Unravel Expensive Spending Habits
Do you find yourself spending money, only to get home and wonder why you bought that new ____ (purse, shoes, clothes, makeup, the list goes on).
You may be caught in an expensive spending habit that you don’t recognize.
Habits are patterns of small decisions that create behaviors, usually unconsciously. There is always an emotional reason for your spending habit, you just don’t see it.
Three steps to unravel a destructive habit:
- Reverse engineer — diagram all of the decisions you made leading up to the purchase. Start with how you felt when you bought it, then work backwards, asking, “Why did I do that?”
- What emotions did you feel? After you have identified the small decisions that lead to the purchase, name each emotion you felt along that path. Identify the emotional trigger that sent you to find relief.
- Is the triggering emotion based on fear? Fear is the feeling that you were avoiding when you decided to look outside of yourself for relief. Recognize that fear motivated your decisions, and take a deep breath of relief. This step is crucial, because now you sit with your fear, listen to it, and love it.
By the end of this process, your fear will lessen. Fear is pain that never healed. As you become aware of the fear, your awareness helps heal it. You no longer avoid it and there is no need to make yourself feel better.
The next time that you are triggered, you can take a deep breath and say, “No need.” As you live in the new habit of awareness, you will choose again.
That’s why it’s called Empowered Way.
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