How to Stop Wanting Things

Merry
Last Updated: November 11, 2024

It’s not easy to figure out how to stop wanting things when the Internet has you in a chokehold.

“Everyone lives by selling something,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, whom Wikipedia calls “a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer.”

But did Stevenson (who died in 1894, by the way) know that the Instagram girlies and the Twitter bros would be selling their asses and their biceps (excuse me—their green juices and their protein shakes) from morning ‘til night with no respite in sight?

I’m going to guess probably not.

All hypocritical finger-pointing aside (I, too, am a flawed beast), the dude had a point … and I agree with him. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with trying to make a sale. After all, we’re all just trying to make a living without selling (too much of) our souls to the mega-corporation-algorithm-overlords we’ve let fester and swell for the past 50-odd years. (Heck, I’m also selling something by way of writing services. ✌️)

But even though I’d like to scream from the rooftops how fed up I am with the advertising, the marketing, and the pushing, jamming, and ramming of materialism down our throats, that would be complete and utter whinging.

Because they can sell, sell, sell as much as they want—but I’m the one responsible for whether or not I decide to buy.

So a couple of years ago, I called my own BS and set out to figure out how to stop wanting things.

I don’t think I’m a particularly materialistic person, but I like a new lipstick as much as the next gal, and anyone who knows me knows I only buy expensive (usually leather) shoes because they put a spring in your step (and last!) like no other.

I used to:

read fashion magazines during high school physics class
watch Fashion Police (RIP Joan Rivers) with my mom and wonder what it’s like to wear couture (I believe my exact words were: “I would never want to be famous, but my only regret is that I’ll probably never get to wear haute couture…”)
and ~~stare longingly at buttery leather shoes from Cole Haan and sniff Dooney & Bourke leather handbags like they were coke (no, just me?)~~ window-shop with my sister

And then somewhere along the line … I just stopped. I don’t know why.

I traded InStyle for The Economist, gave up TV almost cold turkey (except for sci-fi because I’m a loser), and told my sister I didn’t want to go to the store anymore. I still treat myself to a new lipstick about once a year (and you’ll pry my leather and/or suede high heels from my cold, dead hands), but I no longer give a shit about acquiring new ones until those in my closet become so old that the cobbler refuses to keep re-heeling them. (Yeah, he really did play me like that.)

So what happened? How did I learn how to stop wanting things?

In the end, learning how to stop wanting things was pretty simple.

I just stopped looking.

Looking at Instagram. Looking at TV. Looking at magazines.

And TBH, it’s a lot easier said than done. Just yesterday I was visually assaulted as I waited patiently like a Good Samaritan for the tram.

BOOM! Enormous advertisement for Volkswagen slithering around the side of every tram car when we could have just had nice, clear windows (but this is why we can’t have nice things).

BOOM! Mega poster with a pair of Photoshopped t*ts that’s pretending to sell women’s underwear when it’s really selling eating disorders, low self-esteem, and the normalization of hyper-sexualization to teenage girls who think they need to look like that to be worth something to someone.

Boom.

Even when you’re trying to live in your hand-me-down-clothing, using-an-old-jam-jar-instead-of-a-water-bottle life, the presence of advertisements is downright suffocating.

But once you cut ads out of your life off, they just don’t work anymore.

It’s like upgrading to Spotify and then suddenly going back to free Pandora radio (and 2010 where it belongs). You think, “What the f*** was I doing back then?”

What was I doing when I felt it necessary to scroll through Instagram because I had to wait in the grocery line for 10 minutes and simply needed to fill that time with stimulation?

What was I doing when I turned on the TV—not because there was something I wanted to watch but just to “see what was on”?

As an aside: To be honest, that was never me. I was never a big fan of the TV even before I quit it. (To those of you out there who like having the TV on just as background noise … y tho?)

Things that had once seemed so commonplace to me and just a natural part of the fabric of these modern lives we’ve built for ourselves became uninteresting, even buffoonish.

It’s like feeling dead inside in the best possible way.

Now when someone I know sends me a TikTok video with some cool gadget that apparently solves the very niche problem of cutting mangos that I didn’t realize existed … I feel nothing. (Well, after I feel disbelief that this person I know and respect is actually spending their time on TikTok, which I think we can all agree is the very worst of all the social media platforms. But you do you, friend. (Do I sound judgmental?))

Now when another person I know tells me about the new clothes they just ordered online and how they really needed this one specific dress because it has this one specific feature that the others in their closet don’t precisely fulfill (and either way, it’s okay because the dress only cost $40 and they just got it to top up their cart to get free shipping) … I feel nothing.

I feel nothing, whereas before I might have felt curiosity to

check out that store …
and then see something I like …
and then ponder buying it …
and then ask myself if I need it …
and then know I don’t need it but come up with some very specific reason as to why I might need it sometime in the future and had better order it now while I can still take advantage of the sale that’s going on.

I feel nothing, and it feels great.

Don’t get me wrong—I haven’t gone full-on Amish.

Just yesterday I spent an embarrassing amount of money on plant oils because I, too, want to have beautiful, blemish-free skin that twenty years from now will have people saying, “She’s in her forties? No way!” because I sometimes delude myself into thinking that this is 1) possible and/or 2) even important.

Except this time I bought these things (it’s rosehip oil and tamanu oil, by the way) after obsessively researching the anti-inflammatory properties of rosehip and other plant oils, leaving it in my shopping cart for weeks on end because I hate shopping online, and inevitably feeling guilty for 10 minutes after hitting CONFIRM ORDER.

Clearly, this is not a model way of living, and I am in no way positioning myself as someone who should be listened to about … pretty much anything.

BUT

I am happy that this purchase was the result of my own contemplations and musings, careful consideration, and not because I saw it on Instagram and was able to buy it without any reflection within 30 seconds because iSn’T iT gReAt ThAt InStAgRaM hAs MaDe It So EaSy To bUy ThInGs OnLiNe?

Let me be clear from way up here on my soap box: This is not an attempt to shame you for buying things.

I buy things, too. It’s fun!

But this is one woman shouting into the abyss that even though advertisements are everywhere and consumerism has us all in a chokehold and there is 24/7 pressure to BUYBUYBUY, it is up to each of us individually to stop playing into the game.

If you want to buy fewer things, don’t give yourself a budget. Don’t try to resist temptation.

Just stop looking. That’s how you kill the desire. Because in my experience, once you go to look again, it all becomes so painfully uninteresting.