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During the Christmas season, I would be guilty of shopping and spending a lot of money. As a teenage girl, one of my favourite places are huge shopping malls. Although, this does not make any sense to me. Why do I love the moment where I give my hard working money away? I wonder, why do some people love shopping? Why is it so exciting to spend so much money?
Sometimes, we spend too much money while we’re in a place, such as the mall, because we don’t think of the future. In the moment we want to be happy. This causes us to not think about the stresses you might have in the future. For example, I might want to buy a nice car in the future. But while I am shopping at Lush, all I can think about is all the amazing, expensive skin care products. Buying things keeps us happy, but only temporarily. This is also called “Hedonic adaption“. Have you ever bought a shirt and you were so excited to wear it the next day? This became your favourite shirt. Sadly, maybe after two weeks, the shirt doesn’t excite you anymore. The happiness has worn off.
When we buy nice clothes we become happy. If you buy expensive clothes for example, you might be happy because we start visualizing ourselves in a “richer” life. We call this Retail Therapy. Retail Therapy is where one goes shopping to become happier. After a tough breakup, people might shop as an escape from reality. Personally, I would not recommend shopping as a relief. As I have discussed earlier, this happiness would only be temporarily. Unfortunately, running away from problems by shopping will not solve them. This would only cause more issues. Without thinking of the future, we later become broke. I suggest, we need to realize when we’re shopping for necessary goods and when we’re only shopping to keep us happy. I challenge you to stop doing this.
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