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7 Ways to Kill That Urge to Buy New Stuff
You don’t have to be a slave to consumerism
You are strapped to a treadmill. It’s the same treadmill most of us can’t escape. It’s the hedonic treadmill — the observation that even though we keep chasing money, rainbows, and unicorns, believing that these things will make us happy, we’ll instead quickly adapt to any life changes, returning to our baseline of happiness.
This means that buying new things won’t make you happier. And you know that. I mean, it’s not as if you never crossed something off your wish list.
It’s happened to you before. You’ve longed for a new phone, gadget, garment, whatever, watched unboxing video after unboxing video, read reviews and opinions, fantasized about it, and then — when you couldn’t resist any longer — you bought it. But what happened to that shiny, that brilliant, that sparkling thing after it ended up in your hands?
It stopped twinkling. It’s glow faded. It just became a thing. It joined your pile of stuff. At best it’s now something lying around somewhere in your home that you occasionally use. At worst, you don’t even know where it is. It might even be broken by now.
But you don’t care. You’re not thinking about it. Instead, you’re busy stomping away on that treadmill, like we all are, chasing the next…
