Since it makes my goals very personal, I can't compare myself on an objective metric with other people and as a result feel less frustrated about not earning more.
Problem-solving mindset: what problem do I need to solve? “Problems” will always arise life (due to other people, random events, our brain always wanting novelty, etc.), so this mindset is a reactive one that leads to anxiety and lack of direction.
Creational mindset: what would I love to create? This mindset can seem harder to get at because of all the conditioning we’ve gotten from society and childhood. But all it takes is a simple perspective shift. It leads to more proactivity, and trust that you’ll be able to do whatever you need to do. All the secondary, tertiary, etc. questions about how get answered relatively easily when you’re clear about what you want to create.
My version would be more like :
"Owning a car is very circumstantial. It means you temporarily have some property right on it. It can break, it can be taken away from you. If you create something it's yours forever. Its existence is not independant of your will.".
At the end of their lives some people will have owned ten cars, others will have written ten books.
No need to ignore anything. Instead realize that everyone on this planet has exactly the same amount of hours in a day - the poorest and the richest alike. With that understood realize that you can only spend your time on so _few_ things that you better choose what's really important to you.
And thus one may choose to spend time on projects and making stuff, and "friends who buy a new car every year" are simply people that chose differently - there is little point to ordering the choices (or conversely you can always design a metric by which any given choice will be strictly superior to others - thus making such orderings generally pointless).
And in terms of money and even its power to buy time - it's all diminishing results surprisingly quickly. And if you like cars then indeed switching every year sounds like a much better strategy than owning many at the same time.
To each their own. Would be extremely dull otherwise!
If you're genuinely into cars and driving, you might well indulge in buying nice cars and find it emotionally fulfilling. If it's about status, however, you can probably find more fulfilling ways to attain status that doesn't involve purchasing a trinket you don't truly want or need – perhaps by becoming known in the local area as a donor/philanthropist, having the best garden on the street, involvement in local politics or sports teams, being in a band, becoming a busybody on the PTA, and such things. (I admit these things all sound a bit suburban but that's my frame of reference.)
Money is freedom and trading that freedom to get a shiny toy doesn’t make sense to me. I would much rather know I can work on what I want or not work at all than drive to my job in a nicer car.
And if people judge you as person based on the car you have, the clothes you wear or the appartment / house you live in, well, maybe ignoring those people actually is a healthy thing to do.
A car especially is just a tool, I care as much about someone’s car as I do the hammer in their toolbox, but I am not a car person.
It comes down to what you value. Stability, time, and financial freedom matter more to me than any fancy thing I could buy.
They definitely are, which is why I forego things that take them away from me. No children or dogs in my future.
The fact you notice and thinks about it means you care. You want a new car every year. You envy it. Be honest to yourself and go get it. That is what you want.
If you have sanity issues because you ain't driving the nicest car in town... Maybe that's the core issue? Why do you place so much importance on having the nicest car? Vast majority of people do not give a damn what others drive/wear/whatever.
All in all the only way to win this game is to not play.
How do you ignore friends who write a new book every year?