How To Stop Spending Money On Unnecessary Things

If you're the type of person that spends so much money on a necessary thing so much so that you feel like it's become an addiction that you no longer have control over I'm here to tell you it's not your fault the reason that you can't control your spending is because we're living in a world that our primitive brains can't function and it's so clear to see because we live in the age where everyone is addicted to something with that social media moving or online shopping it's very hard to have self-control.

The world that we're living in and if you find yourself spending too much money on unnecessary things if you find yourself addicted to spending money first talk about our past with chapter one from scarcity to abundance as I said if you have trouble with spending too much money it's probably not your fault because although it's important to have self-control and personal responsibility we're competing against our own human psychology and let me explain how by giving you a crash course on human history which begins about 200,000 years ago when we humans were hunter gatherers and this was a time of hardship and scarcity where our biggest Pleasures were sitting around a warm fire finding food in the story of the hunt and we lived in that scarce world for about 180,000 years until then about 12,000 years ago we human beings settled down and discovered farming which made survival easier and things were less scarce and we can enjoy easier access to food more security and easier work and with all that extra time we started to become more advanced which leads us to today where we're living in this age of comfort and abundance where we have online shopping food delivery apps.

Cars and so the reason that you're having trouble spending too much money is because our brains evolve of the period of 200,000 years to live in a world of hardship and scarcity but for the last 50 years we've been living in a world of extreme comfort and abundance it's hard to have self-control with our spending because our own human psychology is against us our brains are saying seek pleasure things are scarce but we live in a time where pleasure is extremely easy to come by which leads me to chapter two the age of easy pleasure so back in the day when we were chasing the Buffalo before we sold out to the man pleasure wasn't something that was easy to com by I mean we might spend hours walking through the forest eventually find some berries and get pleasure from eating those sweet berries we put in all this effort first to receive this small reward and this pleasure was good for us because things were scarce and did and encouraged us but nowadays pleasure is so easy to come by I mean we can simply pull out our smartphones order some sugarcoated.

Berries on along with a bunch of candy and get it delivered to your house we put in no effort to get the reward and because we human beings love our pleasure when it's extremely easy to get we seek it out as much as we can and we frequently buy things on Amazon seek convenience through apps and buy nice possessions we do these activities at involve buying things and spending money because it makes us feel good we like to seek this pleasure but what ends up happening is when we do this too much it creates this addictive behavior where you buy something to get pleasure then you want to recreate that feeling but you have to buy something bigger then you have to buy something bigger and eventually you find yourself unable to control your spinning not because you're addicted to stuff but because you're addicted to the pleasure that comes from spending money you're addicted to that exciting feeling that comes from spending money and because we live in this world of abundance this world of easy pleasure it's something that's extremely hard to overcome but to overcome this addiction we next need to talk about how addictions work with chapter 3 the pain pleasure seesaw all right so now that we established that the reason it's so hard to stop spending money is because your brain evolved for hardship and scarcity but is living in comfort and abundance let's try to understand how this creates an addiction by talking about what the author of dopamine Nation calls the pain pleasure seesaw so let's imagine a seesaw or as they say in England.

Seesaw is pleasure and on the other side is pain this is your Natural Balance now whenever you do a high dopamine activity like online shopping you push down on the pleasure side of the Seesaw getting pleasure from buying something in no pain however eventually your brain wants to go back to this balance so afterwards you might experience some pain like boredom or lack of contentment and once you're back to that balance you want to experience that feeling of pleasure again but this time you need a bigger hit so you have to spend more money which again increases the pleasure side but afterwards you experience some pain to balance it out and eventually as you keep doing this instead of returning to a neutral balance your default balance is pain and instead of feeling neutral when you're not spending money you feel bad and so you start to spend more and more money to both get pleasure and combat pain and so if you're having trouble spending too much money it might be because for so long you've been seeking pleasure from the behavior of spending money that you've created this imbalance with your pain and pleasure and the only way to break this addiction is get back to that equilibrium so let's talk about how we do that and how we can ab break this addiction with chapter 4 returning to equilibrium now I am not a psychiatrist but if you're having trouble with spinning too much money to the point that you do not feel like you have control over it chances are it's because your pain pleasure seesaw is IM balance your own brain chemistry is being manipulated by this abundant world that we live in and the only way to overcome this addiction and control your spending is to move back to equilibrium and in the book The author offers two solutions on how do this the first solution is abstain from pleasure for 2 to 4 weeks if you constantly feel the urge to spend money to get pleasure or just to avoid pain instead of constantly trying to push down on the pleasure side simply don't seek pleasure and this is something that requires a lot of self-discipline to do but for 2 to 4.

Weeks avoid indulging in spending money distance yourself from online shopping and avoid impulse purchases in over time your brain will recalibrate and move move back to equilibrium making you not feel the urge to spend money to get rid of that pain in your tolerance for pleasure won't be extremely high and the second solution is intentionally press on the pain side of the Seesaw as we've seen pleasure is always followed by pain on the other hand pain is followed by Pleasure so instead of constantly seeking pleasurable activities like spending money seek some painful activities like taking a cold shower or exercising because it will move your brain back to equilibrium the goal is to have this neutral balance where you don't get trapped in this negative feedback loop that's telling you to spend more and more money to get pleasure and avoid pain and when you get back to this equilibrium you're able to think more rationally and make better decisions and that's how you resist the urge to stop spending money.

Much easier said than done so let's talk about some of the obstacles that you'll face when trying to overcome this with chapter 5 overcoming emotional obstacles in order to beat this addiction with spending money there are four obstacles that you might encounter so let's talk about those four obstacles and how to overcome them the first obstacle is prioritizing long-term rewards so the first obstacle that you might face when overcoming this addiction to spending is focusing on long-term rewards because when you're spending money you're often focusing on short-term rewards you're just getting that quick dopamine hit but if you sit down and take the time to write down some of your long-term goals like having more Financial Security more Financial Freedom in no debt then it helps to motivate you to change your behavior and see the cons of always seeking these short-term goals now the second obstacle is recognizing and accepting your behavior patterns it's very easy to recognize and point out someone else's Behavior patterns.

It's very hard to recognize and accept your own behavior patterns especially when they're bad and when you have this spinning addiction you might ignore minimize or discount your patterns of behavior you just sweep it under the rug however if you do the uncomfortable Act of being honest with yourself then you can recognize your bad habits strengthen your mind hold yourself accountable and see you have the power to change it being honest with yourself can open the door to actual change now the third obstacle is isolation in the United States the Surgeon General has declared an epidemic on isolation in loneliness and when people feel lonely and isolated they turn to these addictive behaviors like spending money because they think that it brings them pleasure however it doesn't work it just intensifies the problem and instead we should discuss our addictive behaviors with others and find a supportive Community we humans need each other and the pleasure that we get from being around each other is much more sustainable than the pleasure of spending money and the final obstacle is escapism a huge reason that people have these addictive spending habits is because we live in a very m mundane world where not that much goes on and people view it as a way to escape the mundane world but this escapism brings a lot of pain into our lives and instead we should search to find hobbies and passions that make life more interesting and if you can overcome these obstacles and move back to equilibrium then you could stop spending too much money on unnecessary things many people have trouble with spending money because our brains evolved in a time for hardship and scarcity and now we're living in times of comfort and abundance and if you can recognize that the reason that you're having trouble with spending too much money is because your pain pleasure seesaw is in balance and focus on moving it back to equilibrium then you can have a much healthier relationship with money and that's how you stop spending money on unnecessary things.