Dear Stoics,
There’s something odd happening to the calendar around now. We have Singles’ Day on the 11th, then Black Friday, which has somehow become Black Weeks, then Cyber Monday, then advent calendars and gift guides, and by December, you can’t open a single app without something flashing a buying countdown at you. Today, we’d like you to look at this time in a more mindful and conscious way.
Singles’ Day began as a joke among students in China, a day to celebrate being unattached, some kind of “anti-Valentine’s Day” tradition. It is now one of the biggest shopping days in the world, and the brands’ pitch goes: you are alone in your life, so buy yourself something nice. It takes a perfectly good way of living and hands it a consolation prize. Moving on to the next one: Black Friday used to be just one day. Now it is a week, sometimes a month, followed by Cyber Monday. Think about it: if a sale lasts three weeks, doesn’t that make it the regular price?
Many of us remember that during our childhood years, Advent calendars used to have chocolates in them. Now every brand has a box of 24 miniature things chosen by a marketing team that has never met you. The odds that you will love all of them are close to zero. If you want the one cream in there, why not just buy the cream?
There’s also a relatively new phenomenon: blind boxes, where the whole point is that you don’t know what you are paying for. We’d suggest passing on this one. Instead, why don’t you agree with your friends to give each other something? The surprise is still there, and it comes from someone who actually knows and likes you.
None of this would really work if our brains were not so easy to charm. When we spot something we want, the brain’s reward centre, the nucleus accumbens, lights up right away, so most of the pleasure is in the wanting. Seeing the price wakes up the insula, which also handles pain and discomfort. The decision to buy comes down to a dispute between the two (here’s the study, if you’re curious). Every brand marketing team knows this about us, and that’s why they bring out a big red “70% off” every once in a while.
The more troubling part is that we shop more when we feel low. Sadness comes with a sense that bad things in life are happening to us beyond our control. Choosing to buy something us gives back a feeling of control, and makes us happier for a moment (more on that here). Unfortunately, when the parcel arrives, the brain adjusts to it super quickly, and the feeling that sent us shopping is back.
We all need to buy things like food, clothes, cosmetics, and we absolutely know that. This letter is about the other kind of buying, the kind that we hope will make us feel better. So, for those days when you feel overwhelmed and want to protect your peace of mind, here’s a very short survival handbook:
Ask two questions: “Do I need this?” and “How will my life be better with it?” If the first one is “No”, and the second one has no answer, that’s the sign to rethink the purchase.
Unsubscribe and block shopping apps: a countdown won’t bother you if it never reaches you.
Name what you really feel first: are you bored, lonely, tired, or sad? Try to address it before you go shopping, and maybe visit a friend for a coffee or go for a walk in the park instead.
Write it down in a journal: spend a couple of minutes writing about what you want and why. That often deflates the urge to buy.
Check what you already have: open the wardrobe or the bathroom cabinet before buying anything to go in it. The fewer things compete for your attention at home, the easier your life gets.
There are two more things from our team that might help you now. In the app, you’ll find a collection On Less with practical tips for a simpler life. And if you’d like a companion for the shopping side specifically, our sister app bless is built for those times you get the urge to buy something you don’t really need. So keep calm and let the sale end without you!
Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have, who then am I?
Erich Fromm
Two small words that can go either way: “What if it all goes wrong?” keeps us up at night, “What if it goes right?” opens us to the world of possibilities.
This week in Stoic, we’ll ask whether “what if” is a worry or a doorway, and choose which one it will be. Every prompt starts the same way: What if… So, come and finish the sentences how you really mean it.
