Pads, condoms, sugar and buckwheat… Why do people buy in bulk and why now is the best time to listen to your desires and start living right now.
The research company DSM Group has published a report that Russian buyers are buying up condoms en masse. Their demand in March increased by 20% compared to the demand in February. Condoms are followed by feminine hygiene products and baby diapers. On Internet services with ads like Avito, there were sellers of gaskets with ten times the prices.
“People buy for the future in order to feel safe”
This is what psychotherapist Irina Vinnik thinks: “They do not have such a high need for ten kilograms of buckwheat, as in the feeling that everything is in order. Even if external events contradict this attitude, people will be able to maintain their habitual way of life for some time. There is nothing destructive in this method of self-support: in times of turbulence, any means of keeping the psyche in a resourceful state are effective.”
Panic buying of things that people could not afford before has become the norm. In 2005, researchers from Oxford conducted a study on the impact of the significance of death on consumer habits. Observations have shown that people direct more of their limited self-regulatory resources to areas that are important sources of self-esteem and less to areas that are not. Fear of death increases the desire to consume material goods, be it a branded bag or a robot vacuum cleaner.
People’s behavior is influenced by the fear of death and the feeling of the finiteness of time.
This also applies to mass layoffs and divorces. An increase in the number of annulments of marriages against the backdrop of an unstable situation in the world because many couples have realized the need to seize opportunities here and now. After all, no one knows what will happen tomorrow.
Psychotherapist Irina Vinnik notes that similar divorce statistics could be observed at the beginning of the pandemic: “People have locked themselves at home and are faced with the fact that being next to a partner 24 hours a day is unbearable. When a society lives well, the finiteness of life and time is remembered only during periods of loss. Death of a loved one, car accident, serious illness. What is happening now is also one of the reasons to remind yourself: if the relationship has ceased to please or a crisis has come in them for a long time, it’s time to change something.
The postponed life syndrome, when we constantly wait for the right time, income or energy level to satisfy our desires, is replaced by the need to live here and now.
It all starts with the fact that we clearly understand our needs and satisfy them as quickly as possible.
There is a 72 hour rule in coaching: if a person has an idea, he must start implementing it within 72 hours. Otherwise, it will never be implemented. You can start small: write down your ideas, outline a plan of action, make up questions for yourself. In Gestalt, this is called the contact cycle:
the beginning of contact: recognition of the need through feelings, meeting with the need;
search for the possibility of satisfying the need;
meeting with the need and the object of its satisfaction;
saturation, exit from contact.
The psychotherapist notes that the advantages of this approach are the high pace of life with a slight feeling of fatigue. This position does not imply uncontrolled hedonism.
The point is to realize your desires and potential without waiting for any right time or set of circumstances.
Change is an essential part of life. Someone is now waiting for the end of the unstable situation outside the window, while others, on the contrary, use it to finally take care of their health, get a new profession, learn a foreign language …
What can you do right now? Allow yourself small pleasures. Use things when you want, not when the opportunity presents itself. Listen to the inner voice. And let yourself live.