Are people addicted to shopping ?

Yes! Yes! Yes!

How many people go into a supermarket for a pint of milk and come out with a trolley full?

How many people have gone into a supermarket for a pint of milk and come out with a pint of milk – only the very single minded.

Do people have withdrawal symptoms if they cannot shop? Yes! Yes! Yes! All creativity is now channelled through money. The act of addiction to spending money is completed.

As a child I could not spend money if I had it. The only shop was a mile away in the village and if I had turned up there with my mother’s purse there would have been very little I could have bought that I could eat there and then.

Biscuits in square metal tins that were weighed out and given to you in a paper bag. Not much good if it is raining. No plastic bags then, no carrier bags.

Spend a week with someone and stop them shopping for you to know if I speak the truth. You will land up being seen as a jailer.

People have to break out, they have to get out there in case they are missing something and they need to buy something, anything, to satisfy that craving for creativity that they cannot get anywhere else as their lives have no other outlet for creativity.

Yes some people still have it, you have your artist, your writer, your train spotter. But how many people today have no hobbies or callings only spending money? Far too many.

Until we can as people break the hold that money has over our lives the amount of depression is going to rise and rise.

I saw an advertisement some time ago on the television; It was appealing; mountain climbing, canoeing, hill walking; get out and enjoy the great outdoors it said. I thought for a moment this is the way, people should make more of being out there doing these things that cost no money. Then I realized all the advertisement was doing is selling me the equipment to enhance my experience of that great outdoors.

My life has been hijacked. I do not need fancy clothes to go out walking, I only need me and a good day and the suitable clothes which could be many years old but will still suffice.

How many people buy equipment for hobbies and never complete that hobby. But no one cares as you have had the little release into your brain of that endorphin that made you feel good and you now equate that feeling with the spending of money.

How many advertisements explain about the endorphins that are released into your brain when you create anything?

Do they explain how creation can be anything from cooking a big breakfast to sewing a toy?

Do the advertisements tell you that you can get a huge amount of that endorphin released into your brain by being creative enough to beat the system and going into the supermarket and coming out clutching the one pint of milk you went in there for?

How many advertisements show you that man/ woman walking out of the supermarket clutching their singular purchase, punching the air, jumping ecstatically and shouting eureka! I have achieved it.

This act could release enough endorphins into your brain to make you feel good all day.

Go on try it, I challenge you.

We need to claw back our creativity, we need to turn our backs on the advertisements which lead us on a path of only money counts and start looking for anything we can do which costs us nothing.

To me crafts are just that, take something that has one use in its present state and make something that is of use to you in an altered state. Take a cutting off a plant and get a free plant, make two plants out of one, creation.

I do not want to be a jailer, but if you are addicted to spending money and are looking for that next purchase to make you feel good then you need to break the cycle.

Set yourself a challenge of not spending any money whatever for just one day.

Yes just one day in your life, take sandwiches to work, don’t go into the petrol station, don’t buy that cup of coffee from the machine and take a bottle of orange juice from your fridge.

I can tell you that if you can achieve this for one day it will make you feel so good you will want another fix and want to do it again.

Only if you consciously think what you are doing will you achieve this.

Take back your brain. Be pro active in your life and do not be led blindly by those who only want your money and not you.

You are important, every bit as important as the next man/woman so treat yourself as important, take back your life and be pro active in it, do not hand it over willingly and remember money is not  the top of the tree, there are treasures at the top of the tree that the addiction to money stops you from ever reaching.

Break that addiction NOW!