Ask the Readers: How Do You Handle Peer Pressure?

@Beth… You would not believe the (nonjudgmental) explanatory lectures I’ve given I mean dialogues I’ve had on infertility treatment, breastfeeding, early potty training etc. (Ask a TMI question, get a TMI answer…) One of my single friends is not having much luck with her mother on the love life rationale though (the mother has a personal interest in grandkids), but it seems to be working with everybody else who wonders why she doesn’t have a boyfriend.

@Jane That’s what my mother says. However, I contend that kids don’t all watch the same TV shows at the same time like they did when we were growing up and the internet and DVDs make up for any lack. (Also, growing up I was the only kid in the world without a Nintendo… that just meant I played Nintendo a lot at other kids’ houses and when they came over we baked cookies instead.)

And, it’s never too late to get more culture… got a 30+ year old friend who has never seen Star Wars? Tie her to a chair for a marathon. She’ll thank you later. Maybe not so much if she’s missing your Alf or Married With Children references.

Hey J.D. and Rob,

How to effectively deal with peer pressure: focus on what’s important to you.

Easier said than done, of course. But it’s a simple method.

When you’re confident in your life, then it becomes easy to ignore others. You don’t even need to consciously do it – you naturally shake off any jeers and criticism. It just doesn’t get to you. Like someone telling you the grass is blue – someone making fun of you for not having a TV becomes ridiculous to where the only thing you can do is laugh.

This has done wonders for me. I too suffered from peer pressure. I used to spend energy coming up with excuses and reasonings. Not an effective use of resources, and the peer pressure wore me down.

But then I started to focus internally. Instead of manipulating external forces that were out of my control (people’s opinions), I started strengthening what I could control (my core: my values, my principles). I became confident in my lifestyle. The reality was strong, and what I did made complete sense to me.

Whenever someone would criticize or make fun of me for something, it was easy to ignore. I noticed I didn’t even need to consciously try to block their opinion out – it just didn’t phase me to begin with. My belief in my lifestyle and reality was so strong that someone telling me I “needed a real job” or “needed to watch TV” or something sounded absurd to me. All I could do was smile (and laugh to myself).

Effectively handle peer pressure by focusing on strengthening your lifestyle (and your belief in it) rather than defending yourself. When your reality is strong enough, any criticism and opinions naturally bounce off due to its ridiculousness.

Here’s to finding and surrounding yourself with supportive people, who are the true friends,
Oleg

JD’s comment: “This site would never have been built if I were a TV-watcher.” This says it all really doesn’t it? I have not had a TV for over 10 years now. Sure, when we sit watch dvds on a 15″ laptop screen I wonder whether a large screen might not be better but to be honest I really don’t miss it. When my colleagues talk about TV I literally tune out, wondering to myself why on earth they care so much about comedy/soapstars/celebrity come dancing when they could invest that energy in their own lives….

Great reply Seamus! (11) “Simple answer to this question is avoid those who like to devalue others for whatever reason they find in their minds to justify doing so.” I had an interesting encounter with a person who felt it necessary to advocate to the world what a wonderful person he was, how great his kids were, his grandchildren were, how much money he had in his retirement account, how he almost made it in a TV show, how well his house showed and so on. We no longer interact after he probably noticed that I was not impressed. Typically people who don’t take a genuine interest in other people are not worth hanging out with. Again, great reply Seamus!

Making fun of your coworker for not having a TV is lame.

Maybe Rob’s coworker is just an obnoxious jerk. If so ignore him.

I wonder if the coworker is really serious or if he’s just giving Rob what he thinks is some ‘good natured ribbing’? I’ve had a boss that would make fun of you for stupid stuff but that was just him joking in his odd way of being friendly and he expected / liked to get such joking in return.

@ Cara: “They’re your co-workers, not your friends. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

I guess I don’t get this. You spend AT LEAST 8 hours a day with your coworkers, if not more. Depending on the job, you might well spend more time with your coworkers than your partner (unless you count sleeping time).

Why not start a conversation?

@ Jane #80,
Kids will ostracize and bully each other for any reason, or no reason at all. Spending a bunch of money on stuff you don’t want is not going to help. If your kids are bothered by something, wouldn’t talking about it be better than trying to “fix” it with a weekly dose of whatever-kids-are-watching-now?? I am horrified to think that people buy their kids the latest toy so they won’t get teased in school. It doesn’t work!!

Re: Minderbender
“Just tell them that living without a TV has given you more time for sex.”
I was in Mexico one time, talking to a cab driver. I don’t remember what we had been talking about exactly, but he essentially said “there’s not much to do around here except have sex or watch TV. Since we’ve got a TV now, no more kids for us.” For him, TV really had replaced sex. It was his birth control.

But back to the main topic:
Personally, I haven’t found this to be a problem for me. I work with people who make $125,000 a year (plus or minus), drive 8-year-old cars, and share apartments with roommates. One friend of mine just recently traded in his car for a brand new one. The old one had 120,000 miles on it and was starting to have reliability problems. He traded it in for a new one he could pay for in cash. No one made fun of his old car, he traded it in because he was afraid of it leaving him stranded. He’s talking about buying a house and putting $200k as a down payment. He says he doesn’t want to put more than that down because he feels it wouldn’t leave him enough savings.

I have another friend who makes similar money, and has for the past ten years. I remember him telling a story about how, back in the dot-com boom days, he’d been awarded a bunch of stock options that became highly valuable. He sold a bunch and used the proceeds to pay off his student loans, *and his sister’s*. He’s owned exactly one brand new car in his life. He bought it in 2001, and he still has it. He takes very good care of it, it still looks new. This is a person who’s currently on vacation in the Caribbean, sailing around St. Lucia on a 40-ft catamaran. He can afford to do pretty much anything he likes, but he shares an apartment with a roommate, because that’s not one of his priorities.

Most of my friends have iPhones. I don’t. Nobody cares though, because they all realize that it’s really just a toy, and if I don’t want one, it’s no problem for them, they can still call me on my “regular” phone.

The people I’m surrounded with every day tend to be *good* examples of how to be financially successful rather than then opposite, and I actually feel like this has helped me. There definitely is a correlation between my financial success and my association with this group of people. As I’ve aged, I think this value set has become more ingrained, and if I were to be surrounded by less responsible people now, I’d be less likely to be influenced than I would have been a few years ago, but having exposure to this sort of social group — people that meet all the standard definitions of success and choose to live how they do, has given me not only new perspective, but also role models. These are people who’s *expectations* are that everyone contributes to their 401ks, (probably maxing them out), and also feels it’d be foolish not to take advantage of things like our employee stock purchase plan. And yes, they make good many and may have big flat-panel TVs, but they bought them after their cars were paid off and their retirement funded.

@Kate: I’d rather learn more about my co-workers than talk about myself, so it’s easy to keep my personal life private. A conversation doesn’t have to involve sharing anything about my own life, and frankly people want to talk about themselves anyway, so I encourage them to do so. I don’t confuse friendliness with friendship, and I don’t confuse co-workers with friends (although in a few cases, a very few, a person can be both). But then, I’m a lawyer, which probably skews my view. Most of the people I deal with professionally are not people I would ever choose as friends. We don’t have the same values or the same lifestyles, not even close.

I have a not-so-nice but very effective response to that kind of teasing: be smug. When a friend of mine mocked me for keeping a detailed budget, I was mild in my response to him. But inside, I was thinking of all his wild financial ups and downs. I felt smugly superior in my ability to manage my money. Not a very charitable response, but it sure made me feel better!

My friends and I are in our mid-twenties, and I encounter this a fair bit. A lot of them are (like me) making a strong effort to learn to manage their finances. But some of them spend money like it’s going out of style. And then look at us like *we’re* the crazy ones for not wanting to blow our whole paychecks on clothes, concerts, drugs, electronics, etc.

@ Cara

Yeah, I think I can buy that. I know we’re an unusual office, not least because a) everybody’s salaries are public, and b) we actually WILL wind up living together at some point when we’re on post.

I guess the challenge is not becoming the free-rider.

There seem to be quite a few people saying “I don’t have a TV (except the one we use to watch DVDs on)” or something along those lines. If you have a TV that you watch DVDs on then how is that really any different than having a TV? I don’t see any real difference. I understand you’re not paying for cable but you’re still staring at moving pictures on a screen. You can watch TV broadcasts for free and you can skip commercials with a DVR.

Do people really think watching DVDs is better than watching scheduled programming? (commercials and payment aside)

I’m not meaning to be critical, and if thats what works for you then great, but I’m just not seeing a difference so I need a little help understanding that viewpoint.

I adore TV. I could never do without. I have a PhD in rhetoric, and I just find everything about TV completely rhetorically compelling. TV is only as intellectually devoid as the person watching it.

I will concur with the general idea that people who talk about not having a TV, but then talk about watching DVD’s, hulu and Netflix on the computer aren’t really all that different from the rest of us unwashed masses.

Really looking to kicking back with a martini and watching Stargate: Universe tonight.

Matt said:
“The reason? I said I’d probably never bring my family to Disney World. She simply couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea that kids could enjoy going other places, and felt that I would be denying my daughter an ‘important experience.’”

Well, not everyone needs to go to a Disney Resort, and actually, on a global scale, you’d be in the majority. However, for a humorous perspective on what it was like growing up in the shadow of Disneyland but never visiting: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1016 (Act One, “Across the Street from Heaven”)

Also, if you break down and end up at Disney World, don’t do it like JD did. There are certainly ways to visit a Disney resort in as frugal a manner as possible and still enjoy the experience.

I think a lot of what Rob is experiencing from his co-workers is every person’s strong desire to belong to the herd, even if it is heading over a precipice. That question, “Did you see (some TV show) last night?” has been the ice breaker at the workplace for decades (and probably replaced “Did you listen to (some radio show) last night?” that preceded it).
But that’s hardly a reason to put yourself into a financial hole. So you can carry on a conversation at work? There are plenty of other topics.

The other thing is the showing off of Stuff. Which is even more ancient: Bringing back the Trophy, be it some beast you hunted down or the loot collected from war. “Look at this iPhone/Jewel-encrusted gold thing/Animal I got!” For some people, that’s what keeps them going, which is more about them, than about you.

Finally, we are frankly oddballs in a consumer and marketing driven world. Consumption is gloriously advertised as curing all our ills. And given that most people have been plopped down in front of a TV since before they could walk, it’s not surprising that many of them buy into Consumer Culture and can’t fathom frugality.

How do you cope? Well, you are going to have to continue to laugh it off, shrug off the idiotic logic that somehow you’re depriving your family, and just plow ahead on your path. You’ll have to accept you’ll be known as the “cheapskate” to your co-workers. The way I see it, while having friends at work is nice, it’s not exactly part of your job description.

@Tyler Karaszewski I want to live near you! We live in a very liberal, left-leaning area where the majority of people I run into each day think money is evil and people who have it are greedy. The others don’t make enough to support their lifestyles, but encourage others to go into debt for things they don’t need. Either way, I’m hosed – I get comments about how uppity I am when someone asks me what my car payments are and I say I don’t have car payments. I get comments about how ‘rich’ we must be because we can afford the occasional theatre ticket and dinner. It’s very annoying, and sometimes grates on my nerves. Yet, I don’t say anything because to each his own. I have found a handful of successful people with goals of being wealthy, active within their community and to one day be able to give more generously. The time I’m able to spend around them almost balances out the negatives. We hope to move next year, and I hope we can find a community more suited to our way of thinking. *sigh* it can wear on a person, can’t it?

I’ve recently begun reading this blog and I enjoy your posts and the comments. I agree that laughing it off and ignoring it are valid responses, but in this case it may be too passive. Apologies if this post is redundant, I haven’t read through all the comments.

It’s one thing to shrug off peer pressure when it’s an offhand remark, but Rob’s story indicates it’s a consistent problem. By continuing to be passive about confrontational remarks, Rob is always on the ‘defensive’ in both his coworkers’ mind’s and possibly his own.

As an alternative, if it doesn’t work for him, my recommendation is to be a bit more aggressive and question the “everyone needs this” mentality his coworkers espouse. Maybe comments like “I’m happy without all the gizmos and so is my family, why should I buy things I don’t need or want?” or “Why do you assume my family wants them[gizmos]?”. He would be putting them in the position of justifying why their beliefs should be held by everyone.

And if he prefers not to be aggressive just ask them to stop. Being in the presence of people who spend money like crazy isn’t a big deal, but being actively taunted for it is. I don’t see how it’s OK to ignore being constantly ostracized in your workplace – Rob doesn’t deserve it and they should stop.

Lastly, for myself at least, I don’t want to ignore people who spend more money – I think the key part is to not compare yourself. If my friend Kyle wants to spend a crapton of money and show it off, cool, that’s his choice and I’ll be very happy for him – but I won’t internally compare myself to Kyle thinking ‘why don’t I have all that stuff’. I’m guessing you’re saying the same thing, but using the term ‘ignoring’ makes me think of people putting their head in the sand, which again sounds like running away from the issue.

Andrew

Responding to your co-worker’s rant is simple. Respond with soemthing like “I prefer to spend that time with my kids. Anything that looks good, I can download later and watch it on my time.” Simple as that. He can bugger off. Take the high road!

It would depend on the way the person asked the question.

If they were honestly curious, I would answer them truthfully.

If they were being rude or obnoxious, I’d probably talk down to them. “We don’t have time for TV. The kids are too busy learning biochemistry and using household products to build their own spectrophotometer.”

@Marie

Good point. However, your idea of “talking down to them” will just make them ostracize you more. If you don’t care about that, then so be it. But he clearly wants to maintain rapport with his colleagues.

@ Garrett, # 138 – My best friend is writing her dissertation on reality television and has presented at numerous national conferences on the issue. Of course it’s rhetorically compelling! Who does it appeal to and why? How are the conventions of the genre (the hero, the villain, the challenge, the alliance) built, and what functions do they serve (both within the genre and within society at large)? How are the conventions broken, and what are the consequences of that (again, both within the genre and society at large)? Does reality television create society or reflect it? Is reality television (which operates as a rhetorical Spectacle) any different from gladiator-type events and tournaments in Greek and Roman days? How does reality television compare to “canonized” authors such as Dante, or Shakespeare, or Chaucer (all of whom were considered extremely raunchy and low-brow back in the day)? What purpose does anti-reality-television rhetoric serve for those who employ it? Does employing anti-reality-television rhetoric effectively divorce the rhetorician from the social effects of the genre, or bind him/her inextricably to them?

I could go on…and ANTM is great, although I am recording too many other shows to have seen the last 2 or 3 seasons.

But materialism doesn’t lead to happiness.

Not directly, maybe, but being a non-conformist can definitely erode one’s happiness. And when you begin talking about a household with children, that has gone to the extreme of not having a television…all of your choices effect your kids, and I just hope people are cognizant of that. If you’re okay with the alienation that your kids will receive for being ‘out of the loop’ socially—if you feel that’s a worthwhile trade-off, because you believe they get something greater—then so be it. They’re your kids.

But I hope that decision is well considered before made.

To each his/her own. I was laughed at for being so cheap and doing frugal things like eating ramen noodles and brown bagging it at work. Their jaws dropped when I retired shortly after turning 50. I had a pretty thick skin due to serving on submarines and got used to 100+ guys trying to get under it. We have a dish and tho I don’t watch much, my wife likes it, even with the audio music channels as background music. I could drive a new car but choose to have a lab that has averaged $400/month this year in vet bills. He goes with me in the car with 235K on it and we enjoy it more that we would in a new car. One guy at work gave me grief on the old car and I told him that I would meet him at the dealership to pick out a new car for me since he would be signing the loan papers. That shut him up. My wife and I are both not working now and are off to the $2 theater. Life is good.

PS JD’s wife’s pot roast recipe was great and inexpensive last night.

I think this was more of an issue for us when we were trying to fit in, and hadn’t resigned/declared ourselves to being counter-culture and out-of-step with the Joneses.

When someone decides that they need to comment on our family spending and lifestyle, I’m happy to start discussing how our choices reflect our values, and keep us happy, sane, and fiscally sound.

Interestingly, I find that this approach leads to a very brief conversation, because most people who comment haven’t thought very hard about why they think, spend, and live the way THEY do. And they think we’re weird.

(The TV thing was a bit of an unfortunate tangent, but for the record, we only have 1 TV, and watch way too many shows on Tivo. IMHO, we should cut back, and our quality of life would be better, but DH has never gotten on board. )