more satisfied and making the changes in your life that need to be made to help you feel more satisfied and then going on to make the changes you want to see in the world, these are all doable things that get broken down into simple steps. And that’s the kind of stuff we work on in coaching.
Now, in coaching we often do start with what’s personally dissatisfying to you. A lot of times we start with things like setting boundaries or shifting your behaviors from these things that you’ve learned and been indoctrinated to do, like spending money when you feel sad, to do things that are actually going to be more supportive to you as an ecosystem.
And then when you feel good, you may also look out at the broader world and decide that you have enough time and energy to change things in a bigger way, to organize, to change the world, really. And as I was saying at the beginning of the episode, even one coaching call, like we heard about from Erin, even one session can have a huge impact both on the thing we talk about, and that will ripple out to all kinds of other areas of your life as well.
And right now I do have single sessions available. You can go to korilinn.com/learnmore to grab one for your very own. And I also have room for one-on-one clients for longer packages. Like right now we’re doing three months and that will give us time to work on either one area really deeply or several different areas of your life.
And I realize buying coaching is a privilege. It’s an expensive thing to buy. So if you’re not in the right position for that, I do want to reiterate there are lots of free ways to engage with this work. And I love hearing from listeners and I would love it if you want to send me an email or come chat with me on Instagram. Let me know what this podcast brought up for you and where you’re going to go from here.
All right. That’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. Before we get into this week’s topic, I wanted to do a shout out for Erin who sent me a wonderful, lovely email with so much good stuff in it. First, she told me how much she appreciated last week’s podcast and how helpful the content and ideas in that episode have been to her.
And then she also mentioned we did a single one-off coaching call last year, if I had to guess, probably as part of the fundraiser that I did for RIP Medical Debt. And she said she’s doing much better on the topic that we coached on, but also that she’s continued to relisten to that coaching and it’s giving value in lots of other areas of her life as well.
And one, I’m so glad to hear that. And two, I’m not surprised because that is one of the benefits of coaching. It’s kind of the gift that keeps on giving because one of the things we work on in coaching is the thought patterns and behavior patterns that are at play.
And a lot of times, if you have thought or behavior patterns at play in one area of your life, you may have it in another area too. So if you even do like one coaching call, then you may be able to relisten to that single coaching and have lots of benefits in many different areas of your life. And I’m so glad, Erin, to hear that you’re reaping lots of rewards from that one session.
I do also just want to mention, like I love hearing from listeners. It really made my day when I got that email from Erin. So if you want to tell me something about a podcast episode you’ve heard, I would love to hear from you. If you have questions about anything I teach, you can email me or you can also tag me on Instagram or send me a DM there. I love to be in conversation with my listeners.
And I also just want to take a minute to say, thank you for being a listener. Without listeners, a podcast is really just me sitting in a room alone, having conversations by myself. So I’m so grateful to everyone who tunes in and listens. And I hope you’re applying everything I teach here. I mean, it doesn’t even have to be everything, that’s very all or nothing. I hope you’re taking some things to apply and seeing big and small transformations in your own life from this work.
And if you really enjoy the podcast, I would be so appreciative if you would take a moment to follow, rate, and review, or if you would share this podcast on your social media or with your friends. It means so much to me. I would love to get this podcast in front of even more people and help them create more satisfaction in their lives, their careers, their relationships, and as they work to achieve their goals.
Okay, so thank you again, Erin, so much for that email. Really, it did mean so much to me. And let’s jump into this week’s topic, which is capitalism and dissatisfaction.
Okay, so a lot of times on the podcast I talk about the social conditioning that you’ve received from your parents, from your peers, from media you’ve consumed. And all of that is very real. The messaging you absorbed as a child about what it means to be a good person and how you’re supposed to live your life, that all has a huge impact on you today.
And some of that stuff, may be things you want to keep that you really love, values that you align with. And some of it may be stuff that you really hate, and it doesn’t actually align with you living the kind of life you want to live and achieving the kind of things you want to achieve.
But on top of the socialization you received from the human beings in your life, there’s also the socialization you received from growing up in a capitalist culture, if you did. I realize that not everyone did, but I did. And I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably did grow up in a capitalist society.
So I’ve been thinking and talking a lot with my partner. We’re redesigning my website and as we make edits to that, I’m realizing I want to talk more about the impacts of growing up in capitalism and existing within a capitalist culture and how those relate to creating a satisfying AF life and specifically to obstacles you may face.
So one thing that’s really important to know is if you grew up in a capitalist culture, you’ve literally been socialized since the moment you were born to be dissatisfied because capitalism benefits when people spend money and when people go out and pursue things and when people work and cultivate economic value. So those are the things that capitalism is going to really encourage you to do.
So the first thing I want you to understand is that capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction. Now that might seem wild. Like why would capitalism thrive on your personal dissatisfaction? But there’s a few reasons. The reason one that capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction is that when people are dissatisfied, they often spend money.
They spend money to buy things, to try to increase their satisfaction. And that could look all kinds of different ways. It could look like going out and buying a new outfit. It could look like booking an adventurous, delightful vacation. It could look like getting a new pair of shoes. It could look like buying a new house.
There’s all kinds of things that you might end up going and buying from a sense of feeling dissatisfied, feeling not enough, feeling too much, feeling any kind of way that’s not satisfied. These can all lead to you going out and buying things, right? So consumption.
And thing two is a lot of times when people feel dissatisfied, the other thing that they may do besides buying something is work. They may go out and do a job to get money because they want to be more successful in a financial way, which is going to, of course, tie back to number one, because when you have more money, then of course you can spend it on more things.
But you’re also generating value for the economy when you work, so it impacts how the capitalist culture is going. And whether it’s like failing or thriving depends a lot on how you’re feeling. Not just you singularly, of course, it’s all of us together, right? But capitalism directly benefits when you feel dissatisfied.
And I think this is really interesting to know, because I think there’s a lot of people out there who just generally feel a vague sense of malaise, a vague sense of unease, a vague sense of like unsettled or what’s the point, or when it gets extreme kind of like also despair. But I think for a lot of us, it’s kind of more mild than that. And I think a lot of us take that personally. We’re like, oh, there must be something wrong with me or like, maybe I need something. But I think it’s important to also realize that this is manufactured, right?
So there’s a bunch of different stuff at play here. There is also some stuff at play that’s just about being a human being. I’ve talked many times on the podcast about negativity bias, right? So that’s also at play. But negativity bias plus capitalism is also going to have a different outcome, right? Because the negativity bias on its own does one thing, but negativity bias, when you combine it with a culture that benefits directly when you overwork and overspend, then that negativity bias is going to send you in kind of a more specific direction.
And then there’s other things at play. There is also marketing, right? So capitalism is kind of like the way the culture works financially. And there’s a lot of different pieces of that. And to be clear, I think there are probably different ways that capitalism could look if it were in different societies, if there were different kinds of regulations, stuff like that.
But the way capitalism looks in the culture that I live in, which is the United States, and a lot of other cultures that I’ve witnessed, I think there are not the factors involved that would need to be involved for it to be more beneficial for people. And I do think it really does thrive on people feeling bad and feeling disappointed, dissatisfied, and unhappy in their life. So that’s kind of the frame that we’re going to talk about this through.
So one thing to understand is that capitalist economies are fundamentally driven by a principle of perpetual growth, right? Everything is always supposed to be getting bigger and more and going further. And I think that’s really interesting because I think in a lot of ways like that just doesn’t work because there’s not always more that we can do or more that we can go to.
And I think any system where success means it always has to keep increasing is probably a problematic system. And I don’t think it’s in balance and in harmony necessarily with nature, with human beings, with the need to rest, with the need for downtime, things like that. But it is important to understand that that is one of the components of a capitalist culture or of a capitalist economy.
So since capitalism is fundamentally driven by the principle of perpetual growth, there’s this constant need in a capitalist economy for things to increase, right? Production needs to increase, but also consumption needs to increase and it has to keep getting bigger and keep getting bigger and keep getting bigger.
And that’s really interesting because if people already have a bunch of things, like how do you get them to then buy more things? You need them to believe that they need more things in order to be happy, in order to be successful, in order to be okay. And it’s kind of like this treadmill or even escalator, right, that keeps increasing. And I think that’s really scary and really dangerous.
So how does capitalism accomplish that, right? This is where I’m tying it back to how capitalism thrives directly on your dissatisfaction because dissatisfied people, like I said before, are more likely to buy new products and services, looking for these products and services to alleviate their discontent. And that’s going to drive sales and stimulate economic growth, which some people think is pretty great, but your personal experience of it’s probably going to be pretty terrible.
Because of the way the system is set up, you’re going to keep buying, keep purchasing, keep overworking, but you’re not actually going to get to a place where you feel better. You’re not actually going to get to a place where you feel satisfied because the system’s not set up for that.
Now, like we said, there’s two components, right? There’s spending more, buying more, over-consuming, but there’s also overwork and over-productivity. And if you live in Western culture, you’ve probably noticed the obsession with productivity.
Dissatisfaction with wherever you are, right? Where your money is, where your career is, what your relationships are like, that kind of dissatisfaction, that kind of like, I need something more, something bigger, something better, as much as it leads to over-consumption can also lead to overworking in the pursuit of a better life. So looking to be more productive.
And it’s interesting because this overworking doesn’t just happen in the workplace. You may also find this happening in your hobbies where you’re like, oh, I just need to be better at this so I can feel productive. So I can feel good about myself.
And I think from the point of view of the capitalist economy that’s probably going to benefit employers. It may also circle back to benefiting vendors as if you are doing something where you’re trying to be highly productive and you’re buying tools for that, then you’re also stimulating the economy in that way.
But here’s the thing, if it was going to work, I would be like, okay, like we’re putting in all this time, we’re putting in all this money, we’re putting in all this effort, but we’re getting somewhere. But we’re not getting anywhere. And I think that’s what I really want you to take away from this podcast, is you’re not getting anywhere. This system isn’t set up so like if you just buy enough stuff, you’ll actually feel satisfied.
The promise of the marketing is that if you buy enough stuff, you’ll feel satisfied. But the system benefits from your dissatisfaction, so it’s not incentivized to satisfy you. And the same thing with productivity. The promise of productivity is like, if I just get enough done, then I’m going to feel good.
But y’all, I have coached dozens if not hundreds of people who were concerned about their productivity, and no matter how productive they were, none of them felt good about it. They always wanted to be even more productive or there was something not working still and there was such a sense of dissatisfaction.
Like I’ve coached multiple people who are like the most productive, most effective employee in their entire organization where they work and it still doesn’t feel good enough. So that’s what I want you to really see, is if you are out there trying to hustle and overwork and earn your satisfaction, or if you’re trying to buy your satisfaction by getting all the latest gadgets and the latest outfits, I have no judgment about that. I have done these things also.
But what I want this episode to point out to you is that it doesn’t work. The system is not set up to actually allow you to be satisfied because that would take you out of the system, and the system is benefiting from your dissatisfaction and your participation.
Let’s take a minute to also circle back to the other kind of socialization, right? So there’s the socialization of our small family. There’s the socialization of our peer group. We live in a world where we’re even more connected than we ever have been before, and we’re getting more connected all the time. So there’s also that kind of socialization. And then there’s the general beliefs in our culture.
And in a lot of ways, a lot of these normalize consumer culture, they normalize productivity culture, right? So there’s messaging probably, depending on how you grew up and what your family actually said to you, because this isn’t true for all people. But for most people, there were at least some inputs of like, it’s normal to want to acquire wealth. It’s normal to want to acquire nice things. It’s normal to want to reach a point of achievement in your career.
And I want to be clear. I’m not judging any of that. I want to have nice things. I want to have nice clothes that fit me and feel good on my body. I want to eat really nice food. I want to have a lot of success in my career, but what I want to point out is there has to be a different way of doing it because inside of the overconsumption, overwork system, there is no end point.
It’s a little bit like an addiction cycle. So a few years ago, I got really interested in addiction and the brain and I read a bunch of books about it because that’s the kind of stuff I do for fun. And it’s this idea of never enough. Actually, I think that was the name of one of the books, was like never enough. And it’s about how different substances, and it can be activities too, hook into the brain.
And it’s like, we feel this drive and compulsion to keep doing them, but they are not satisfying. They are not satiating. And there is not a point at which we’re like, ah, that was a good amount. So the key way that addiction shows up, from what I understand it, right?
I’m not an addiction expert, but from what I understand from reading all these books and what I’ve seen with myself and what I’ve observed with others, I do think the overconsumption and overwork functions a lot like an addiction because it’s a compulsive behavior that you then need to participate in more and more of and that ultimately never actually leads to satisfaction or to feeling good about yourself. And it actually usually leads directly to feeling bad about yourself and wondering why you did that.
So I don’t want to pathologize spending and working. I just want you to kind of have this understanding of, oh, maybe there’s something wrong or something not working with this system if it pushes me to do more and more of something and it doesn’t actually feel good in the long run. And it doesn’t actually help me create contentment, create satisfaction, create delight. It’s kind of more like, oh, I just have to do this because the promise is if I do this, I’m okay, but then I don’t actually feel okay.
So that’s just something to think about. And look at yourself and your own patterns in your life. How are you spending your money and how are you working? Like, does it feel frenetic? Does it feel driven by like, then I’ll finally be happy or then I’ll finally feel good about myself? Or is it calm? Is it thoughtful? Is it values aligned?
And listen, I get it, it takes a lot more effort to become thoughtful and values aligned. And our culture also really prizes speed and urgency and doing it and getting there and pushing through. So I do realize that this may feel kind of weird or alien. It may feel really difficult. We’re not going to try to make a zero to 60 change.
I just want to drop these seeds in for you to be able to think about like, oh, I’ve been indoctrinated since I was in utero to be dissatisfied. So if I’m struggling to cultivate a lasting sense of satisfaction in my life, maybe there’s a reason for that, right? And maybe the reason is bigger than me.
And yes, in coaching, we often work on individual solutions because that is a point at which we do have a lot of control. But we are also talking about systemic issues that are beyond you. But usually in order to impact the systemic issues, we may need to work on our individual self and get our individual self to a place where we can then work on the systemic issues.
Okay, let’s talk about marketing. So I don’t think marketing is inherently bad or evil. I don’t think marketers are inherently bad. I just want to point out to you that one of the things marketing can do is work really hard to create a desire where there was none, and work really hard to create an idea of status where there was none. Marketing can work really hard to create a sense of like, oh, I need this for something you actually don’t need at all.
Now, I think marketing can also be a beautiful thing. As a coach, I do marketing as well, I have a business. I think marketing can also be educational. Like content marketing in specific is like, hey, I’m going to teach people things for free, and people who want more of that thing can come and work with me or come and buy my product or come and have my service.
And that’s something I do in my business. I try really hard to make a lot of ways to learn from me and get value from this business that don’t cost you any money. And it is also marketing because if you like it and have really good experience with it, you may tell somebody else about it, or you may come and hire me. And I love that. And that’s fine too, because like it is a business and a business needs to make money to survive.
And I also exist in a capitalist culture, just like everyone else. So I’m going to point out some of the things about the structure and also I live within it, which means I need to earn money to pay my bills and to survive in this structure, in this system of capitalism.
So marketing is a powerful tool that can speak both to, I think your conscious mind, but also to your subconscious mind. And something that happens a lot is that marketing can kind of create a desire associatively. Like, oh, this person bought this product and now they feel great. If you want to feel great, you should buy this product and that will help you feel great.
And so the interesting thing about marketing is some of it is like, oh yeah, this service or product may actually solve your problem and then you too may feel great. But a lot of marketing is storytelling that is like, oh, look at this sexy, beautiful person. She bought this perfume. If you too want to be sexy and beautiful, you should buy this perfume.
But as you know if you’re a human being who’s been alive and bought some stuff, a lot of times when you buy the thing you’re like, oh, I don’t feel sexy and beautiful now. I feel like a person with an expensive bottle of fragrant water.
So marketing is interesting because not everything that is marketed can actually do what it says it can do. That sounds very silly that I have to point that out, but I think this is what’s true. Sometimes marketing is like, this thing can do this and it can. A lot of times marketing is like, this thing will do this for you, but it doesn’t because what marketing is doing is telling a story about this other person got this and feels this way. But usually that thing is kind of an inside job.
If you want to feel sexy and beautiful, there may be some things you can do to your outside to make your outside match more of what your vision of sexy and beautiful is. But if you want the mental story of feeling sexy and beautiful, that is the kind of thing coaching helps with because then you need to think thoughts about how you’re sexy and beautiful. And you need to cultivate the belief that you’re sexy and beautiful. And you need to live into the embodiment of what sexiness and beauty mean to you.
And very rarely, I’m not going to say never, but very rarely is fragrant water spritzed on your outfit going to do all of that work for you. That being said, like sometimes there are very effective shortcuts. But I think the thing with marketing is marketing wants you to believe that everything has a shortcut and a lot of stuff doesn’t for a lot of people.
For a lot of people to actually create the change that they want is going to require slow, laborious effort. And that’s not what marketing ever talks about because that’s not a sexy and fun sell.
Even in the coaching industry, I’ve heard other coaches tell me like, don’t sell them on the journey. Don’t sell them on what it’s actually going to take to get there. Sell them on where you’re going to go. And I can see the value in that because people need to believe in their ability to get to a different life. People need to be able to believe in their ability to create delicious relationships and build a career that feels amazing and achieve their goals in a yummy or less stressful way.
And also, I want to be honest that that transition will require work. And so I talk about that a lot on the podcast and give you lots of ways you can start doing that work yourself and lots of ways you can have an enjoyable experience of doing that work because, yes, I’m going to participate in marketing and also you can market responsibly. And that’s what I want to do.
But it’s important to know that a lot of marketing isn’t like that. A lot of marketing is just, buy this thing and you’ll feel amazing. And then the service or product isn’t actually able to cash that check. What’s really interesting is then within this system though, within capitalism, a lot of people are then urged by additional marketing to go buy more things or to go work harder to create more money.
And so it’s like, even when we buy something and it’s not able to do the thing we thought it would do, fascinatingly, that often doesn’t slow us down or stop us. Then we look around going like, well, maybe I bought the wrong thing. Maybe there’s something else.
And again, I don’t think this is our fault that we do this or that we are this way. I think it’s because we’ve been indoctrinated from babyhood that this is how you solve problems and this is how you create satisfaction and this is how you become successful and this is how you get things done. But we have to slow down long enough to realize that that’s not working and that we need another way in order to get out from under that.
Okay, and as if all of that weren’t enough, we also live in the age of social media. And let’s be honest, social media platforms significantly amplify dissatisfaction. These platforms are designed to keep you engaged, to keep you clicking, to keep you scrolling. And some of that is through things like, oh, if you get some likes, then you get a dopamine spike.
And then the more dopamine you get, the more you want to do that thing, which by the way, y’all, that’s exactly how addiction functions. When you read the books about it and learn the science about it, it’s when your brain gets artificial bursts of dopamine, it’s going to want to do that thing over and over. And the people who design social media, they know that.
And besides that, the things we see on social media, right, this highly curated content about what people are doing, like here’s the pic of their gorgeous meal. And here’s the pic of their vacation. And here’s them drinking champagne to celebrate that they wrote their book. It directly feeds comparison, which makes you feel bad about yourself.
And it’s interesting because the way that happens also is that they are comparing your internal experience of yourself, which is complete with ups and downs and negative emotions and problems and long-term things you still haven’t figured it out yet. And you’re comparing it to their highlight reel of like, here are the four things that I want everyone in the world to know about me, which probably has very little to do with the complete truth of their internal experience.
And then on top of that we have influencer culture, which influencers are sponsored by brands and they’re showcasing these seemingly perfect lives, bodies, meals, like all these things. And again, designed to make you feel bad so that you buy things. And designed to make you feel like, oh, if I only buy these things, then I too can be like this influencer and I too can have this incredible life without revealing all the kind of, first of all, super intense work that I believe goes on behind the scenes.
Because as a person who uses social media for my business, when I see what influencers put out, I’m like that kind of content is probably taking so much behind the scenes work. And I think what they’re selling there is like effortlessness, but the reality is probably very effortful. But of course they don’t want to tell you that because they want you to think that if you buy this dress, your life is going to be spectacular and satisfying. And we’ve all bought the dress and it doesn’t work that way.
And it’s interesting because so many people are aware that social media makes them feel bad, and yet so many of us refuse to stop using it. And you know what? I understand that interesting dynamic because I’m in that category too. Like I’m on social media and I use it for my business, but I also use it personally.
And I do have this interesting thing in my brain where I’m like, oh, how do I want to engage with this? Because sometimes I find things on social media that are so fun and silly and interesting. And other times I’m just mindlessly scrolling and being bombarded with these highlight reels of other people’s lives and being bombarded with all these ads about like, you should buy this thing.
And the way that they’re able to curate ads because of the information they have about us on social media also makes it, I think, even more kind of insidious because they almost know, they know what our concerns are. They know what’s bothering us, they know what we’re worried about through analyzing our data, but it can be kind of creepy, right?
And so I want to be clear, I’m not saying get off of social media and disengage from all marketing and escape capitalism. Because if you’re living in a capitalist society, unless you, I don’t know, move to somewhere that’s different, you’re probably not really actually going to be able to fully escape. What I want you to do is just have a more informed relationship.
I want you to have a more informed relationship with social media. I want you to have a more informed relationship with marketing. I want you to have a more informed relationship with capitalism. And I want you to understand that if you actually want to feel satisfied in a lasting, sustainable way, you’re going to have to cultivate a bit of a new way of being because these ways of being you’ve been taught and indoctrinated with since birth, they’re not going to get you there. They’re going to get you somewhere, but they’re not going to get you to that destination. Not ever.
Let’s also talk about news and media, because I think that is an important thing to consider in our culture and in capitalism. Especially because, first of all, news and media, there’s so much sensationalization. There’s so much focus on conflict and crisis. And this is because this is what people will read and click on and engage with, right?
But I think that gives a really skewed view of what the world is like. And then on top of that, there’s ad revenue, right? If you’re engaging with a news source, you’re getting bombarded with ads, whether you’re doing it online, whether you’re doing it with a physical paper, whether you’re watching TV. Ads are everywhere and ads are marketing, right?
And even things that aren’t marketing kind of are marketing. Like news has ads in it. The ads are like the actual technical, like someone’s advertising to you, someone’s paying money so they can try to get you to buy something. But even just the way we talk is a bit of marketing of like, I have an idea and I want to convince you of it. That’s kind of a form of marketing.
So it’s a little bit like everything you’re coming into contact with all the time is a little bit of marketing. And the marketing is all designed for something specific, right? Things like news, they’re designed to inform you somewhat, but they’re also not just designed to inform you and be neutral about it. They’re designed to inform you in whatever way you’re going to find most engaging so that they can get the most engagement so that they can get the biggest ad revenue so that they can make money, right?
And also even socialization is kind of a form of marketing, right? There’s the literal marketing of like, this brand wants you to buy this handbag. Again, nothing against handbags, just understanding they’re not like this bag can carry things. I mean, occasionally there is marketing like that. But usually they’re like, you’ll feel flawless and perfect and you’ll feel like you won’t have any pores on your face if you carry the sandbag. And the handbag is not delivering that.
But also socialization is a form of marketing of like, this is what it means to live a good life. This is how you’ll be happy, both from like someone who wants to sell you a handbag, but also to like your parents or your peers or the people you went to school with or like this is how you accomplish something. That’s also a form of marketing. So that’s just something to keep in mind.
Okay, so let’s review. Capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction. And we’ve talked about two ways that’s true. And then I’m going to mention a third too. So one is that idea of continuous growth. The more dissatisfied you are, and the more you tie that dissatisfaction to things and consumerism, the more you’re going to go out and buy things to try to cultivate a sense of satisfaction or to try to numb out from the sense of dissatisfaction you have.
The second one is work productivity. Another thing that people are socialized with is like if you feel bad about yourself, work harder. If you’re dissatisfied, be productive and create this different life for yourself. And so that also benefits capitalism because it boosts the economy.
If you work in an organization for someone else, like you’re making money and adding value for that company. If you’re boosting productivity, even in some kind of private endeavor, that might still boost the economy in some ways, even if there’s not a direct financial correlation.
But there’s another important factor that I want to talk about, which is that a dissatisfied distracted people is not a people who organizes and creates change and builds new systems. So capitalism thrives on your dissatisfaction because your dissatisfaction causes you to spend money, because your dissatisfaction causes you to overwork, but also because your dissatisfaction keeps you separate from other people.
It keeps you disconnected and it keeps you from realizing all the systemic problems and then going to work on those. If your brain is convinced that what it needs in order to feel good is a new pair of shoes, it’s going to do whatever it has to do to get that new pair of shoes. But when you back up and slow down and have enough awareness, you’re like, wait a minute, no pair of shoes has actually ever fixed the dissatisfaction before. Maybe there’s another problem here.
And when you get some of that attention back, when you get some of your time back, when you get your money back because you’re not constantly consuming and spending, then you can look around and go like, wait a minute, what do I want the world to be like? And what changes could I make? And what impacts could I have?
A dissatisfied people is less likely to organize, less likely to demand systemic change, and more likely to focus on themselves and try to make themselves feel better. So I also think there’s a really interesting radical political angle to this of when you become a person who knows how to cultivate your own satisfaction, who knows how to feel good about yourself no matter what you’ve bought and no matter how hard you’ve worked, you also become a person who is so powerful.
And I want to be clear, it’s like when you learn how to become satisfied and to build a life that feels satisfying to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean then you’re like, ah, and then you lay on the couch. It probably means you look around at the world and you’re like, I know I’m good enough. I know I have enough. I also have really big dreams and visions for what the world could be like, and I’m going to work on those.
I think it’s also a little bit shifting where your dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction is. If you feel personally dissatisfied and you’re trying to fix that through spending and working and hustling, then capitalism thrives on that. But if you are able to cultivate a sense of satisfaction in your relationship with yourself, in your relationship with your community, your significant other, and in your career, then you’re able to widen your focus and look at things like, where is society at large deeply dissatisfying? And you have energy and time and money, often, to then spend on that.
So in a lot of ways, this podcast is very broad, very far reaching. We’re talking about a lot of different things, but I think if there was one main takeaway for you, it’s that culture is not set up for you to feel satisfied. And if you’re struggling to feel satisfied, you’re not alone. It’s not your fault. And it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong.
And developing the capacity to feel more satisfied and making the changes in your life that need to be made to help you feel more satisfied and then going on to make the changes you want to see in the world, these are all doable things that get broken down into simple steps. And that’s the kind of stuff we work on in coaching.
Now, in coaching we often do start with what’s personally dissatisfying to you. A lot of times we start with things like setting boundaries or shifting your behaviors from these things that you’ve learned and been indoctrinated to do, like spending money when you feel sad, to do things that are actually going to be more supportive to you as an ecosystem.
And then when you feel good, you may also look out at the broader world and decide that you have enough time and energy to change things in a bigger way, to organize, to change the world, really. And as I was saying at the beginning of the episode, even one coaching call, like we heard about from Erin, even one session can have a huge impact both on the thing we talk about, and that will ripple out to all kinds of other areas of your life as well.
And right now I do have single sessions available. You can go to korilinn.com/learnmore to grab one for your very own. And I also have room for one-on-one clients for longer packages. Like right now we’re doing three months and that will give us time to work on either one area really deeply or several different areas of your life.
And I realize buying coaching is a privilege. It’s an expensive thing to buy. So if you’re not in the right position for that, I do want to reiterate there are lots of free ways to engage with this work. And I love hearing from listeners and I would love it if you want to send me an email or come chat with me on Instagram. Let me know what this podcast brought up for you and where you’re going to go from here.
All right. That’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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