My advice for anyone doing a shopping ban
Be mindful of how you begin
Hi friend,
It’s hard for me to believe this, but 2014 marks ten years since I first setup the personal experiment that changed the trajectory of my life. What started as an idea to get some control on my spending and save more money turned into a successful experiment (and successfully documented experiment) that went viral and led to my first book deal (for THE YEAR OF LESS).
That experiment was, of course, a yearlong shopping ban: a challenge to not buy anything for a year, unless I absolutely needed it. No clothes, no shoes, no books, nothing for my home. I did it—for a full two years, in fact. I learned a lot and saved a lot of money. And then, as a true surprise to me, I even got to earn some money from writing a book about it. But the ban also changed my relationship with shopping in a way I couldn’t understand after, and can probably only begin to explain now that nearly a decade has passed.
Namely, it left me in a state of feeling as though buying things was bad. And that is simply not true.
Before I share more, I want to be clear that I don’t regret doing the shopping ban. I also don’t think they are a bad idea—and there are many reasons you might design one for yourself, and for any length of time that feels right for you. Mine helped me hit pause on my spending, which gave me the time and space to begin reflecting on why I used to make so many impulse purchases. Fundamentally, I learned that overspending was a coping mechanism to avoid difficult feelings. This is also why I drank too much, ate too much, and lived in front of a TV for so many years (each of these topics is outlined in the book). I didn’t want to feel my feelings, so I would quickly do things to take me away from them1.
This was an invaluable lesson, in and of itself—and I have the shopping ban to thank for that. Every time I thought about buying something, I would stop and consider why. The ban created space for me to sit with difficult feelings for the first time, and let them pass through me without needing to fix them. It was like my own little mindfulness practice. The fact that I saved money, finally got to spend some on travel, etc. were bonuses. And, it also kind of damaged my relationship with buying things. Specifically, it left me stuck in a state of restriction/deprivation.