I’ve spent the last several months reflecting on J.B. MacKinnon’s The Day the World Stops Shopping. The premise is rooted in a fairly straightforward but somehow radical thought experiment: What would happen if the world reduced its consumption by 25%? Greenhouse gas emissions would plummet, annual deaths from air pollution would decrease, oceans would be a little less plastic-ridden, and, with a little ingenuity, the entire global economy would still survive. 

Really, it shouldn’t be that challenging to decrease our consumption by roughly a quarter.  After all, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that we are consuming well past what we can reasonably use. Polls consistently find that we wear only 20% of our clothes 80% of the time. The average American household has 2.6 people but dozens of coffee mugs. And while the preferred square footage per household is finally starting to trend downward, the median home in 2015 was nearly twice that of the median home in the 1970s… despite having fewer occupants. 

So what makes this thought experiment radical isn’t that it’s unreasonable for you and I to consume less– in fact, chances are we would be happier if we did.  It’s that shopping has become synonymous with status. We mark the passage into adulthood with the right clothes for a first professional job, a new car, then a home. We face mid-life crisis head on with home renovations and vehicle upgrades. And sure, sometimes we complain about consumerism as a status symbol. But we continue to let it sneak into our lives for one simple reason: it’s easier to swipe a credit card than it is to confront the actual sources of dissatisfaction in our lives. 

So here are a few ways we can actually break free from the cycle of consumerism:

Get up close and comfortable with your deep-seated fears 

Maybe it’s the voice from our childhood that tells us that love is somehow dependent on the grades we earn or the goals we score. Maybe it’s the voice of our teenage years that tells us we won’t be liked or we don’t fit in with the crowd because of our clothes or our body shape or our music taste. Or maybe it’s the voice of a terrible boss or an abusive ex-partner. But these voices tell us– with the help of advertisements that play on these exact fears– that buying “stuff” will make us smarter, more attractive, or more well-liked. 

All too often, we let those voices win. We shrink our beliefs and our passions to be more palatable to the crowd. We shrink our dreams to something we know we can achieve rather than risk failure. And as we keep shrinking, we look for ways to numb our dissatisfaction.  Sure, when I say “numb,” you might be thinking of someone you know who numbs with drugs or alcohol. 

But how many of us are numbing with something more insidious? How many of us are trying to numb our anxiety with mindless scrolling? How many of us are hiding our wildest dreams behind hours spent clicking “add to cart”? 

How many of us are trying to numb our anxiety with mindless scrolling? How many of us are hiding our wildest dreams behind hours spent clicking “add to cart”? 

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So take the time to sit down for a coffee with your greatest fears.  Name them. Feel them. Tell your loved ones about them. Take ownership of these insecurities until they lose their grip over your life.

Practice Gratitude 

The entire advertising industry– worth nearly $304 BILLION dollars in 2021 in the United States alone– exists to tell us that our lives will be better if we click “add to cart.” And if a particular product didn’t meet our needs or expectations, marketing tells us that there’s another product out there guaranteed to give us what we are looking for. 

But gratitude tells us that we have everything we need. It tells us that our homes, cars, watches, and smartphones serve their purpose well enough. That “upgrades” may give us a temporary hit of dopamine– and sure, they might come with some increased functionality– but they are unlikely to change our base level of happiness. 

Gratitude tells us that upgrading our homes, cars, watches, and smartphones won’t change our base level of happiness.

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I’ll be the first to admit that gratitude is no easy feat. I’ve been a minimalist for a decade now– long enough for the pursuit of intentionality in my life to be far more than a passing fad. But even I have to remind myself that there is nothing I can buy today that will give me more happiness or peace. When asked what really matters in life, chances are that most of us come up with pretty similar lists: Being a good partner, parent, or friend. Being kind and generous. Being someone who contributes to the community around them. And guess what? There is no product I can buy that will make me more of any of those things. But acknowledging the abundance of gifts already in my life can keep me from thinking I will be happier with “more.”

Channel your energy into a higher purpose 

One of the most meaningful prayers I’ve ever heard was this: “God, break my heart for what breaks yours.” What I think is so powerful about this prayer– whether or not you are religious– is that it highlights the capacity each of us have to meet the needs of others. From volunteering at a food bank or supporting orphans to coaching a Little League team, your talents can be deployed in ways that are far more meaningful than finding the next best deal at the outlet mall. 

When we choose to silence the voice of consumerism in favor of meaning, we tap into our true purpose and heal our community.

Consider the actual cost of your goods 

We pay for the trinkets in our life with more than just dollars and cents. Certainly, there is a monetary exchange: My cash for the bright and shiny “thing” urging me to “add to cart,” whether on my phone screen or a literal store shelf.  But there are a number of other costs to consider: The hours of our life we spend working to earn the money we hand over. The hours of our life we will spend cleaning, rearranging, and maintaining the item we once wanted. The money we pay for the extra square footage– in some cases, even in the form of a storage unit– to store our “stuff.” 

We accumulate cheap goods– both in the sense that they are inexpensive and in that they are poorly made– without considering the true social and environmental costs

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The actual cost of our “stuff,” however, goes even beyond the price that we ourselves incur. We accumulate cheap goods– both in the sense that they are inexpensive and in that they are poorly made– without considering the true social and environmental costs: Where did we factor in the cost of child workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo dying in the cobalt mines that supply the smartphone industry? What about the exploitation of garment workers in Cambodia and Bangladesh that guarantees our $1.99 tops and $10 jeans?

I’m not suggesting that practicing gratitude and acknowledging your insecurities will be a “silver bullet” to never experience the siren song of consumerism. But acknowledging that we have better and more meaningful pursuits than clicking “add to cart” will help enrich our own lives and reduce the impact of consumerism on the world around us.