“
Although most introverts seek time alone as an alternative to people and competition, solitude is a power source for the introvert. And for someone wanting to exert control, solitude is indeed threatening. Many sales schemes rely on “today only” impulse purchases because “sleeping on it” will help you realize that you don’t need the product. Cults gain their power by depriving members of any time alone. Clients in my office comment on what a difference it makes to have time to think, and value psychotherapy for its attention to inner processes.
”
”
Laurie A. Helgoe (Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength)
“
Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!”
Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall…
“He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched.
“He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.”
Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a…
“The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?”
Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter.
Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.”
“Oh, yes it is!”
Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?”
She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too.
She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.
”
”
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
“
A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a matter of experience, a professional expertise. It is a facility most of us can acquire. But while a confidence trickster, a play actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief. For him, deception is first a matter of self defense. He must protect himself not only from without, but from within, and against the most natural of impulses. Though he earn a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a razor. Though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but banalities. Though he be an affectionate husband and father, he must within all circumstances without himself from those with whom he should naturally confide. Aware of the overwhelming temptations which assail a man permanently isolated in his deceit, Limas resorted to the course which armed him best. Even when he was alone, he compelled himself to live with the personality he had assumed. It is said that Balzac on his deathbed inquired anxiously after the health and prosperity of characters he had created. Similarly, Limas, without relinquishing the power of invention, identified himself with what he had invented. The qualities he had exhibited to Fiedler: the restless uncertainty, the protective arrogance concealing shame were not approximations, but extensions of qualities he actually possessed. Hence, also, the slight dragging of the feet, the aspect of personal neglect, the indifference to food, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and tobacco. When alone, he remained faithful to these habits. He would even exaggerate them a little, mumbling to himself about the iniquities of his service. Only very rarely, as now, going to bed that evening, did he allow himself the dangerous luxury of admitting the great lie that he lived.
”
”
John Le Carré (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3))
“
The list of indications of depletion is also highly diverse: deviating from one’s diet overspending on impulsive purchases reacting aggressively to provocation persisting less time in a handgrip task performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making
”
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Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
There’s a concept in psychology called “decision fatigue” that marketers use to exploit consumers. It appears humans have a limited capacity to make many decisions in one short stretch of time, and the quality of our decisions will deteriorate to the extent that we eventually begin making downright irrational choices. Ever wonder why supermarkets stack the junk food at the checkout counter? After wading through the forty thousand items in the average supermarket,46 we end up with less willpower to resist impulse purchases.
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Michael Greger (How Not To Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
“
There were, inevitably, children’s clothing stores, furniture shops still offering bedroom sets by layaway, and dollar stores whose awnings teemed with suspended inflatable dolls, beach chairs, laundry carts, and other impulse purchases a mom might make on a Saturday afternoon, exhausted by errand running with her kids. There was the sneaker store where Olga used to buy her cute kicks, the fruit store Prieto had worked at in high school, the little storefront that sold the kind of old-lady bras Abuelita used to wear. On the sidewalks, the Mexican women began to set up their snack stands. Mango with lime and chili on this corner, tamales on that. Until the Mexicans had come to Sunset Park, Olga had never tried any of this food, and now she always tried to leave a little room to grab a snack on her way home. Despite the relatively early hour, most of the shops were open, music blasting into the streets, granting the avenue the aura of a party. In a few more hours, cars with their stereos pumping, teens with boom boxes en route to the neighborhood’s public pool, and laughing children darting in front of their mothers would add to the cacophony that Olga had grown to think of as the sound of a Saturday.
”
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Xóchitl González (Olga Dies Dreaming)
“
While there is a real urgency for caution, there is also an overwhelming urgency for calm. My greatest concern is that the driving force of this pandemic may cause those who have no signs or symptomology to develop other chronic fears, anxieties and medical conditions. Heightened fears and anxieties will not make you feel safer. Compulsive and impulsive purchases will not protect you from the virus. It is important that you take care of your physical and mental health. Follow what your state and county are advising you to do. The sky is not falling and life will return to normal. The most prudent thing that people can do at this time, is to take commonsense approaches to reduce your risk of exposure.
”
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Asa Don Brown
“
I understood the impulse for personalization. In fact, I had indulged that impulse when I came to Westwind with the naïve idea of someday opening La Belle Mort, a funeral home for the one-of-a-kind, personalized death. But what we needed wasn’t more additions to the endless list of merchandise options. Not when we were missing rituals of true significance, rituals involving the body, the family, emotions. Rituals that couldn’t be replaced with purchasing power.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
“
Do they imagine that the students who come in here and patiently fill out the questionaires, who repeat their own names again and again for the woman to type into her computer--do they imagine that these people want to hurt the woman behind the desk. Do they think that because Connell sometimes lies on his own floor for hours, he might one day purchase a semi-automatic machine gun online and commit mass murder in a shopping center? Nothing could be further from his mind than committing mass murder. He feels guilty after he stammers a word on the phone. Still, he can see the logic: mentally unhealthy people are contaminated in some way and possibly dangerous. If they don't attack the woman behind the desk due to uncontrollable violent impulses, they might breathe some microbe in her direction, causing her to dwell unhealthily on all the failed relationships in her past.
”
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Sally Rooney (Normal People)
“
Sam threw up on Mark's new blazer.
"Shit," said Mark.
"I'm sorry," I said. Sam started to cry. There was a kind of odd murmur in the seats around us, as the smell began to penetrate to the adjoining rows. At any moment the murmur would probably build to a hiss, and then a chorus of boos, and ultimately Sam and I would be stoned to death with Bic pens.
"What am I apologizing for?" I said. "It's not my fault."
"I know it's not," said Mark. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault either," I said.
"This whole thing is my fault," he said.
"If you really believed that, you would have paid my shuttle fare," I said.
I picked up Sam and stood up to go to the bathroom with him. Mark began to wipe off his blazer with his handkerchief.
"You bought that blazer with Thelma Rice, didn't you?" I said, and started for the back. I didn't even have to hear the answer. Mark's impulse to fall in love is always accompanied by his impulse to purchase clothes with the loved one looking on.
”
”
Nora Ephron (Heartburn)
“
was strange but true. And perhaps I’d known it in some way from the very beginning. Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed. I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I’d lost, the new one I was spinning—while I hiked that morning, the snowy peaks of the High Sierras coming into occasional view. As I walked, I didn’t think of those snowy peaks. Instead, I thought of what I would do once I arrived at the Kennedy Meadows General Store that afternoon, imagining in fantastic detail the things I would purchase to eat and drink—cold lemonade and candy bars and junk food I seldom ate in my regular life. I pictured the moment when I would lay hands on my first resupply box, which felt to me like a monumental milestone, the palpable proof that I’d made it at least that far. Hello, I said to myself in anticipation of what I’d say once I arrived at the store, I’m a PCT hiker here to pick up my box. My name is Cheryl Strayed.
”
”
Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
“
At eight-thirty that night Ian stood on the steps outside Elizabeth’s uncle’s town house suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to murder Elizabeth’s butler, who seemed to be inexplicably fighting down the impulse to do bodily injury to Ian. “I will ask you again, in case you misunderstood me the last time,” Ian enunciated in a silky, ominous tone that made ordinary men blanch. “Where is your mistress?”
Bentner didn’t change color by so much as a shade. “Out!” he informed the man who’d ruined his young mistress’s life and had now appeared on her doorstep, unexpected and uninvited, no doubt to try to ruin it again, when she was at this very moment attending her first ball in years and trying bravely to live down the gossip he had caused.
“She is out, but you do not know where she is?”
“I did not say so, did I?”
“Then where is she?”
“That is for me to know and you to ponder.”
In the last several days Ian had been forced to do a great many unpleasant things, including riding across half of England, dealing with Christina’s irate father, and finally dealing with Elizabeth’s repugnant uncle, who had driven a bargain that still infuriated him. Ian had magnanimously declined her dowry as soon as the discussion began. Her uncle, however, had the finely honed bargaining instincts of a camel trader, and he immediately sensed Ian’s determination to do whatever was necessary to get Julius’s name on a betrothal contract. As a result, Ian was the first man to his knowledge who had ever been put in the position of purchasing his future wife for a ransom of $150,000.
Once he’d finished that repugnant ordeal he’d ridden off to Montmayne, where he’d sopped only long enough to switch his horse for a coach and get his valet out of bed. Then he’d charged off to London, stopped at his town house to bathe and change, and gone straight to the address Julius Cameron had given him. Now, after all that, Ian was not only confronted by Elizabeth’s absence, he was confronted by the most insolent servant he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. In angry silence he turned and walked down the steps. Behind him the door slammed shut with a thundering crash, and Ian paused a moment to turn back and contemplate the pleasure he was going to have when he sacked the butler tomorrow.
”
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Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
Carrying her over to his bed, he slowly laid her on it. She sank into the mattress with a dreamy murmur of a sigh.
Though the protective impulse he had felt toward her earlier had returned full force, the soft and sensual moan from her lips filled him with a moment's blinding lust.
Dear God. A tremor of hunger ran through him. His stare traveled over her lax face and down her white neck to her creamy chest. He swallowed hard, gazing at her breasts.
Somehow, he became fixated on them again.
Heart pounding, he moved slowly and with caution sat on the edge of the bed. Desire slammed through his veins, but he only meant to look. She was a harlot, she wouldn't care, as long as he had money, which he did, lots of it. Yet it amazed him that such beauty could be purchased for the taking. She was exquisite, with the dusky fringe of her lashes fanned above her cheeks in sleep.
The thick and wavy cloud of her satiny brown hair flowed back from the pale oval of her face and spilled across his pillow.
He marveled at the creamy shimmer of her complexion in the firelight, her flushed cheeks like delicate pink-tinted porcelain. His gaze traveled over her smooth forehead, the delicate twin arches of her light brown eyebrows, and her small, prettily formed nose.
He would not have guessed her any common sort of wench. Then his attention strayed to her pink lips in ever-growing desire, a gathering smolder darkening his eyes.
She had a very charming chin, slightly pronounced, and hinting at a firm stubbornness of character. He wanted to nibble its smooth rounded curve.
”
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Gaelen Foley (My Dangerous Duke (Inferno Club, #2))
“
But if her idiot suitors were staying at Halstead Hall with her, then by thunder, he'd be here, too. They wouldn't take advantage of her on his watch. "We're agreed that you won't do any of that foolish nonsense you mentioned, like spying on them, right?"
"Of course not. That's what I have you for."
Her private lackey to jump at her commands. He was already regretting this.
"Surely the gentlemen will accept the invitation," she went on, blithely ignoring his disgruntlement. "It's hunting season, and the estate has some excellent coveys."
"I wouldn't know."
She cast him an easy smile. "Because you generally hunt men, not grouse. And apparently you do it very well."
A compliment? From her "No need to flatter me, my lady," he said dryly. "I've already agreed to your scheme."
Her smile vanished. "Really, Mr. Pinter, sometimes you can be so..."
"Honest?" he prodded.
"Irritating." She tipped up her chin. "It will be easier to work together if you're not always so prickly."
He felt more than prickly, and for the most foolish reasons imaginable. Because he didn't like her trawling for suitors. Or using him to do it. And because he hated her "lady of the manor" role. It reminded him too forcibly of the difference in their stations.
"I am who I am, madam," he bit out, as much a reminder for himself as for her. "You knew what you were purchasing when you set out to do this."
She frowned. "Must you make it sound so sordid?"
He stepped as close as he dared. "You want me to gather information you can use in playing a false role to catch s husband. I am not the one making it sordid."
"Tell me, sir, will I have to endure your moralizing at every turn?" she said in a voice dripping with sugar. "Because I'd happily pay extra to have you keep your opinions to yourself."
"There isn't enough money in all the world for that."
Her eyes blazed up at him. Good. He much preferred her in a temper. At least then she was herself, not putting on some show.
She seemed to catch herself, pasting an utterly false smile to her lips. "I see. Well then, can you manage to be civil for the house party? It does me no good to bring suitors here if you'll be skulking about, making them uncomfortable."
He tamped down the urge to provoke her further. If he did she'd strike off on her own, and that would be disastrous. "I shall try to keep my 'skulking' to a minimum."
"Thank you." She thrust out her hand. "Shall we shake on it?"
The minute his fingers closed about hers, he wished he'd refused. Because having her soft hand in his roused everything he'd been trying to suppress during this interview.
He couldn't seem to let go. For such a small-boned female, she had a surprisingly firm grip. Her hand was like her-fragility and strength all wrapped in beauty. He had a mad impulse to lift it to his lips and press a kiss to her creamy skin.
But he was no Lancelot to her Guinevere. Only in legend did lowly knights dare to court queens.
Releasing her hand before he could do something stupid, he sketched a bow. "Good day, my lady. I'll begin my investigation at once and report to you as soon as I learn something."
He left her standing there, a goddess surrounded by the aging glories of an aristocrat's mansion. God save him-this had to be the worst mission he'd ever undertaken, one he was sure to regret.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
“
A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort—cognitive, emotional, or physical—draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Their experiments involve successive rather than simultaneous tasks. Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In a typical demonstration, participants who are instructed to stifle their emotional reaction to an emotionally charged film will later perform poorly on a test of physical stamina—how long they can maintain a strong grip on a dynamometer in spite of increasing discomfort. The emotional effort in the first phase of the experiment reduces the ability to withstand the pain of sustained muscle contraction, and ego-depleted people therefore succumb more quickly to the urge to quit. In another experiment, people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task. The list of situations and tasks that are now known to deplete self-control is long and varied. All involve conflict and the need to suppress a natural tendency. They include: avoiding the thought of white bears inhibiting the emotional response to a stirring film making a series of choices that involve conflict trying to impress others responding kindly to a partner’s bad behavior interacting with a person of a different race (for prejudiced individuals) The list of indications of depletion is also highly diverse: deviating from one’s diet overspending on impulsive purchases reacting aggressively to provocation persisting less time in a handgrip task performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making The evidence is persuasive: activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers.
The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.”
But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry.
The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.
”
”
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
“
Similarly, people are far more likely to splurge impulsively on a big luxury purchase when they receive an unexpected windfall than with savings that they have accumulated over time, even if those savings are fully available to be spent.
”
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Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
“
Customers or shoppers, they love buying as much as they want without thinking about going out of cash. The thought of scarcity of funds annoys them to the core and often spoils their made to a point where they no longer are interested in making the purchase. Though this doesn’t harm them in anyway because they can buy the needed product/service later but this changed attitude of them costs high to the business that loses a valuable customer and an important sale.
Credit Card Processing: Never Lose Upon A Consumer
If you are limited to the traditional era of accepting cash, the above explained scenario can become a reality for you if not today then tomorrow. However, to stay away from this disappointment, credit card processing can be used to the fullest extent.
As shoppers are interested in paying via credit card, a business can entice them by accepting card payment. Talking exclusively about the small businesses that are particular about everything, pulling impressive customers through credit card processing for small business totally makes sense. Not only it appeals to the needs of the customers but also lets the business stay active 24/7. In other words, sales remain on without any break and revenue can be generated even when official business hours are closed.
Benefits To Catch Up With
• Boost in sales
• Encouraging customers for impulse buying
• Legitimizing the business
• Improvement in cash flow
• No risk of dealing with bad checks
• Inexpensive business expense
• Getting started is quick & easy
• Multiple currencies can be accepted
• Needs of customers can be catered no matter where they are located
These advantages are seriously wonderful to take a small business forward and give it the needed recognition on global level. Accepting cash payment is soon going to become thing of the past as credit card processing and mobile payment processing are the new mates businesses are interested in joining hands with. Hence, start with these services before your customers find comfort in arms of your competitor’s business.
”
”
Emma Megan
“
General Decluttering Strategy 7: The Seven-Day Strategy Whenever I feel the urge to buy something that I know in my heart is non-essential, I always go back to my seven-day strategy. Here’s how it works – say, I notice a really nice watch in the mall. I’ll usually tend to go into the store and try to find out a bit more about the watch, how much it costs, what its features are, etc. After gathering this information, I’ll resist the urge to buy the watch on the spot –instead, I’ll go back home and whip out my journal, and write down today’s date, the watch I was interested in, and how much it costs. In the list, I’ll include a date that is seven days from now. Seven days from now, if I still feel that I need the watch and it’ll add value to my life, I’ll go out and buy it. The seven-day strategy allows us to think about the true value of the things we want to buy. It stops impulse purchases. And it inevitably ends up saving money, since about ninety percent of the time, I’ll end up not buying what I really wanted seven days ago. Of course, this does not apply to every single thing you buy – if you want to buy some chocolate at the check-out counter, you can’t really apply this method – it wouldn’t make sense. This approach is appropriate for more expensive, material purchases.
”
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Gwyneth Snow (Minimalism: The Path to an Organized, Stress-free and Decluttered Life)
“
Like the medieval heretics that Norm Cohn wrote about in The Pursuit of the Millennium, the Beats cultivated an extreme narcissism that bordered on self-deification and that 'liberated them from all restraints' and allowed them to experience every impulse as a 'divine command'. What Norman Podhoretz observed of Ginsberg was also true of the Beats generally: they 'conjured up a world of complete freedom from the limits imposed by [bourgeois] responsibilities'. Podhoretz added, 'It was a world that promised endless erotic possibility together with the excitements of an expanded consciousness constantly open to new dimensions of being: more adventure, more sex, more intensity, more life'. Alas, the promise was illusory. Instead of an 'expanded consciousness', the Beats purchased madness, ruination, and, for many, an early death. Their attack on bourgeois responsibility led not to greater freedom but to greater chaos. The erotic paradise they envisioned turned out to be rife with misery.
”
”
Roger Kimball (The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America)
“
A similar situation exists for impulse categories that are mostly only considered if the consumer notices them. This is often the case for items such as cut flowers, confectionery, treats and novelties. If the product is not seen, the consumer is unaware of dropping the purchase and won’t seek to find it elsewhere.
”
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Greg Thain (Store Wars: The Worldwide Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace, Online and In-store)
“
A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire. But while a confidence trickster, a play-actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief. For him, deception is first a matter of self-defence. He must protect himself not only from without but from within, and against the most natural of impulses; though he earns a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a razor; though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but banalities; though he be an affectionate husband and father, he must under all circumstances withhold himself from those in whom he should naturally confide.
”
”
John Le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold)
“
Emergency savings can be used to pay for unexpected emergencies only, which include: ➔Unexpected home repairs and replacement of essential items ➔Unexpected essential car repairs ➔Unexpected medical/dental bills ➔Bills and household costs in the event of an unexpected drop in income. Examples of expenses that cannot be funded by emergency savings are: ➔Christmas and birthdays ➔Routine or advance-planned medical/dental treatments ➔Budgeting fails ➔Impulse purchases ➔Non-essential repairs/replacements ➔Holidays.
”
”
Grainne McNamee (How to Get Out of Debt)
“
Some people call them impulse purchases, but for me they truly felt like blackouts. Like I had slipped into a coma for 60 seconds and woken up with amnesia and a receipt.
”
”
Cait Flanders (The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store)
“
Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).
”
”
Eric Siegel (Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die)
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how to make notes ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1584-1589 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:21:47 wanted to share my ‘colour coded’ way of remembering things with everybody, so they too could benefit. I felt like I had stumbled upon a great secret and my discovery would be hailed. I pictured it being used in schools, colleges and everywhere else as a new memory technique. I wondered why nobody else had thought of such a simple but brilliant technique earlier. As I was waiting for him to finish making the photocopies, my eyes chanced upon small glittering stickers of cartoon characters like Tw eety bird, Fairies and Garfield and some Disney characters, which children use to decorate their books and other objects. I thought the stickers would make a nice finishing touch and I bought twenty sheets. I also came across some very beautiful printed stationery and could not resist buying about eight packets of writing sheets. They looked very beautiful and ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Note at location 1596 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:24:46 cont. how to make notes ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1590-1596 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:24:46 I also looked around the shop and discovered some water colours. I had last painted with water colours only in school. On an impulse, I bought a set of water colours and a set of brushes as well. It was like an urgent impulse inside my head that was driving me to buy all this stuff. They seemed absolutely essential. I reached home armed with my large bag of purchases and unpacked them carefully and arranged them all on my desk. Then I sat down and decorated the corners of each set of notes with tiny stickers of cartoon characters. I used highlighter pens and highlighted each set of the notes in my colour coded way with green, purple and orange. There were seventy sets to finish and I was like a woman possessed. I stayed up the whole night doing just this. I was a reservoir of energy. I just couldn' t stop. Strangely I did not feel even a little tired. ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1617-1617 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 11:55:29 uncannily ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location 1650-1650 | Added on Monday, 15 June 2015 14:48:08 besotted ========== Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (Preeti Shenoy) - Your Highlight at location
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Anonymous
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THE DSM-V: A VERITABLE SMORGASBORD OF “DIAGNOSES” When DSM-V was published in May 2013 it included some three hundred disorders in its 945 pages. It offers a veritable smorgasbord of possible labels for the problems associated with severe early-life trauma, including some new ones such as Disruptive Mood Regulation Disorder,26 Non-suicidal Self Injury, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Dysregulated Social Engagement Disorder, and Disruptive Impulse Control Disorder.27 Before the late nineteenth century doctors classified illnesses according to their surface manifestations, like fevers and pustules, which was not unreasonable, given that they had little else to go on.28 This changed when scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch discovered that many diseases were caused by bacteria that were invisible to the naked eye. Medicine then was transformed by its attempts to discover ways to get rid of those organisms rather than just treating the boils and the fevers that they caused. With DSM-V psychiatry firmly regressed to early-nineteenth-century medical practice. Despite the fact that we know the origin of many of the problems it identifies, its “diagnoses” describe surface phenomena that completely ignore the underlying causes. Even before DSM-V was released, the American Journal of Psychiatry published the results of validity tests of various new diagnoses, which indicated that the DSM largely lacks what in the world of science is known as “reliability”—the ability to produce consistent, replicable results. In other words, it lacks scientific validity. Oddly, the lack of reliability and validity did not keep the DSM-V from meeting its deadline for publication, despite the near-universal consensus that it represented no improvement over the previous diagnostic system.29 Could the fact that the APA had earned $100 million on the DSM-IV and is slated to take in a similar amount with the DSM-V (because all mental health practitioners, many lawyers, and other professionals will be obliged to purchase the latest edition) be the reason we have this new diagnostic system?
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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Cut the habit of buying on impulse, especially with high ticket items. Think twice before making any major purchase. If possible, sleep on it overnight before deciding to make the purchase.
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Erick Walk (Investing 101: A Beginner's Financial Guide for a Rich Life. The Basics on How to Make Money and Build a Wealthy Retirement. (Personal Finance Book 1))
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and I avoid taking a credit card to places like Renaissance Faires so I can't make impulse purchases. Communication
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Marissa Baker (The INFJ Handbook: A guide to and for the rarest Myers-Briggs personality type)
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To give one example, consumerism and juvenilization reinforce one another. People who know who they are, who think carefully about purchases, and who exercise self-control are harder to persuade to buy products they don't really need. In contrast, impulsive people who are searching for a sense of identity, who are looking to salve their emotional pain, who desperately crave the approval of others, and who have lots of discretionary income (or are willing to spend as if they do) make ideal consumers. In
other words, encouraging people to settle into some of the worst traits of adolescence is good for business. Not all businesses and advertisers operate on this basis, but enough do to encourage the cult of youth and discourage people from growing up. Considerable evidence suggests that consumers can see through these techniques and resist them to some extent. But immersed as we all are in the culture of adolescence, it becomes increasingly hard to embrace the self-denial and character formation necessary to achieve what used to be called mature adulthood.2
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Thomas Bergler (The Juvenilization of American Christianity)
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Efficiency is another area of balance. On the one hand, you want the trip to be as efficient as possible, so the shopper finds what he or she needs and leaves. On the other hand, you want to create engagement, to make the shopper stay longer and interact to drive more impulse purchases and form some kind of relationship. You also want variety, but not too much.
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Herb Sorensen (Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing)
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A. D. MURPHY: Film companies, distributors, and exhibitors woke up to the fact that people don’t go to films, they go to see a specific film. It’s an impulse purchase. There have been many studies. People make up their mind to see a film about six hours before, and they go that day. It’s literally an impulse purchase.
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Jeanine Basinger (Hollywood: The Oral History)
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The gun industry collectively reinforced Glock’s pitch that small handguns were the perfect response to crime-ridden streets. The prolific Massad Ayoob advised in Shooting Industry, a periodical aimed at gun retailers: “Customers come to you every day out of fear. Fear is what they read in the newspaper. Fear of what they watch on the 11 o’clock news. Fear of the terrible acts of violence they see on the street. Your job, in no uncertain terms, is to sell them confidence.… An impulse of fear has sent that customer to your shop, so you want a quality product in stock to satisfy the customer’s needs and complete the impulse purchase.
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Paul M. Barrett (Glock: The Rise Of America's Gun)
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There were other reasons it was so important. America was the trendsetter. Other countries around the world looked to it for innovation, new styles. There was also a culture of disposable commerce. The level of income, and the lifestyle this afforded, enabled people to take greater risks when purchasing something. They weren’t like Europeans, who thought twice, three times about buying shoes and clothes. The Americans were more impulsive. If they liked it, they bought it. If it proved to be a good purchase, they’d buy it again. If they didn’t like it, they moved on to something else, no refunds, no fuss, no hard feelings.
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Joe Foster (Shoemaker: The Untold Story of the British Family Firm that Became a Global Brand)
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Happiness was a hungry beast, requiring constant feeding, while contentment was placid, undemanding
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Veronica Henry (The Impulse Purchase)
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We might think we want whatever instant purchase or impulse we yearn for in the moment, but we don’t actually want that as much as we want our greater goal.
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Ashley Feinstein Gerstley (The 30-Day Money Cleanse: Take Control of Your Finances, Manage Your Spending, and De-Stress Your Money for Good (Personal Finance and Budgeting Self-Help Book))
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There are currently 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world. Pretty much every one of those phones does something for its owner that they used to do for themselves. Before all the apps, algorithms, and websites we have today, we used our brains to do things like remembering and recalling (phone numbers, calendar events, and other facts). We also figured out how to get places without GPS and we made more of our own decisions about what to buy instead of clicking on ads and making impulse purchases. While there certainly are benefits to having tech- nology take care of many of our needs, we should be aware of what we might be losing. What types of thinking are we no longer doing on our own? Are there unintended consequences to letting computers (and the corporations behind them) do so much of our thinking?
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Thatcher Wine (The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better)
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The deeper minds of all ages have at all times felt sympathy for the animals because they suffer from life and yet do not possess the power to turn the thorn of suffering against itself and to understand their existence metaphysically; one is, indeed, profoundly indignant at the sight of senseless suffering. That is why there has arisen in more than one part of the earth the supposition that the bodies of animals contain the guilt-laden souls of men, so that this suffering which at first sight arouses indignation on account of its senselessness acquires meaning and significance as punishment and atonement before the seat of eternal justice. And it is, truly, a harsh punishment thus to live as an animal, beset by hunger and desire yet incapable of any kind of reflection on the nature of this life; and no harder fate can be thought of than that of the beast of prey pursued through the wilderness by the most gnawing torment rarely satisfied and even then in such a way that satisfaction is purchased only with the pain of lascerating combat with other animals or through inordinate greed and nauseating satiety. To hang on to life madly and blindly, with no higher aim than to hang on to it; not to know that or why one is being so heavily punished but, with the stupidity of a fearful desire, to thirst after precisely this punishment as though after happiness - that is what it means to be an animal; and if all nature presses towards man, it thereby intimates that man is necessary for the redemption of nature from the curse of the life of the animal, and that in him existence at last holds up before itself a mirror in which life appears no longer senseless but in its metaphysical significance. But we should consider where the beast ends and the man begins—the man, the one concern of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above the horizon of the beast; he only desires more consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse. It is so with us all, for the greater part of our lives. We do not shake off the beast, but are beasts ourselves, suffering we know not what.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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I’m having some business partners coming over on Saturday for dinner. You need a dress.” “I definitely don’t need another dress. I’ve purchased enough clothes to last me two lifetimes last week. Vova barely managed to get everything into the car, and I don’t have any space left in the closet. There are at least ten dresses that I haven’t even worn.” “You said you are an impulse buyer.” “That doesn’t equal hoarder, Roman.
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Neva Altaj (Painted Scars (Perfectly Imperfect, #1))
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Satire, sarcasm, and innuendo may give a salesperson a reputation as being quick with a one-liner, but that kind of negativism will not help him or her sell products. The master salesperson doesn’t speak negative words or allow his or her subconscious mind to broadcast negative thoughts. Like attracts like. Negative suggestions attract negative action and negative decisions from prospective purchasers. Remember that people are motivated to buy or not to buy, through their feelings. Much of what they believe to be their own feelings consist of thought impulses they have unconsciously picked up from the messages sent out by the salesperson
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Napoleon Hill (Selling You!)
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Nothing is more important when it comes to your clothes, or your life for that matter, than feeling comfortable and confident with yourself. Don't punish yourself for growing old, gaining weight, making impulse purchases, or holding onto things past their point of usefulness.
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Bonnie Borromeo Tomlinson (Stop Buying Bins: & other blunt but practical advice from a home organizer)
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we think of “cutting steel” as a media expense. Cutting steel is what you do when you build a mold to create a custom product—you buy a big block of steel and then cut it into a mold in the shape you want. It’s an expensive process with little room for error; it’s why many companies choose generic or stock bottles instead of investing in custom ones. But when we compared the cost of cutting steel to the cost of marketing, the ROI suddenly started looking much better. For us, it costs an average of $150,000 to create a new unique bottle design, which looks expensive compared to selecting a stock bottle with no tooling cost. But if we saved that $150K and invested it in marketing instead, what would it buy us? Not much. Not even one quarter-page ad in a national magazine. Yet the unique bottle design can generate millions in free press and social media attention! Not to mention the marketing power it will retain, capturing retailers’ attention, landing better shelf space, and inspiring impulse purchases from new customers. Our belief was that if we created a product that exceeded expectations, people would talk about it and drive word-of-mouth. Because Method could never win the advertising battle by shouting louder, we needed the product to shout for us.
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Eric Ryan (The Method Method: Seven Obsessions That Helped Our Scrappy Start-up Turn an Industry Upside Down)
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The Two-Minute Cleanup In an ADHD home, no room should take more than two minutes to pick up. How do we achieve this? By purging brutally and committing to acquire sparingly; by using money saved on avoiding impulse purchases and overstock to procure services (e.g., a housekeeper to maintain bathrooms, floors, and possibly laundry); and by keeping storage efficient
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Susan C. Pinsky (Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized)
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Likewise, all those irrational feelings which offer no purchase to analysis. I can define them practically, appreciate them practically, by gathering together the sum of their consequences in the domain of the intelligence, by seizing and noting all their aspects, by outlining their universe. It is certain that apparently, though I have seen the same actor a hundred times, I shall not for that reason know him any better personally. Yet if I add up the heroes he has personified and if I say that I know him a little better at the hundredth character counted off, this will be felt to contain an element of truth. For this apparent paradox is also an apologue. There is a moral to it. It teaches that a man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses. There is thus a lower key of feelings, inaccessible in the heart but partially disclosed by the acts they imply and the attitudes of mind they assume. It is clear that in this way I am defining a method. But it is also evident that that method is one of analysis and not of knowledge.
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Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus)
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In his book-length review of the executive functions, Dr. Russell Barkley (2012) explored the reasons that these skills evolved in humans in the first place. He makes the compelling case that it was the selection pressures associated with humans living in larger groups of genetically unrelated individuals, which made it selectively advantageous to have good self-regulation skills. That is, these abilities became more important to survival as humans became more interdependent with and reliant on dealings with people
who were not family.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and executive dysfunction continue to have effects on the myriad relationships and social interactions in daily life. These connections include romantic and committed relationships/marriage, relationships with parents, siblings, children, and other relatives, friendships, and interactions with employers, coworkers, and customers. The executive functions in relationships also figure in the capacity for empathy and tracking social debt, that is, the balance of favors you owe others and favors owed to you. The ability to effectively organize behavior across time in goal-directed activities gains you “social collateral.” That is, the more you deliver on promises and projects, the more that you will be sought out by others and maintain bonds with them.
Some of the common manifestations of ADHD and executive dysfunction that may create problems in relationships include:
• Distractibility during conversations
• Forgetfulness about matters relevant to another person
• Verbal impulsivity—talking over someone else
• Verbal impulsivity—saying the “wrong thing”
• Breaking promises (acts of commission, e.g., making an expensive purchase despite
agreeing to stay within a household budget)
• Poor follow-through on promises (acts of omission, e.g., forget to pick up dry
cleaning)
• Disregarding the effects of one’s behavior on others (e.g., building up excessive debt
on a shared credit card account)
• Poor frustration tolerance, anger (e.g., overreacting to children’s behavior)
• Lying to cover up mistakes
• Impulsive behaviors that reduce trust (e.g., romantic infidelity)
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J. Russell Ramsay (The Adult ADHD Tool Kit)
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Even when the underlying motive of purchase is mere speculative greed, human nature desires to conceal this unlovely impulse behind a screen of apparent logic and good sense
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Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
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Curb impulse purchases by giving yourself a cooling-off period: instead of buying something immediately, wait a few days and see if you still “need” it. These
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Francine Jay (Miss Minimalist: Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify)