1. Set a timer. After you have shopped for 90 minutes, you tend to go into a zone- and you spend more mindlessly. You zone out. Malls encourage this by hiding the passage of time. They don’t post clocks or have a lot of windows. This way you don’t know how much time has passed. So simply set a timer on your phone for 90 minutes. When it goes off, sit down and have a cup of tea. You don’t have to go home. Just take five minutes to relax and assess where you are, what you’ve purchased and what else you want to do.
2. When you go into a store that is new to you, you spend more money. Why? Because you get a hit of dopamine- that feel good neurochemical. Dopamine is released when things are new, novel or exciting. It feels good! And a new store is very stimulating and exciting. So try this: tell yourself you can buy what you want, but you’ll purchase it when you come back a second time. Leave the store and go somewhere else (perhaps stores you’ve been to before) and then return. The second time it won’t feel quite as exciting. It’s not as new or stimulating. If you still purchase something from there, it will be from a more grounded place. It won’t feel so “speedy”.
3. Don’t carry items around with you in a store. When you are debating purchasing something and you carry an item around, it starts to feel like yours. When you finally decide to return it to its shelf or rack, your brain feels pain- it feels like it is losing something that was yours and you are less likely to put it back. You’ll rationalize why you should have it. If you don’t carry it around with you, it doesn’t feel so hard to put back. Worried that size of jeans will get taken? Go hide it somewhere on a different rack while you think about it. Come on, you’ve never done that?!
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