ADD TO CART is not a therapy

 

No Doubt we have all felt the effects of solitude and separation- anxiety during the Pandemic of 2020. There are only so many re-runs of That 70's Show you can watch before you want a change.  

Some turn to various interests such as drawing, writing, music, painting, arts and crafts and the like. Others turn to online shopping. 

I actually got this idea from a meme I saw posted. 

Therapist: "And what do we say when we are feeling lonely and depressed?"

Patient: "Add to Cart."

Therapist: "NO!"

The meme, of course was meant to be funny. But there is more truth in it than we care to admit.  

With the way things are, we can't just go to the store the way we used to.  It's an adventure now. Masks, gloves, wrapping yourself in clear-wrap and the like. Then they only allow a certain number to people to enter at any one time and you are stuck in the cold, or the heat (Vegas in the Summer) waiting your turn to go in and try to maintain 6 feet between you and every other human being in the store.  UGH! 

So, society has embraced online shopping more than ever.  It is a good thing, you can get anything you want from the safety of your own home. Or is it?  We are forced into solitude and isolation by the rules. (You may insert your own rant here...I will keep my thoughts to myself). Humans by nature are not solitary creatures. We thrive on relationships and human contact. We need to feel the touch of a friend, have a shoulder to literally cry on, or just sit in a room and talk to each other.  Facetime, Zoom, Messaging, all that is fine to a point, but none of that replaces the human contact that is genetic to human beings.  (Or any animal that is not a solitary hunter).  

So, we hole up in our caves and try to replace that need with buying crap. Hey, don't get me wrong, I get a lot of stuff on line now instead of going to the Mart. Essentials. Stuff I would get on a daily basis. If I don't need t today, I can prime my way to delivery tomorrow. 

I am, of course talking about the online shopping experience that involves hours of boredom-scrolling through your shopping platform(s) of choice and buying on impulse. Things you would never think to buy or even want to buy if you were out in the shopping wild.  We justify it by saying to ourselves I am not doing anything else, why not treat myself to a.....(fill in useless thing you will never use here). 

Admittedly,  I have done my share of this too, but never to excess. I may think I need a new computer keyboard that lights up, buy it, and low an behold, I am typing on it now. Did I need it? Not really. But it is something I justify because I actually wanted it and did a search for it. Pre-meditated shopping! 

Only you can decide what is ADD TO CART binge shopping to fill a void in your life. But like anything else, admitting you are doing it is the first step. Only you can be your own shopping police. Be aware, be conscious of what you are doing and why. Get up, walk around and think Do I really need or want this thing before you ADD TO CART.  You might even save a little money!

You might do one more add to cart and order my book. The Self Help Book for People Who Hate Self Help Books.

Available on Amazon and Nook, iBooks and other e readers.

Have a great day!

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The Clock is Ticking

 So, Here is a thought for you. Procrastination sucks. 

Time is all there is in the NOW, and it seems to go by faster the older we get. Being in my sixth decade, I cannot believe how fast it goes by. It seem like the minute you get the Christmas lights down, you have to turn around and put them up again. 

When we were kids, time dragged on. School days lasted for hours on end, and the only time it seemed that time sped up was either when you had a paper due, or you were out playing and had to come in.  The big difference is that as you grow older, you become more aware of the time. You begin to deal with schedules. You have appointments. You have kids that are in sports, you have a job, you have a family, and suddenly time just accelerates and you "have no time to do anything but what you have to do." 

I have a daily planner as most organized people do. I have had to get into the habit of actually using it. I know everyone of you has started the year with a planner, sat down with good intentions, and at the end of the year, January is nicely filled out, then nothing except birthdays and anniversaries that you filled in the first day that you had it.  Do yourself a favor and use your planner. Along with the appointments and the stuff you have to do, block out a time during each day to not do anything, and stick to it. It does not have to be a huge amount of time, just a time every day around your other stuff to hang out with yourself. 

I sell cars, so my days are spent full on waiting for the next customer to walk in or on the phone trying to generate the next buyer. So when I am at work, I try to be productive with my time. I also block out a little time during each day to decompress. Even if it's only 15 minutes. On my days off, I do stuff with my wife, but there is always a me time  block there to just be with me.  I like to take short naps in the afternoon on my days off. I always have time to do that, because it recharges my spirit and body. Napping is not wasting time, it is a necessary time to let the body slow down. There has been much research done on the benefits of napping, and many large corporations encourage a 15 -20 minute power nap which has been shown to increase productivity. 

But let's get back to the main point of time. We cannot get time back. Procrastination is a killer. We tend to procrastinate over the things we don't like to do. Doing taxes, cleaning house, seeing the doctor or dentist, emptying the cat box. All things that if left for later  can turn bad. We would rather just sit around on the computer, or watch TV or do anything other than what needs to be done. And funny enough, once you do get the stuff done, a lot of the time you will ask yourself, why didn't I do that sooner?  

Budget your time. It goes by fast. My wife was raised by British parents, and over the last 20 years with her, we have never missed tea time. It is a great habit, because it makes you slow down and take a break from the day. In Mexico, they have mid day siesta. Very smart. Anything to break the stress of the day up. You need to find your own way to break the day up and take time for just you. You will find that your stress levels will drop a lot!

I cover this in my book,  The Self Help Book for People Who Hate Self Help Books.   

Here is an excerpt from the chapter "There is no Present Like the Time"

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How much time do we waste doing … whatever...?  We have to sleep, we have to eat, we have to work.  In this day and age, we have to check our email, we have to look at Facebook (to see what all our thousands of friends are doing). I suppose if you took a stopwatch, and timed all the things that distract you, you would be amazed, no, GOBSMACKED by how much time you devote to useless, aimless distractions.  We all do.  And, as the technology gets more advanced, we will continue to divert our creativity to the tiny micro-processors in our devices. We will, in a sense, become the BORG. Like in Star Trek, Next Generation. All of us part human, part machine, run by one group conscious in our wearable tech.  Look around you.  How many people do you see with their heads in their smart phone or smart watch? A little scary, huh? Now, let’s just play with some hypothetical numbers.

 

Say the average guy or gal spends 1 hour on their phone a day doing useless, mindless crap.  Now let’s insert that into a business setting that has, say 50 people working there. Already you see that there is 50 hours a day of lost production.  Over a 5-day work week, that would be 250 hours a week of lost production.  Let’s say each person makes 20.00 per hour.  That comes to $5,000.00 a week that the company is spending on people doing meaningless stuff on their phone. ($260,000 a year). That's a lot of money spent for people to play silly games, or comment on someone's restaurant choice.

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That is, or course, a rather simple example, but you get the point.

Time and Tide wait for no man. - Geoffrey Chaucer

It is a fact that we are only here in this incarnation for a very short time. A blip on the evolutionary clock. It is only common sense, then, to make the best of that time and not fritter it away.  Balance your time wisely and you will find you get more done and feel better about yourself. Have a wonderful day. 

Links to my book

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