Every week you probably go to the shopping center and shop your way
through your valuable spare time. We are taught by society and
traditional politics that the more we buy, the more we consume, the
happier and more successful we will be. This concept is outdated and
needs to be reviewed.
Let me give you a great example. I often like to buy myself a new
pair of Nike running shoes. I never really need them but somehow end up
buying more pairs than I can wear. I thought about this subconscious
decision that I consistently made and realised that the feeling of new
shoes only lasted a few days.
After a couple of days, the good feeling the shoes gave me no longer
existed. When you think about this scenario carefully I am sure you will
come to the same conclusion; buying new things all the time only makes us happy for a short time but not in the long run.
For years, I went out every weekend and brought things that society
told me would make me appear successful. I had the flashy car, new suit,
expensive watch, nice deodorant, and yet I couldn’t have been more
miserable.
Long-term success occurs when we are fulfilled and are achieving our life’s work not when we are shopping.
Below are seven reasons why I believe shopping is killing your success:
1. It’s distracting you from your purpose
Whatever your purpose is in life shopping is distracting you from achieving it. Shopping takes up space in your mind that needs to be reserved for important things like how you are going to change the world with your vision.
Shopping causes little impulses in the brain to continuously fire off
and take you away from what you should be doing. Your to do list
becomes out of control because shopping can take over what your mind
perceives to be important. You start thinking to yourself, “I can’t go out tonight, I have worn this shirt before and I need a new pair of shoes.”
You don’t need anything new at all.
“You need to forget about what others think of your possessions and start thinking about the small amount of time you have on this planet to do something that you will be remembered for, long after you are not around anymore to shop like the other zombies”
2. It’s taking up your time
Your success is exterminated when you allow time to slip away.
Success requires lots of time to achieve the goals necessary to make you
fulfilled. From the outside, shopping seems like it doesn’t take a long
time, but it does.
Time can be wasted trying items out (like clothes), returning items
that are faulty, parking the car in the shopping centres endless car
parks, and by eating food at the shopping centre. You’re probably
wondering why I brought up food at the shopping centre in relation to
time.
The reason is that not only do the bright lights and nice smells at
the shopping centre make you shop, they also make you hungry too. This
usually results in you eating on of the many junk food options available
at the shopping centre which can suck more of your time.
The real time is wasted though until you return home and have
no energy left because of all the sugar you consumed while shopping. Typically, you then say to yourself “I’ll have a sleep and then do my to-do list tomorrow.
The problem with this is that tomorrow never comes, and you get
distracted with some other useless exercise that won’t help you on your
journey of success.
3. It’s wasting your precious money supply
The one resource you have that can buy back some of your time is money. Money can allow you to work less and spend more time on your dream. Shopping interrupts this harmony though because it sucks what money you have into useless items you don’t need.
Have you ever walked into a shopping centre to buy one thing and then
come out with a whole bunch of stuff you don’t need? It’s happened to
all of us. The reason it happens is because the shopping centres are
laid out in such a way that they play havoc on your impulses and urges.
If you allow shopping to control you, then your money will go flying
out your wallet without you even realising it. This money is what you
can use to buy things that help you with your dream like a website or
some training in a particular field.
4. Addictive traps compound the problem further
Not only does shopping waste your time but the problem is compounded further through addictive traps such as: perceived sales and discounts, and loyalty cards.
The first thing to understand is that 90% of the time nothing is on
sale and the price has just been marked up to retail, and then
discounted back again to the true selling price.
I see some items in the supermarket that are on sales every week. How
can that be? Simple, the supermarket has hit their next volume tier in
pricing for that particular item, and rather than permanently decreasing
the price, they make you feel weekly that it’s on special – it’s not.
Loyalty cards are another doozy. The purpose of a loyalty card is to collect your information and then analyse your spending patterns.
Once the shop knows what you are buying, they can increase prices of
what consumers buy the most of, and then offer two for one type specials
to make you spend more.
You’re smarter than this. Don’t let your brain be manipulated by these very simple, psychological tricks.
5. It’s clogging up your house
Without realising it, shopping is clogging up your house with lots of
extra stuff you don’t need. Most of the things you buy, statistically
speaking, will hardly ever be used. This means that most of the junk in
your house is psychologically making you feel stressed, and your mind
cluttered.
6. It’s creating more housework
As
well as clogging up your house, shopping is making your house messier.
The more things you buy, the less space you will have in your home. Your
mind will do its best and want you to clean constantly to free up
space, but most likely, if you let shopping take over, you will never
have the space you need to feel relaxed.
Then, the more items you have in the home, the harder and more time
it takes to clean your house. Shopping creates a pattern of failure that
you have to avoid at all costs. Go shopping once in a while but reframe
from doing it weekly (other than the basic food supplies).
7. It’s making you unhappy and ungrateful
As success is sucked away from your life through society’s burden on
you with this whole shopping lie, at the same time, you will become
unhappier and more ungrateful. When you act from a place of gratitude
you feel like you already have everything you need.
You feel like you are lucky to even have a car, which stops you from
going and changing your car every five years like most people. The less shopping you do the happier you will start to feel.
With shopping, there is no end; you will never have everything you
need, or the greatest or latest of every item. That’s the whole game my
friends and that’s why you need to avoid the addiction of shopping.
