NO BUY WEEK #16: I Really Failed This Time...But Maybe I've Learned the Key to Success?

hi everyone and welcome to week 16 of my no by year and in this video I'm actually not even sure if I can call it a no by year anymore because I failed again I've backslid in a big way and I've undeniably broken multiple of my Noby rules and I honestly thought about giving up completely and stopping reporting on this YouTube channel it's embarrassing it's a moment of vulnerability my behavior is not matching my values and I kind of wanted to give up I've got to be honest if I seem a little bit down in this video I'm processing still all all of the emotions and the guilt and the shame and the effect of failing something I set out to do I guess and I will go through the things that I bought and the the few upsides about it and um how the no bye has helped at least a little bit already and how I will be continuing with my no bye I'm going to pull up my brides and I'm going to keep on reporting so next week will be week 17 I might try to do a full no by year by keeping on going until you know April or May next year and really trying to actually stick to the rules and make a more sustainable change in my mindset and habits going forward and I think that actually touch touches on one of the problems with my approach this time was that I didn't view shopping as a habit that needed to be changed or behavior that needed to be changed I just thought I could stop doing it out of sheer willpower without having a framework or a system so I'm going to go into those details a little bit more at the end of the video or mid midpoint of the video but I will quickly go through the things that I did actually end up buying um just to get that out of the way I will try not to focusing too much on these things but I will show you what broke my Noby and uh fair warning I kind of broke it in a big way there's multiple things that I bought in multiple categories there's one small Silver Lining though is that everything was on the wish list so that actually represents a substantial difference in my shopping habits from previous years I used to buy a lot more impulsively I used to not think about things for as as long before buying them so that's one small win and one way that the no bu has helped me so far is that I've wishlisted it and I've even talked about these items publicly on this channel before buying them so I think that is a habit that I really should continue with um at least to help me make better shopping decisions when I do shop even though I don't want to be shopping this year and I do want to recommit to Noby and succeed for the remainder of the year but again I'll get back to that later so firstly the things that I bought I'm going to start with the clothes and accessories the first thing on top here is an Maj hair clip and it is the brown or black I think it's brown plastic version of the pink one that was on my wish list since January so for three or four months I've been thinking about getting a plastic one of these hair clips and I pulled the trigger and got one there was another like online boutique that had had mej clips and they had this color left in stock which I actually thought is more practical and versatile than the pink that was on my wish list so I went ahead and pulled the trigger and bought it and actually the plastic doesn't hold as well as the metal one so it's it's still functional it holds all my hair it will do the job I was kind of pushed into pulling the trigger because I was getting headaches from wearing a ponytail just a hair tie ponytail in my hair at work and it was really starting to bother me so I thought this CLA clip would help solve that problem and it kind of does but it doesn't hold as well as I thought it would so it's not the miracle perfect cure all product that I thought it would be and that's actually a good reminder buying something doesn't actually solve your problems a lot of the time even if it is a practical problem often times there's something not quite right or the problem you have is not going to be solved by a miracle product in whatever form the next couple of items I'm going to go down here actually are from abber cromie and again you might be familiar with this sweatshirt that was on my wish list for I think since January as well so this is that Buffalo shirt with South Dakota and the bad lands the design going all the way around I got it in a large so that it would be oversized and if it shrinks in the wash or when it shrinks it will fit how I want it to and I was on abber cromi in the first place shopping for a gifts for one of my kids' birthdays at the beginning of may they are very into clothes and they're GI is basically going to be some summer clothes from abomi kids so I was already on the the website shopping not for me but I was there engaging in shopping Behavior picking out clothes and I had already kind of talked myself into the fact that it might be okay to buy some clothes for Mother's Day and I think this was a mistake I think occasions should not be so tied to stuff even things like Christmas and birthdays where gifts are traditionally a big part of the celebration I I think I need to re-examine my attitudes towards these things I mean those times of year might still be a good time to buy some of the stuff on my wish list but I really want to make a broader mentality change and not see stuff or consumable items as desirable as I see them now this is where I think my philosophy differs a little bit from my YouTube Idol Hannah Louise poston's approach where she maintains that loving beautiful things is kind of a superpower and I understand what she means when she she says that there's a there is a magic something special in the appreciation of beautiful things but I think for me at least I want to remove myself from appreciating through acquiring these things and I almost want to see stuff as just what it is it's just material objects this is just a piece of fabric right I I em bibed it with imbued it whatever the word is I attached the special qualities to this piece of fabric with Dy on it printed Graphics it is not an inherently special object and it doesn't have power over me I gave it that power but um I at the time was not wise enough to see that or didn't feel it that way so I want to be able to feel it that way in the future I don't want to be pulled in by the beautiful things I want to be able to be detached and more logical in looking at them and choose to buy these things and I know that I did choose to buy these things when I bought them but it didn't feel as much like an objective non-emotional choice because I was caught up in the frenzy of shopping and I had a variety of emotional triggers at the time that I don't have right now so I'll go through those triggers as well after I go through all the the rest of the list of stuff so the sweatshirt and then what happened after I made the purchase was abber cromy sent me a $10 gift card because of the rewards points or whatever it was loyalty program and I just feel like I can't waste a coupon like that I know it's stupid I know this is exactly how they get you back in um the the plus side is that I only purchased one thing I didn't get sucked into purchasing another whole cartload of stuff and the one thing was also on my wish list for last month as well so it wasn't completely impulsive but I did go back and buy the fruit print t-shirt that that I had been eyeing both of these items will be very useful in that I will wear them a lot I like them they're very specific to my needs so they're casual items they could be styled with anything they have just that little bit of Personality that makes me feel good in my clothes but I didn't need them I have plenty of items that fulfill those purposes and I was definitely swept up in the frenzy of shopping I guess and then the emotional triggers that were going on at the time the next thing on my list of things that I bought to fail my no bu is this vest that I also talked about in my last things that I wanted and I also said maybe I should get this for Mother's Day because I wanted it so badly at the time and I was so afraid that it would sell out and I wouldn't be able to have it and again like what a silly attitude it's just a piece of fabric to Adorn my body with I mean clothing has always been my Achilles heel and I want to say I don't know exactly why but I've been examining since I made this failure I've been examining exactly why this might be and some of the reasons draw back to Childhood and my feelings about clothing as a as a kid and I am essentially a child of immigrants neither of my parents was born in the US and both of my parents I guess you could say are not culturally American I guess I would also say that both of them are fairly Frugal when it comes to spending on non-essentials or they certainly were when I was a child and I remember distinctly many experiences of feeling like I didn't have the right clothes so there was a a soccer game where it was cold it was fall and all the other kids had Under Armour to go under their soccer shirt and my mom didn't know that this existed because we'd never done team sports in America before or you know Outdoor Sports when it was cold so I had a fleece jacket you know non-branded it wasn't an athletic brand or anything just a hooded blue dull drab fleece jacket with a zipper and my soccer coach made me put that bulky jacket under my t-shirt because that's how you were supposed to do it you couldn't have a jacket on top you had to have a layer under your team shirt and I just remember feeling so uncool and I must have been like five or six years old and I was just that one kid that didn't have the Under Armour to go under the t-shirt and then there were many times in middle school high school where I felt like I didn't have the cool jeans I didn't have the abomi clothes I didn't have the the cool stuff and so I really wanted to have that I didn't want to wear clothes that were given to me from my mom's friends whose daughters had outgrown them um I was also tall even back then so a lot of pants were short on me and I just felt like a dork I wanted to choose what I wore and now that I'm an adult and have a job in earn money and can buy whatever I want essentially I mean within reason not going to try to bankrupt myself or be totally irresponsible and I don't shop a lot of fast fashion I I think abber cromie is technically fast fashioned so I can't say I don't shop any but I really really try to consider it and avoid it these days but um yeah I think part of it is just the feelings I had in childhood and that's why clothing is such an Achilles heal from me now but anyway so I bought this vest this fulfills a function that I had felt was missing in my wardrobe since making my spring capsule and including that brown leather vest and discovering why it wasn't really fulfilling its purpose this is a little more oversized it's a little more long it's it's longer and um fulfills that purpose while also providing a little bit of Interest with print so that I can feel more stylish when I'm just wearing a neutral black or white t-shirt maybe so this is going to replace that leather vest and provide those functions of layering and comfort without sleeves so this is the only item I have in my closet actually that's like a layering piece that's not long sleeved or a sweater so at least it was a carefully considered wardrobe need even if it wasn't really a need and it was breaking my Noby in this period where I made an agreement with myself to not add anything new and then the last item of clothing is these jeans now these were also on my wish list they're Tibby they're not the Sid Gene they're the bruzi Jean so they're those ones with the sculptural bottom like the ankle and I had said in my things I wanted to buy but didn't that they were sold out in the size I would normally buy but I saw a fashion vlogger or reviewer um say that she recommended sizing down in these so they were still available in a size down from what I would normally buy and I did extensive measuring comparison between the size chart for these and all the pants and skirts that I own I was doing the waist the hips the length just to make sure that these would fit because they were final sale which is the other reason I pulled the trigger right because they're originally a $385 pair of pants and I would never have broken my no buy for a pair of pants at full price at that price um it was just because they were on sale for6 that I was triggered Again by the fomo of the sale and and the desire for I guess more artistic genes in my life uh another part of this new desire for jeans because I don't always look around for jeans to buy I think part of it is because we mooved to the city we live now about two years ago and the uniform here it's pretty casual it's like jeans in a hoodie it's what most people wear even to work at my job and we live in the midwest so I feel like everywhere I live I kind of feel a little bit of a push to conform or adapt my style for my lifestyle and surroundings I think that's kind of normal um but I can't just be happy wearing regular jeans in a hoodie like that's just not stylish enough for me um in my interest and love of artistic fashion so I think what I've been attracted to these days is more artistic genes which is why these and the Sid jeans have been on my wish list and then more artistic hoodies basically or like casual tops which is why I got that sweatshirt and that T-shirt with the graphics on them because it's a little bit of an elevated or more personal version of the jeans in a hoodie uniform which is kind of what surrounds me where I live now so for all those reasons the sales the coupons the new kind of style uh wants desires focuses with the jeans hoodies and the vest layer um I caved and bought a bunch of things that I didn't want to be buying buying on my no by year basically clothes the list is not even complete I have a couple more items that I purchased in the early April days and I'll start with the books so these were from Target I had another gift card from Target so it was kind of pushing me to spend and these two books I'm interested in Reading productivity and self-improvement books even though they're all the same essentially but I am inspired by little bits of information that I get from these books and I do have a library app and a Kindle and I did sign up for the wait list on both of these books but because they're so popular it was about six months for each of these until I would be able to read them and with the Target gift card and also their buy two get one free book deal that they had on it was a sale I also bought Wear It Well by Alison Bornstein which is not even on my local library app so they don't even own it so that was another reason I think was pushed to make the purchase because if I didn't buy that book I didn't know how i' would be able to read it in the near future and I'm interested in curating my closet a little bit more that's kind of why I'm doing the capsule wardrobes and the little bit of outfit content on my channel so I bought that book and these two books and again the coupon got me the sale got me I don't know if I'm going to feel like keeping these books after I read them I talked about how that's a mistake in my last video last week um getting books because I don't often keep them unless they're valuable enough to keep so I I know this is probably a mistake but I'm also trying to get away from the return economy this year and think very carefully about what I purchased so that I don't have to make returns and possibly be sending things straight to landfill because returns are not often resold um as far as what I've learned uh so I will be paying the price keeping these books maybe passing them on to friends who I think would also get value from them if I don't want to keep them but I might report back later on if I learn anything from these because I think a lack of productivity or feeling like I'm not being productive in these days of being a fairly new mom again has been one of the reasons that I've been triggered to shop and break my no buy but I will Circle back to that later after I get through the last of the things that I bought so the Sephora sale happened and I'm not a regular enough Sephora consumer to know when the sales are I just happened to be looking for mascara to replace the one I've been using since the beginning of the year so it's been about four months and I just like to have mascara is like the one makeup product that I don't want to run out of and have none because I kind of feel like my face doesn't have any eyelashes without mascara is like the one thing that I want to have on um so I bought a backup for the one that's just about to run out so I'm not having multiples of this it's going to be opened when I feel like the other one is completely used up and then I did go ahead and get a mini of the skin fix moisturizer that's been on my list since January as well even though I have moisturizer to use up but my justification here is that I've been using a moisturizer mini because I've had a couple that I've been cycling through and I have this on my nightstand for night moisturizer I'm not very good about maintaining a skincare routine if I'm completely honest so having this on my nightstand at least ensures that I get a nighttime moisturization and it also occurred to me that I want to try this before I run out of what I've currently been using because then I'll know what I like better for real so getting a mini seemed like a really good idea to just compare them and also I know I'll use it up in about a month on my nightstand and then the mini came with a cleanser and a triple lipid collagen activating serum which is not really why I bought it but I'll use this up anyway and I kind of am shopping around for cleansers so this again is a mini I'll be able to try it compare it to what I'm currently using I know I'll use this up within the year and then when the time comes to repurchase a full size of anything I'm going to wait until I've used up all of my products of the category so again I need to be careful about this because I don't want to fall into traps of getting backups and having collections of products to use up especially consumables that I need to use before they expire but again that's why I got the mini and this is where it stops I'm not going to be purchasing any other makeup or beauty products and I'm hopefully not going to be purchasing any more clothes and I'm going to be setting up a much better framework to avoid falling into the Trap of failure in the future obviously it took a week or so for everything to arrive after being purchased so I've been kind of removed from the actual Act of buying for maybe a week or two now and I guess that's that's how come I'm in a place here to reflect on it in this video so some of the triggers that I was experiencing at the time so a general feeling of law and a little elevated stress a little elevated guilt and shame um just through various aspects of life that were going on at the time so I had an audition coming up which I've already just taken and it was in Florida so we had a little trip to Florida auditions for a musician are a source of stress and I was really really struggling to prepare this time so I was kind of feeling bad on a low level for the few weeks leading up to that because I knew I should be prepared preparing or I wanted to be trying to prepare but it was just really hard to make the time I didn't have any illusions that I would be winning this audition and getting a job and therefore moving to Florida but you don't really ever want to do badly at an audition as a musician and I knew that I was not in a good place to do well so that was a little bit stressful I had a couple of hard days at work we played the Star Wars one of the Star Wars movies and those are very physical right so it's when you have two rehearsals or services in a day you're playing for five hours and the Star Wars movies are so intense that you're really playing and your brain is really really working and trying to keep up and the the music was 102 pages long for us so I was physically and mentally and not getting full nights of sleep so in all senses I was exhausted my body achd part of the trigger was making extra income I had a couple of extra gigs in the end of March um totaling to about ,000 of extra money in my budget that wasn't there before which also kind of made the shopping feel more okay because it didn't really have a a financial impact I also had some instances of guilt and shame as a result of one of these gigs so uh there was a last minute substitute musician called in for one of them and long story short they were trying to pay her less than they had agreed to pay all the rest of the musicians probably because she wasn't on the initial email that told us what we would all be paid and it gave me serious ick and what gave me personal ick is that she was going around asking you know trying to confirm that she was paid less basically kind of appealing for help and we told her to talk to the contractor and I overheard the contractor say that he doesn't really control the pay I think he probably should have advocated for her a little bit because as a contractor you have to be able to trust that musicians will be paid what you say that they will be paid otherwise how can we trust the contractor but um he was also a musician performing on the gig she ended up having to talk to the music director of the church directly and on the way out I was asking if she'd got any resolution from the contractor and she had said no and asked if I would be comfortable staying to support her talking to the director and this is where I made what I feel like is the wrong choice and I said no because I had to get back and feed my baby and realistically I probably could have put it off a little bit longer to stay in support her and I felt really really bad about leaving and she was kind of a younger musician she was still in school and myself as an older and more experienced musician kind of in the field I really regret not staying and advocating with her luckily I found out later she did get a new check to get paid the same as was agreed in the initial email but it just really gave me the ick and then it gave me the personal ick because I didn't behave in a way that I would feel good about later I kind of feel like I ditched her when I should have been a better musical sister but um yeah so I was feeling guilty and then I I guess it was really just the being swept up in the shopping that I was doing for other reasons as well shopping is kind of the only way that I have of treating myself right now and I know that's not a good thing but it's easier than many other things that take care of myself people with small children I guess can understand it's hard to get a moment by yourself and it only takes a few seconds to shop especially when I have this list of things that I want already it's a wish list so it's almost dangerous to have that wish list going all the time I I'm feeling now um because I can look at these items and say I already know why I want them I've already evaluated them and it takes 5 Seconds to go and buy something and check out and feel a little bit better except now I feel worse because I'm doing this no by year and I have to admit it to you all and feel doubly guilty about failing I don't know why when I when I see other people doing know by years I don't know that I've ever seen anybody fail or have to publicly admit that they failed I don't know if the algorithms just haven't served me videos of people failing their no by ears but I I feel a sense of inadequacy a sense of Shame and embarrassment and I mean I'm very lucky to have what I feel like is a relatively non-judgmental and supportive small community here on YouTube so please bear with me I do want to recommit to my no bye and succeed for the rest of the year like I said maybe keep it going until April next year so that I can really do a no bu full year but I really do need to change my Approach and I've seen been served other content that might help me and it's already helped me make some realizations about why I failed so I had all these triggers happen and I didn't have a plan for what to do when I was triggered and I also didn't view shopping as a habit I viewed it I actually don't even know how how I viewed shopping but I wasn't looking at it as an objective Behavior or a habit that I could change through planning and having Alternatives and I guess more rigorous measures than just sheer willpower my plan for Success on my no bye basically came down to just not buying stuff and just telling myself no every time I came close or wanted to buy things and setting these rules and I had reasons why but I don't know that they were actually strong enough or tangible enough to be effective I also didn't have behaviors in place to make sure that I was taking care of myself and didn't reach the low points that I got to when I made all these purchases I guess there the small win of the failure of this no by year is that everything was on my wish list and nothing was bought impulsively also the total spend was in the in the Realms of $350 and having made an extra $1,000 it didn't put a substantial dent in my budget or financial planning for the year one of my next videos I think will be my financial breakdown and what I think is reasonable to spend on wants essentially per month going forward after my no bye and I'm really interested in possibly hearing some feedback on those numbers as well so it's not as if it's a financial issue right now I haven't put myself into debt or ruin um by failing my not by I haven't accumulated a bunch of useless clutter at least in my feelings of it right now but I have demonstrated that I can't trust myself as far as my behavior matching my values and I don't like that I don't like that about myself and I want to become a person that can behave in line with their values or just basically do what they say they would so anyway back on track I need to view shopping as a habit I need to remove or mitigate some of the triggers so I think part of the triggers involve how items get put on my wish list in the first place so I've already hit upon some of these in the videos I've made thus far on my channel the social media so seeing ads everywhere and then also just being lonely and lacking a community kind of living in the suburbs I saw an interesting video on this yesterday about how suburbs the suburbs are isolating because you don't have a sense of community you have more privacy but you lose the community and you basically need a car to get everywhere from one Island to the next and um it's just not super great for society's mental health but anyway so feeling lonely feeling tired and exhausted and feeling guilt and shame from other areas of my life and just turning to shopping for a source of comfort was an ingrained habit that I didn't realize that I had I didn't see it as the main thing that I would turn to to soothe myself and I'd seen other people talk about soothing themselves with shopping but until I experienced it in this firsthand way it was really hard to actually contextualize it for myself and appreciate that that's what it was and that's what I've been doing and that's honestly what I've been doing for years and changing that response is going to take a little bit more than willpower so anyway it's time to pull my britches up and get back on track so I can make this a success story instead of just wallowing in my failure yet again I'm going to keep on posting I'm not going to give up I'm going to take it seriously I'm going to take real measurable steps to change my habits and I think the very next video you'll see on this channel is going to be the first few things that I've done to try and change the habits the triggers that I'm exposed to and reshape my response to my feelings and my environment even to an extent so that I can live in line with my values I can behave in line with how I want to behave and also to make it a little bit easier to do so so it doesn't feel like my willpower is so tested and so stretched thin eventually to the point of caving so this was a little bit of a difficult video to make and I think I chatted for for a very very long time and I hope it made some kind of sense long story short I bought a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to buy during my Noby ear and it taught me a lot about my habits and showed me a more clear path to success for the future I hope anyway bye for now and I'll see you in the next one I've fallen prey to life in the suburbs where the only thing to do is to have a big house in a big closet and hoard your wealth like a dragon in Lair accumulating useless junk without the surroundings of nature or Society this is life in the suburbs ah I'm the Dragon [Music]

Channel: Conscious Consumerism

Views: 4,168

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Id: VA2nXqJQkRE

Length: 30min 46sec (1846 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024