2 sneaky ways your own mind tricks you to buy things you don’t need
Let’s try to understand this with an example.
It’s a story about Home Delivery and a $100 ice cream.
Imagine you recently closed a deal of $10,000 with an international client… after struggling for months and years. In the past, you did small projects here and there, worked with arrogant clients, got little to no payments, and a lot of other struggles…
Finally, it’s over. It’s worth a celebration.
You didn’t tell your family about the achievement… cause you want to give them a big surprise.
Instead, you decided to give an unusual party to your close 5 friends. You gave them a call and invited each one of them to a luxurious restaurant (which you couldn’t afford before) by saying, “The bill is on me.”
I mean, why not… it needs to celebrated.
Your friends couldn’t believe what they were hearing… until they came into the restaurant.
Your best friend gave you a big hug, and everyone congratulated you for your achievement.
Then everyone sat down and ordered their favorite dishes… along with… beverages and alcohol.
Everyone tried something new. Something they didn’t ever heard of. They liked it.
Finally, you ordered a $100 ice cream for each.
Your total expense was around $1200.
After that, all of you decided to stay in a hotel for a night. It was a good decision… since you all don’t meet very often.
But things didn’t go as you wished.
What started as a good-mannered lunch… turned into a wild night party. Your friends ordered more than 15 bottles of beer, plus 2 bottles of vodka, along with some ice.
That’s enough amount of alcohol for most people to forget who they are. It won’t be unusual for them to drool on the middle of the road… and start screaming at the top of their lungs “I love you.”
Luckily that didn’t happen… but no one would dare to enter the room that night.
Cause… it wasn’t a room anymore. It became a cocktail of ocean, jungle, and living room. And you were the animals living on it. One was in the washroom, another one was in the kitchen sink, 3rd one was sleeping while watching Netflix was on… last one was lying somewhere with her phone.
But you were peacefully sleeping in the bed… cause you were in control.
After 14 hours… the sun came up. But everyone woke up with a crazy headache. Everyone started looking for Aspirin. You searched everyone’s bag… but there was none.
At this point purchasing it from a local pharmacy was a reasonable idea… but you were hammered too. It was not possible even for you to go outside.
So you went for online delivery… which cost you a few additional dollars ($).
A few minutes after the medicines arrived. Everyone took it, and drove back to sleep. The hangover was really bad.
It was so bad that you had to book the hotel for whole another day. Because no one was in the right condition to go home.
But eventually by the next morning things started coming back to normal… and everybody realized what they did that night.
Whew… that was a hell of a short story.
anyway…
Let’s try and understand the points you had to spend money.
Here’s the list…
- Luxury restaurant
- $100 ice-cream
- Booking a hotel
- Alcohol
- Aspirin Home Delivery
- Booking the hotel for one extra day
All these expenses could have been easily avoided if you had just invited your friends to your house and had normal healthy meals. There was no need to bear these additional costs.
Now don’t get me wrong… I don’t want to shame anyone. We all make stupid purchases… it’s ingrained in our biology.
The point I am trying to make is… we spend our money out of 2 decisions…
- When to want to get some pleasure
- When we want to avoid pain
These are the 2 primary reasons why we human beings make any purchase.
Let’s put the list once again… and categories them as per the 2 above points…
- Luxury restaurant (Gaining Pleasure)
- $100 ice cream (Gaining Pleasure)
- Booking a hotel (Pain to avoid the loneliness in home)
- Alcohol (Gaining Pleasure)
- Aspirin Home Delivery (Avoiding Pain)
- Booking the hotel for one extra day (Avoiding Pain/Guilt in front of the family)
All these simply means… buying something is an emotional decision.
People buy with emotions and then justify with logic.
