How to Keep Black Friday from Becoming Red Saturday

How to Keep Black Friday from Becoming Red Saturday

This year we’re taking a different approach to connecting with you about holiday shopping and spending. Rather than write holiday blogposts, we’re holding several Facebook live events that we hope will feel like holiday experience gifts to each of you. As soon as those are scheduled, we’ll be sending out the details.

By the time Thanksgiving arrives one week from today, many of us will be in significant danger of overshopping as a response to the stress, anxiety and, all too often, despair, that the holiday can evoke. If you’re reading this, you’re likely primed, Amazon, and otherwise, to try and find the answer in “getting and spending,” just what Wordsworth cautioned us against in 1802. He believed that getting and spending lays waste our power.

Overshopping and overspending are misguided and ineffective attempts to meet emotional needs with material things.

You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.

The challenge is to figure out what it is you really need and find a way to get some of that. Use the holidays as a catalyst to tease out what it is you really need.

Hint: It’s not that sixth pair of black boots.

Love and affection?

To belong?

Self-esteem?

The esteem of other people?

Self-actualization?

Whatever it is, the trick is to figure out a way to meet that need, even in the tiniest way, without involving anyone else. How can you feed that emotional/spiritual hunger simply, sweetly, and smartly. We’ll be talking about ways to do this during the Facebook Live events.

Among the current tsunami of Black Friday emails, there was a link to an article that lists and describes ten compelling reasons why we lose our capacity to think through a proposed purchase mindfully. A few, like the Diderot effect (which I mention in my first book) and the snob effect, are rarely referenced in the literature, popular or professional. Although I wasn’t wild about the cartoons, I think it’s a useful and very good read. To read it, click here.

We’ll be sending details about the Facebook Live events as soon as we have them. In the meantime, if you’re looking for inspiration and tools to help you handle the holidays differently, over the years we’ve written many evergreen holiday blog posts. As a group, they offer a good review of what are likely some of your most important holiday challenges.

To read these holiday blog posts, click here.

To read my personal favorite:

Having a Good, Not a Goods Holiday: Give Experiences Rather Than Things, click here.

With gratitude, we wish you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Warm regards,
April Lane Benson, Ph.D.
Founder, Stopping Overshopping, LLC

Marcela Torres, LCSW
Clinical Coordinator

Steven Rubin, MSW
Program Administrator

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By Carrie Rattle

Carrie Rattle is a Principal at BehavioralCents.com, a website for women focused on mind and money behaviors. She has worked in the financial services industry for 20+ years and hopes to inspire women to better prepare themselves for financial independence. Read More