Shopping Addiction: Finding Your Reason Why

I was huffing and puff through a workout recently when the instructor said something that made me pause, and not just to catch my breath.  She said, "Why are you doing this?  When you find your Why, you can handle any How."  As much time as I usually spend hating this woman during class, she gets results and one of the reasons she gets results is because she understands that people need to be treated holistically: body, mind, spirit.  Like any change we want to make to ourselves or our situations, fitness isn't just physical, it's mental and spiritual and if it's approached any other way it is unlikely to last through all of life's difficulties.

There's more to Why than meets the eye.  In my class, my instructor meant for each of us to find our inspiration, our reason for getting out of bed and exercising each day, and she couldn't be more right.  You do in fact have to have a reason why you want to change.  But, as I've got older, I've come to realize that most people don't know why they do anything good or bad.  They live their lives in  a haze of wants, impulses, and emotions totally unaware of their self-talk, their motivations, their triggers, etc.  And, my dear friends, as Socrates once said, "The unexamined life isn't worth living."  Animals live unaware of their thoughts, motivated by instinct, never considering tomorrow's consequences of today's actions.  People are meant to ponder.  People are meant to search their hearts, to ask and to learn Why.  So perhaps before you can find a reason why you want to change, you need to find a reason why you do the things you do.

How often to you examine your motives?  If you've fallen into some bad habits, or if your life is a total mess, it's probably time to ask yourself why and to take inventory of your life and your thoughts.  When approaching something like shopping addiction, it's important to do a personal inventory.  This is Step 4 in the 12 Step Program and it's one of the most critical if you wish to achieve success.  Being successful in ending a bad habit or beginning a good one isn't as easy as saying, I just will.  Your "will," better known as "will power" is a short lived thing and not to be trusted for more than a day or two at most.  

If you want to make a change in your shopping habits, begin with writing down everything single penny you spend for a month.  At the end of each day, journal about your feelings, what happened, things that may have triggered you, etc.  At the end of that month, take a look at the days you were more likely to spend and compare then with what was happening that day, either internally or in your external environment that made you turn to shopping for comfort, excitement, relief, whatever.  Now you're getting somewhere, but you have to keep going. A good personal inventory (<-that's the link to a free personal inventory through 12steppers.org) is going to go all the way back to when you first began to use shopping to meet a need in your life.  It's going to focus on that need, the hurts, and perhaps trauma attached to it.  

Once you have really uncovered all the pain and really gone all the way back to the beginning of it all, then and only then can you begin to work on the healing, changing, and forgiving, but it all has to start with Why.  So, if you are unhappy with the amount you spend and the amount of time you spend shopping or wanting to shop, it's time to start paying attention and asking yourself why you do this.  Because you can't know how to fix the problem until you know why it is happening.  So, ask yourself that question; the answer might be the key to lasting change.

Shopping Info:  everything in this outfit is old, just to help you avoid temptation