The Great Wake-Up: Fill your shopping basket with joy
Chris Baréz-Brown invites you to ‘wake up’ your life with a series of experiments. This month, try consuming less
By 
Psychologies
Our lives are becoming ever more complex due to the amount of information we deal with daily, and the number of decisions we’re faced with. By removing some of these decisions, we can free up more of our minds to focus on the good stuff.
It is estimated that an adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions a day. That doesn’t leave much headspace for the rest of our day-to-day existence.
By consuming less, we will hopefully realise how much time we spend distracted by buying things that aren’t important to our quality of life. For four consecutive days, I invite you to not buy anything beyond food and water.
Doing something beneficial for ourselves by spending less means we’re also doing something positive for everyone. Moderate UN estimates claim that by the 2030s, we’ll need the equivalent of two planet Earths to support us if our current levels of consumption continue. Last time I checked, we only have one.
Obviously, buy things in a medical emergency, and travel costs are a given, but cut out all the decisions that create white noise in your head and you might be struck by how free you feel.
Author, speaker and Upping Your Elvis founder Chris Baréz-Brown has teamed up with Psychologies to create a 12-month experiment to break our routines. To commit to weekly experiments for your own personal life-liberation and to follow The Great Wake Up! bloggers, go to lifelabs.psychologies.co.uk/channels/297-the-great-wake-up
Photograph: iStock
