Impulse buying: breaking habit to buy at once (part 1)

Yes, we all are guilty in it: coming to a pharmacy to buy milk after work and come out with cosmetics (“I like the color of the eyeliner”), and a couple of chips packages (“I want to finally drop on my sofa and have the TV evening”), and detergent (“Well, I don’t really need it now, but this coupon offered so good deal”), and a couple of gums near cashier (” Eventually I need the gums”)… You know it: I’ve just blown away my planned dining out with my friend and have a batch of unneeded stuff. Or stepping out into luxury clothes store – and buy this awesome black shirt (“It fits me so well“)… Or (for me specific) going to book store: no way I can come out with no purchase…

Then the guilt came. Why on Earth did I decide to buy it? I don’t need the fifth black shirt, I have five of them in my closet!

I have good news: it’s not you, it’s your habit. The habits are widely researched lately, and there are proven methods of changing them. So let’s dig into details.

Habit structure

Habits, in general, are not bad things: it’s brain mechanism letting it save its valuable energy for most important work: making a conscious decision and react to non-standard situations.

All things not requiring immediate brainpower regulate under habit, starting from basic functions (breathing, walking) and ending complex social behavior (driving or shopping). In general, there is no point to change any habit into conscious activity unless the habit turned out to be harmful to you. (Well, for me, for my wallet to be exact, the impulse buying is definitely harmful.)

All habits form during a repeatable cycle of cue-routine-reward.

The cue is a trigger that starts the habitual behavior: it can be an event (you stepped out the bus on the way home), symbol (your favorite store logo), even time (lunch break). As soon as our brain gets the cue it switches on auto-pilot.

Routine is what you do as your automatic behavior started. Scientific researches show that during the routine brain is almost switched off, so don’t blame yourself: you are not on the driver’s seat.

Reward is what you get (or your brain thinks you get) from such behavior. Rewards are always positive (otherwise the habit would not have formed) and sometimes are completely unexpected. If you buying something your reward can be bond not only with the fact of owning the new thing (and derivative, for example, status), it can fall far away: for example, you could enjoy socializing with your friends, be driven by freedom (ability to buy whatever you want) or safety from childhood (when your favorite store uses air freshener reminding you about your grandma). No kidding!

Breaking the chain

Now after you get to know how habit works the answer on how to change it is very simple: break the chain. As soon as you break any link in the cue-routine-reward chain, habit disappears.

Sounds easy? In reality, it is not. The main reason for it is the habits form a physical connection in our brain. They literally build the brain: it’s a cluster of neurons that got used to getting activated together. As neurologists say “What fire together, wire together”. And you obviously don’t want to make lobotomy to change your habits.

The good news is that according to the researches our brains keep its neuroplasticity (ability to change) for the whole of our life: it means that if you make conscious efforts to act differently, different clusters of neurons will fire up. The more they do it together the more stable physical changes of the brain will appear. The bad news is it takes time. According to researches, on average it takes 60 days to form a new habit to replace the old one.

So what exactly we need to change?

To be continued…