How to Program Your Mind to Stop Buying Unnecessary Bullshit

We all buy things from time to time that we really don’t need. It’s okay to appeal to your desires from time to time, if everything is in your hands. If you’re struggling with clutter, impulsive shopping, and shoppers’ remorse, here’s how to get your mind in the right place before you even step into the store.

Understand how your brain works against you

Unsurprisingly, the stores use all sorts of tricks to get you to part with your money, and your brain plays along. With psychological tricks, product placement, and even color schemes, stores are designed from the ground up to increase costs. We’ve talked about the most important things stores do to manipulate your feelings, but here are some of the most important things to look out for:

• Color: Stores use color to make products attractive and inviting, but they also use color on price tags. Red stands out and can trigger action, which is why it is commonly associated with signage and advertisements. When you see red, remember what they are trying to do to your brain with that color. You cannot buy something just because it is for sale.
• Barriers to Navigation: Stores force you to go through the things you don’t need to find what you really need. Make a list of what you need before entering, go straight to it and pretend it’s the only item in the store.
• Touch Factor: Keeps the items they want to sell in easily accessible places and encourages you to touch them. Do not do this! Once you pick up something, you are more likely to buy it because your mind suddenly becomes the owner of the object. Do not lift anything or play with the exhibits.
• Fragrances and Sounds: You are likely to hear classic hilarious melodies when you walk into a store. Cheerful music pleases and pleases, and familiar songs make you feel comfortable. They also use pleasant scents to calm you down. A happy, comfortable, and laid-back mind is a dangerous combination for your brain when shopping. There is little you can do to avoid this if you don’t shop online, but it’s good to be aware of it.

And of course, we can blame the stores for everything we want, but you won’t change how they work – you can only be aware of how your brain gets trapped in their tricks . Even without stores, your brain itself is working against you due to some simple cognitive biases.

For example, confirmation bias forces you to believe only information that matches your previous beliefs and ignore everything else. Advertisers address this bias directly by convincing you that one product is better than another with images and other gimmicks, no matter what the hard facts say. Keep your mind open, do your own research, and agree when you’re wrong about a product. The Decoy Effect is also a widely used tactic. You think that one product is profitable because it sits next to a similar product that is much more expensive. Even if this is the product you want, it probably isn’t as good as it first appears. Again, always research ahead and look for this common trick to avoid impulse buying.

Make a list of everything that you have, and try to get rid of it

Now that you know what you’re up to, it’s time to start changing your way of thinking. Before you can stop buying unnecessary crap, you need to determine what the crap is. The first step is to make a list of everything you have . Each. Lonely. Thing . It may sound overwhelming, but you need to collect data to start reprogramming your mind.

The purpose of this exercise is twofold: you see what you already have and what you no longer need to buy, and you see what you shouldn’t have bought in the first place. As you go through everything, separate the items into categories. It is extremely important that you are as honest with yourself as possible when doing this. It is also important that you write or print it all. Here is the first set of categories to categorize everything:

• Need: You absolutely need this item for your daily life.
• Sometimes you do: You don’t need this item every day, but you use it fairly regularly.
• Want it: you bought this item because you wanted to, not because you need it.
• Shit: You don’t have a good reason why you have it, and you already know to take it away (at least there are a few of those items).

Don’t touch what you listed as “needs,” put things listed as “crap” in a stack or box to say goodbye, and bring your attention back to the “sometimes needed” and “want” lists. You need to go back to both of these lists because you have probably tricked some of the lists, subconsciously or intentionally. Now ask yourself these three questions as you go through the “sometimes need” and “want” lists:

• When was the last time I used it?
• When will I use it again?
• Does this item bring you joy ?

Remember to be honest and adjust your lists accordingly. There is nothing wrong with keeping what you wanted. Material items can bring happiness to many people , but make sure the items on your wishlist actively bring you joy and use. If a certain item is little used or does not suit you, add it to the “shit” list.

Once you’ve got everything organized, it’s time to get into some serious cleaning. This is an exercise in compiling the listing should help you get started, but there are many other great ideas when it comes to getting rid of your unwanted trash. Anyway, whatever is on your shitty list should be deleted. You can donate it, sell it at the yard sale, give it to people however you want. However, before you get rid of everything, take a picture of everything together. Print or save the picture somewhere. Some of them were probably gifts, but overall this is all the crap you bought that you don’t need. Take a good look and remember.

See how much money and time you spent on what you threw away

Now take a look at your shitty list again and start counting how much you’ve spent on all of this. If it was a gift, mark it as $ 0. Otherwise, find out the price of the product at the time of purchase. If you made a deal or bought it on sale, that’s fine, but try to be as specific as possible. Once you have a price tag for each item, add it all together. Depending on your spending habits, this can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Remember the photo you took with all this? Attach the total cost to the picture so you can see both at the same time.

Once you’ve determined your monetary value, you should look at other costs as well. Time is the same resource as any other, and it is finite. How long did you spend on these things? Think about the time you have spent acquiring and using these items, and then write it all down. These may be rough estimates, but go ahead and add everything up when you think you got it. Now attach the total time to the same picture as before and think of other ways you could spend all that time. This is not to make you feel bad, just to bring information to your brain in an easy-to-understand way. When you look at it all this way, it can open your eyes a little more and help you think about future purchases. You look at an object and ask yourself, “Will it just show up in the picture?”

Make a list of all the intangible things in your life that make you happy.

It’s time to make another list. While material things can be a lot of fun, things that make you happier most likely cannot be bought. Take a separate piece of paper or create a new document and list everything in your life that makes you happy. If you cannot buy it, then it is on the list. It doesn’t matter if it just makes you smile or jump for joy, list it.

It is probably because of these things that you really want to get out of bed in the morning and carry on. When you have all this, put it in your purse or wallet. The next time you feel the urge to buy something, make this list first and remind yourself why you probably don’t need it.

Spend some time away from material things to gain perspective.

If you find it really difficult to spend money, it can help you get away from material objects completely. When you are constantly surrounded by things and have access to shopping at any time, it can be really difficult to break the habit. Spend the day in the park enjoying the sights and sounds of nature, go hiking with friends, or hike a trail you’ve never walked before.

Basically, you want to show yourself that you don’t need “things” to have a good time. When you realize how much fun you can get without any trinkets and trinkets, you will begin to suppress your urge to buy them. If you can’t get out right now, just go for a walk without your wallet or purse (but bring your ID). If you cannot buy anything, you will be forced to perceive things differently.

Develop a personal “Should I buy this?” Test

Unless you have a personal “Should I buy this?” test, now is the perfect time to do it. When you find an item that you think you need or need, it must answer all of your questions before you can buy it. This is where you can use all the data you’ve gathered so far and put it to some really good use. The test should be tailored to your shopping habits, but here are some sample questions:

• Is this a planned purchase?
• Will it end up on the “shit” list one day?
• Where do I put it ?
• Have I included this in my budget?
• Why do I need / need it?

Assemble your test to identify all your weaknesses. If you make a lot of impulse purchases, ask questions about it. If you have a strong buyer’s remorse, include many questions that will make you think about using the item after purchasing it. If buying the latest and greatest technology is your weakness, Becoming Minimalist’s Joshua Becker invites you to ask yourself what problem this technology solves . If you can’t come up with what it solves, or if you already have something that solves, you don’t need it. Be careful and create a test that you can put in your head every time you think about buying something.

Learn to postpone gratification and destroy impulse buying urges.

When it comes to the unnecessary crap we buy, impulse purchases probably make up a large part of that. We love to have instant gratification, and impulsive purchases turn to this with a rush of excitement with every new purchase. We like to believe that we are in control of our impulses all the time, but in reality we are not, and this is a serious problem for the old wallet.

The key is to teach your brain that it’s okay to wait for satisfaction . You can do this whenever you want something using a simple timeout. See what you think of the purchase, go through your personal “Should I buy this?” check and then walk away for a while. Planning your purchases in advance is ideal, so the longer you can put off your purchases the better. Set yourself a reminder to check the item in a week or a month . When you come back to it, you may find that you don’t even want it, but only the pleasure that will come with it. If you shop online, you can do the same. Step away from your desk or put your phone in your pocket and do something else for a bit.

You can also avoid impulse online purchases by making them more difficult to complete . Block shopping websites during periods of time when you know you have your weakest points, or delete all stored credit card or Paypal information. You can also practice the HALT method when shopping online or in a store. Try not to buy things when you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, because mentally you are in the weakest state. Last but not least, the Stranger Test can also help you weed out bad purchases.

The last thing you should consider when it comes to impulse buying is “fake substitution.” As Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar explains, artificial substitution can happen when you start cutting back on the time you have for your core interests:

Every time I constantly shorten the time for my main interests in my life, I begin to yearn for them. As you saw on that “typical” day, I do spend time with my family, but my other two main interests are missing. If this happens too many days in a row, I begin to miss reading a lot. I’m starting to miss thoughtful board games with my friends a lot. What will happen next? I’m starting to replace. When I can’t sit down for an hour or even half an hour, and I’m really lost in the book, I start looking for an alternative way to fill in the tiny bits of time that I have. I will spend the money.

There are probably many things in your life that bring a lot of pleasure, so don’t get caught replacing them with impulsive purchases. Always make sure you have enough time to do what you love so you don’t subconsciously try to fill that void with useless shit.

Convert the money you save into more money

Once you program your mind to stop buying crap you don’t need, you have extra money to play with. Take all this money and start putting it on your future and the things that you will need further down the road. You may need a house , a car, or a way to retire, but none of this will happen until you start planning for it.

Start by paying off your existing debts. Credit cards, student loans, and even car payments can make you live paycheck to paycheck . Use the snowball method and pay off small balances to feel motivated, and then start paying off your debt in full using the accumulation method : stop creating new debt, determine which balances have the highest interest rates, and create a payment schedule to pay them off efficiently.

When your debts are reduced, you should create an emergency fund. No matter how well you plan, accidents and health problems can still happen. The Emergency Fund aims to make such events more manageable. This type of savings account is only for when life challenges you, but you can grow it fairly easily with little savings .

Once you’ve paid off your debt and prepared for tough times, you can start saving a lot of money. All that money that you no longer spend on crap can be saved, invested and multiplied to allow you to buy comfort and safety. If you’re unsure of where to start, talk to a financial planner. Or create a simple yet effective set-and-forget investment portfolio . You’ve worked hard to reprogram your mind, so make sure you reap the benefits for years to come.

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