Author : Maureen Mistry
Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.
--W. M. ThackerayHave you noticed how in the times of crisis, peoples hidden trait become clearly visible. For compulsive spenders,a crisis is tackled by an unplanned visit to the shopping mall.For years, this was my pattern, especially if the crisis happened to be of a financial nature.
An urge would come over me. An urge to spend money that I do not have. It would start off with a desire to travel, but this not always being possible, either because of work or usually due to lack of funds I would go on a shopping spree, ....on the internet.Books have always been my weakness. During these dangerous moments, I would day dream about my favorite bookshop. I would actually see myself at the bookshop cafe, surrounded by books, a cup of tea in hand, while I flipped through what ever reading matter I would have collected in my basket. Oh the thrill of it all.In this state of mind, sometimes I would actually abandon whatever it was I was doing, and head for the bookshop, convinced that this time I would be able to find a book that would address all my problems. Sometimes though, it was not always easy to make it to the bookshop and so I would do the next best thing.I would turn to the internet bookshops, looking for yet another book to help me get through whatever crisis I was going through, and since the majority of these crisis were financial, I would comb the net for yet another cure for my spiralling debt.This would be my initial excuse, but like most addicts, yes compulsive spending is a form of addiction, I would soon move on from books on finances or whatever self help book that looked promising, on to other things. It is quite common for me at this time to not only buy books, but end up at sites for clothes, shoes, whatever took my fancy. I deserve it, I would tell myself as I once again punched in my credit card details. It is no wonder my spending spirralled out of control.Having made the purchases, I would eagerly look forward to receiving them by post. Oh the thrill of it all! Though I might not have expressed it like this, but looking back, I acted like the arrival of these items was the begining of a new life. All problems solved.But this was an illusion. The thrill of my purchases were usually short lived. And when the credit card details showed up at the end of the month, matters were not helped in the least. Since I had a very strong bias for books, to improve my mind you know, It took a while before I realised I had a problem.One day,after a shopping spree on the net, making purchases, that included e-books because sometimes I needed the books immediately and could not wait for the post, besides the e-books were cheaper, (another justification) I realized the mess that I was in. I wish I could say that I had this great epiphany and decided that this was not the way to go, No, what happened was that I had maxed out yet another credit card and had now run out of ideas on how to ingeniously make more purchases, and then it dawned on me.The first thing I realized was that the people writing these books I was buying were either copying each other or getting the information from the same source, for it was becoming increasingly difficult to get information that I already did not know.
In fact with the books that I now had taking up so much space on my bookshelves, I had enough resources to put together the same type of books that I was spending money that I could not afford.The second thing I realized was that I was seriously addicted to shopping, and my financial future certainly looked bleak.It surprised me, when I noticed that the desire to recklessly spend always seemed to attack me when I was least least in the position to do so, financially that is, and with my overspending lifestyle these crisis were now becoming more frequent. It was impossible not to realise that I was in worse shape that I had been a few months earlier, and if I did not do something, one year from now, I did not even want to think of my financial situation.Even though I finally made these realizations, I did not stop my spending. I could not stop, I had lived this way far too long.Then I noticed another pattern, perhaps because I was getting tired of the constant juggling of credit cards, I realized that right after the completion of my credit card details, I would have this sinking feeling. The former thrill I used to feel was now being replaced by a wretchedness I could not understand.To get rid of this , I would sometimes immediately rush back and cancel the order, only to spend days later regretting this action, but not wanting that wretched feeling to come back I would resist and not re-order. Other times, the canceled item would, as it where beckon to me so acutely that throwing caution to the winds, I would rush right back to the website and plunge right back to the purchase. If it was a book that could be bought second hand, I would buy this instead , after all I had now made some savings compared to if I had bought a new copy. The smaller amount of money helped to assuage the feeling of guilt.Not long ago, I heard someone say that you cannot satisfy an emotional need with material means, and when I thought about it, I realized that this was what I had been doing.
But what to do, the desire to spend was now coming on with increasing rapidity, and daily I struggled to curb my spending addiction. As I thumbed through my self help books, somewhere in them, there had to be a system that would save me from my overspending lifestyle. Some days, went quite well. I would be strong enough to resist the urge. Other days did not go so well, my "attack days" I learnt to call them, when I just had to buy yet another something that I did not need. After the purchase, I would spend the rest of the day too miserable to enjoy my purchase, but too weak to send them back. I began to live in dread of these "attack days"
As with everything in life, when you really get serious about it, the whole universe cooperates to hand you the answer.I got a set of tapes from a friend on personal finance management and among these was a teaching on changing behavioral patterns. The examples given were actually based on dieting, how to finally win the battle of the bulge. But the situation felt so similar to my shopaholic lifestyle that I adapted the whole teaching to uncontrolled spending. As I see it, uncontrolled spending habits has a lot in common with uncontrolled eating habits.
This is what I learned.All focus is reality. Pain and pleasure are the two motivating factors in life, Human beings would do anything to avoid pain and so the need to avoid pain is the greater of the motivation factors.
In a weight loss programme, If you focus on a chocolate bar for example, you will forget the pain of putting on weight, and if you only think about the pleasure of eating the chocholate, guess what, that is what you will do, with the usual consequence. Like I said, I replaced the focus on eating, with over spending.I read this as, if I focus on whatever it is I wanted to buy, usually a book, thinking only of the pleasure, this becomes reality to me. all I would think about would be the pleasure and the promises on the books back cover. I would forget the debt it will put me into, this purchase like so many others, being unplanned and unbudgeted for, and the consequences attached to it.
You change your behaviour, the seminar coach informed by changing your focus.
Focus on the pain of putting on weight or as in my case, focus on the pain of spiralling debt, and its emotional consequences and the attraction or desire for the chocolate or as in my case an overspending lifestyle will die down.This was new to me. In all my reading of self help books, I had not realized that the reason I could not change was because I was attacking the symptoms and not the root of the problem. The root was that I had a behavioural pattern , which was sabotaging my best intentions.
Being fully aware of what a strong force a habit of many years is, and wanting to be sure that when the urge comes on me to spend again, I was fully prepared to resist, I made a list of the pain or consequences of my Shopaholic lifestyle. I asked myself as the seminar coach said, what would be the pain if I continue my present pattern of spending. I went into great length detailing in writing the emotional consequences (despair), the financial consequences (crippling, always living on my tomorrow) and the physical consequences (living from paycheck to paycheck, never really affording anything).None of this was new to me. I have intimate knowledge of it, and so I detailed everything. I painted the picture as it truly is , without having to resort to exaggeration, it truly was a grim picture.I decided to read this every night before I went to bed, and every morning on getting up. I called it "The life I do not want " I did not want to take chances, because as any addict will tell you, when faced with temptation, all your defence are down, and you find yourself lying to yourself in order to feed your addiction. So I wanted the truth of my life not only in my notebook, where I am sure I would not want to read in the face of an "attack", but also in my subconscious, the idea being that once I had it there long enough, when faced with a temptation, I would react naturally,... that is from my reprogrammed subconscious self. In a very short time, the life I do not want to live became a reality in my subconcious mind.Knowing how easy it is to get into the other extreme, stinginess that it, I made sure that I followed through with a spending plan, leaving some extra money for impulse buying, just enough not to feel deprived.It is now one year since I embarked on this journey, I am almost out of debt, and completely cured of the spending addiction. Just like dieting, I know how easy it is to go back into the same negative pattern, so I have developed some habits that make sure that I am not in the environment of temptation. I still read daily my copy of "The life I do not want" but I have read it now so many times, that I can recite it without my note book. I know that I am not completely free, because sometimes an advertisement with its promises sneaks right through my guards and I catch myself wondering..., but not for long, because out from my subconscious mind, I see the life I do not want, and I am saved.During the rare occassions when, I have problems putting the picture of the latest offer out of my mind, I make a note and put this new prospective purchase in the next months budget, and what I find is, that in most cases, by the time the next month rolls by and it is time to make the purchase , I find the desire tremendously weakened, once this happens, I put the budgeted amount towards increasing a debt repayment.I have been in debt and I am almost free, freedom is better. That in itself is one roller coaster addiction!!Maureen Mistry is a group member of the Lifestrategiescenter, www.Lifestrategiescenter.com where strategies for successfull living are mapped out and implementation tactics made understandable.
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Keyword : Crisis, compulsive spending, shopaholic, spiralling debt.
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