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Optimal Finance Daily - Financial Independence and Money Advice
3489: Buying Too Much Stuff is Driven By Uncertainty by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on Mindful Consumption
00:09:15
Leo Babauta explores how the urge to buy more possessions often comes from our discomfort with uncertainty rather than true necessity
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this is optimal Finance Daily Buying Too much stuff is driven by Uncertainty By Leo Babauda of Zenhabits.net's if you are invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet. Pay My children, Eva and I and our two younger kids are in the process of moving back to California from Guam where we've been living with family for the past nine months. As we pack our stuff, get some stuff ready to ship to California and donate other things to charity, it is a great time to reflect. Why do people have so much stuff? Even though we have relatively little compared to most, we've still managed to accumulate too much from from getting gifts from other people to buying necessities and non necessities along the way. Stuff just piles up over time. That's the nature of stuff. But most of it is not necessary. Most of our stuff we buy because of one feeling, the feeling of uncertainty. This is the underlying groundlessness, shakiness, insecurity we feel about the future and the present moment. It's the uncertainty we feel all day long, every day to varying degrees. It's what causes us to feel fear, stress, anxiety, worry, even anger. It's what causes us to procrastinate and put off our healthy and productive habits. The feeling of uncertainty is the root of our buying too much stuff. Think about these examples. You're going on a trip and you're feeling a bit nervous about it. So you do research and buy a bunch of stuff to take with you to help you feel more secure, prepared, certain you're going to attend a conference and it brings up some anxiety. So you get some gear to help you Feel more prepared. You get into a new hobby and don't know what you're doing. So feel a lot of uncertainty and do a ton of research for days, buying everything you can possibly think of to be fully prepared. You are hosting a social gathering and this is giving you some stress. So you buy a bunch of things to make sure the party goes as well as you can hope for. You are feeling a lot of disruption and uncertainty in your life and find yourself procrastinating on things. While doing a lot of online shopping, you are feeling uncertainty about yourself, about your looks. To help with that, you buy a lot of nice clothes and gear to make you feel better about yourself. I could go on with endless examples, but you get the idea. Uncertainty brings with it an urge to get certainty, control, preparedness, security. And so we buy stuff to try to get that feeling. The futility of shopping to deal with uncertainty. We don't like the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. We try to get rid of it as soon as we can to get away from it, push it away. We have lots of habitual patterns we've built up over the years to deal with this uncertainty and insecurity. And buying things is one of the most common other than procrastination. Here's the thing, it doesn't actually give us any certainty or security. We buy things and we're not really more prepared, in control or secure. We hope we will be, and yet the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity are still there. So we have to buy some more stuff. We're looking for the magical answer to give us control and security, but it doesn't exist. Life is uncertain. Always. It's the defining feature of life. Listen to the quote from Pema Chodron from earlier. It says it, we have to accept the uncertainty of life. And in fact, this is the answer to our drive to buy too much stuff. If we lean into the uncertainty, embrace it, learn to be comfortable with it, we can stop buying so much. We can learn to live with little, sitting with the uncertainty of it all. The practice of opening to uncertainty. To live with little. Imagine owning very little, living in a spare room, eating simple whole food, not being involved in social media, just working, reading, walking, spending time with loved ones, meditating, drinking tea. It's a life of very little, and it's beautiful in its simplicity. But then uncertainty comes up, as it inevitably does. You have a trip, you have to go to a party, you have a new kind of project to take on, you're starting a new venture, you're feeling insecurity and uncertainty. Here's how to practice with it Instead of buying something 1. Notice you have the urge to buy something or procrastinate, get control of everything, etc. 2. Notice that underlying the urge is a feeling of uncertainty that you don't want. 3. Instead of rushing to follow your urge to buy something, pause and just sit with the uncertainty for a minute or two. 4. Turn your attention to the physical feeling of uncertainty in your body. Where is it located? What does it feel like? 5. Stay with the feeling and get really curious about it. 6. Relax around the feeling. Be generous with it. Give it compassion, openness, gratitude, love. 7. Notice that this is just a sensation, just an experience. Nothing you need to run from, hate or push away. You can be with it, even open up to it. With this practice, you don't need to fill your life with more stuff. This is my practice right now as I see the effects of too much stuff that's come into my family's life. Sit with the uncertainty, embrace it, and fall in love with the groundlessness of my life. You just listened to the post titled Buying Too Much Stuff is Driven by Uncertainty by Leo Boboda of zenhabits.net Imagine
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This post brings to mind for me the uncertainty I faced when preparing to walk the Camino. And for those who might not be familiar with the camino, it's a 500 mile trek across northern Spain that I highly recommend. I had a 40 liter pack on my back with all of my stuff and as I was preparing I felt the stress of bringing everything I might need while also trying to keep the weight of my pack as low as possible. I read a ton about what other people brought and even had close to 20 people review my packing list to make sure I didn't forget anything. But then a funny thing happened along the way. I ended up writing new lists of what I realized I didn't need and what I wished I would have brought. This taught me a couple of things. First, what I actually need is highly personal, so I should take advice from others with a grain of salt. And secondly, even when I don't have something I need, I'm resourceful enough to figure it out so I don't need to be so anxious about it. And that's another edition of Optimal Finance Daily. Thank you for your support and for listening every day. We so appreciate you and our authors for writing the thought provoking content we share on this show. Thank you for listening and I'll see you tomorrow where optimal life awaits.