7 Empowering Reminders to Help You Overcome Mindless Spending

If mindless spending is a huge problem you can’t seem to stop, I know how you feel. For most of my life (until about two years ago), I was such a mindless spender.

I used to get so excited at the thought of buying new things. More money meant more clothing I didn’t need. More unhealthy food I didn’t need to be consuming. Plus other random shit that I never needed, but somehow convinced myself I did. When I bought clothing on impulses, I told myself that I was simply ‘crafting the perfect vintage wardrobe’. Actually, I was just mindlessly spending money that would’ve been much better off invested or saved. What had begun as my journey towards embracing my personal style had turned into irresponsible consumption habits that were controlling my life through my own attempts to numb through a little retail therapy.

I wasn’t aware of it, but I was actually trying to buy my own happiness. But the more I bought, the emptier I felt.. and the more overwhelmed I was with clutter. Yet, I still couldn’t overcome my mindless spending.

What you’ll learn in this post:

In this blog post, I’m going to share some empowering reminders to help you overcome mindless spending. It’s one thing to want to overcome mindless spending. It’s another thing to want it enough to actually resist it when temptation strikes. Training our minds to care most about what will affect us long-term, instead of just right now, isn’t easy. But it’s so much better than continuing to live a life controlled by stuff and impulses. This post will delve into the emotional reasons behind our mindless spending and the consequences it creates for us. And hopefully, it will inspire you to look within and remember that you are so enough – right here, right now. No temporary dopamine rush you could ever get from buying something will ever make you more enough.

The things that you buy will either serve you or only turn into more clutter.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m so done with clutter and it’s impact on my anxiety. In my most anxious state before minimalism, I realized that so many things I’d bought had amounted to nothing but clutter. All the vintage clothing, accessories, and shoes laying around my severely disorganized room were all things I once believed I needed. And all for the sake of a quick dopamine rush when I was feeling depressed and self-indulgent. Awesome, right?

I know that I’m not the only one who feels like this. In a study done by UCLA, it was confirmed that there is a direct link between a woman’s cortisol levels (the stress hormone) and the amount of stuff she has in her home. It’s also a well-known fact that most people wear just 20% of their wardrobes 80% of the time. Crazy.

With all off this extra stuff on our hands, how could these items be better used? How much happier and less stressed could we be overall?

All of your clutter used to be money.

When I realized the impact of my mindless consumption habits, I felt nothing but so much shame. Shame because I thought about how much money I could have had, if I hadn’t given in to so many stupid impulses. Prolonged shame is never productive. But getting in touch with my feelings after making these choices is what motivated me to start making positive, lasting changes in my life.

Think about all of the ways your money will be better spent when you’re shopping. You want to buy something, but you know deep down that you don’t actually need it. What dreams can you put that money towards instead? The more I bought, the less money I had to prioritize for traveling. Less money to spend on practical items that would benefit me now. Most importantly, I missed the opportunity to confront the real reasons behind my emotional spending in the first place.

Deep down, we’re all seeking greater purpose and meaning. And as fun as it is, there is no meaning in ordering everything on Amazon Prime because you can.

The less you resist your impulses to buy useless shit, the more in touch with yourself you become.

The more I resisted shopping impulses, the more in touch I began to feel with myself. Every time I left Target knowing that I’d only bought what I needed, I felt so proud. Each time I did this, I created more personal integrity with myself. Every time I told myself ‘no’, I believed in myself a little bit more than I did before. Those choices began adding up. When they did, it started feeling easier to say ‘no’. Instead of following my impulses, I learned to look for the deeper reasons that were triggering those impulses.

I used to be so afraid of facing uncomfortable things about myself for so long. I didn’t want to admit that I had problems with unhealthy consumption. Because that would mean I was an addict. That something within me was broken and not okay.

Facing the reality of Autism and ADHD within myself was often deeply uncomfortable and very painful at first. But if I hadn’t faced them, I wouldn’t have experienced all the joy, self-discovery, freedom, and personal growth I’ve experienced since then. That experience showed me that there is so much value in facing uncomfortable things. It taught me that the more I fear and avoid them, the more power they hold over me. This is what inspired me to get more comfortable with seeing the emotional reasons behind my mindless spending. It helped me be okay with the reality of my mindless consumption habits, which then helped me start replacing them with mindful ones.

The more you practice mindful consumption habits, the easier they become.

Even after realizing how stuff had been consuming my life, it still felt difficult to make consumption choices I could be proud of. I was so used to making so many irresponsible ones for so long! In the beginning, I still made some (though considerably less) mindless shopping decisions. Only now, I couldn’t make these choices as carelessly as I had before. Because I was finally aware of how negatively they were affecting me.

In the beginning, it felt like such a fight to resist my spending impulses. Sometimes they won, and sometimes I overcame them. Slowly but surely, I started training my mind to associate these impulse purchases with emptiness, regret, and anxiety. The more I focused on how I would feel after following them, the easier it was to resist them.

When you’re used to making irresponsible consumption choices, making responsible ones is so hard. But like any good habit worth developing, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

When you buy things you don’t need, you’re not only wasting money. You’re wasting time and energy, too.

When you want more stuff, you have to drive to the store and sift through sometimes crowds of people and traffic to get more stuff. If you’re online shopping, you could easily waste hours looking for ‘the perfect thing’. Or, you might end up buying way too many things.. and then have the stress of a massive credit card bill to drain your energy later on.

Time and energy, even more than money, are so precious, and must be protected at all costs. Once they’re gone, we’ll never get them back. Wouldn’t you rather use your time to do something constructive that you’ll actually be proud of in the next days, weeks, and months?

Challenge: Every time you feel tempted to buy something that you know you don’t need, ignore that impulse. Choose to do something else that will actually be meaningful and worthwhile instead.. like doing something kind for a stranger, accomplishing a task you’ve been putting off, or having a good conversation with a friend… and see how it feels to be perfectly happy and whole without accumulating more stuff.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re chasing a feeling, not a thing.

“What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness”.

Leave it to TV’s favorite ad man, Don Draper, to perfectly sum up why we are constantly buying so much shit we don’t need (If you don’t know who that is, I highly recommend Mad Men). Advertisers are smart. They know they aren’t actually selling a thing. They’re selling a feeling disguised as a thing. And, it’s their job to make us believe that what they’re selling is going to give us the feeling that we want to feel.

But as long we continue to chase things, we’ll never really feel that way. There will always be more stuff to buy, and none of it will ever give us the satisfaction that we want.

Don’t make not spending money the focus. Instead, focus on how you can start showing up as your best self today.

How do you want to feel right now? What kind of life do you want to live? What are the things that are holding you back from living that life and being the happiest version of yourself right now?

There is nothing that can stop you from being that person but you. Things won’t give you that feeling that you long for, but they’ll make you believe that they can. Other people can’t give you that feeling either. They should never be given such a responsibility in the first place.

No one else can help you feel the way you want to feel but you. That means it’s up to you to actually make the right choices that will eventually result in the type of feeling that you want… this means that you’ll have to learn to tell yourself no whether, even when it feels hardest. And instead of retail therapy, you’re going to have to face all of your uncomfortable shit and do hard things.

You don’t need anyone else or anything else to complete you. You are 100% enough – right here, right now.

I finally realized that my mindless spending was less about me getting something new, and more about me subconsciously believing that I wasn’t enough. I realized I was focusing on external sources to distract myself from false beliefs about me that I feared were true.

Pushing myself to overcome this habit was hard. But the more times I rose above the urge to impulse shop, the more in touch with myself I became. Slowly, I realized I had everything inside of me to be happy right now. I didn’t need to distract myself from the fears anymore, because I realized they weren’t real.

Fear that I’d never be able to accomplish anything because of my ADHD. That I’d never be loved for who I really am. Fear that I’d never be able to make my dream of owning my own business a reality.. and that in order to succeed, I’d have to go to college and settle for a conventional job that I hated.

I was afraid. Because deep down, I didn’t believe that I had what it took to make any of those things actually happen. But the more I tried to mask these thoughts, the more power they had over me.. and the more I sought out ways to numb my pain and ignore those thoughts.

I still don’t have any of these things, but I’m no longer afraid of them not happening. But confronting these limiting beliefs has given me the courage to believe in myself and make my dreams a reality. All we can do is take things one day at time and do our best. Trusting that as long as we’re doing our best, everything else will come together.

No, I don’t have exactly the kind of life that I want to have yet.. but I’m damn closer to it than I’ve ever been before. Everyday, I’m constantly becoming more like the person I want to be and creating more of the life that I want to live.. and that is more than enough for me right now. You can decide to make that enough for you, too.

And I have decided that pursuing those things and trusting that they will happen at exactly the right time is more than enough for me right now.

Conclusion

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you will most likely not develop healthy spending habits overnight. Building healthy habits is just that – building. Building anything takes a lot of time, and it’s important that you celebrate the small wins along the way, because they will only lead to even bigger ones. If you slip up, don’t let the shame of that mistake hold you back and create more stress that you end up compensating for with even more mindless consumption. Just do everything you know to get back on track, and choose to believe that you are so much more than any little (or big) mistake that you make.