Session Nine

Waiting for
Marshmallows

Objective:
Unlearn consumeristic indoctrination that breeds waste.

Pivot toward gratitude.

Advertising sells you things you don’t need and can’t afford, that are overpriced and don’t work. And they do it by exploiting your fears and insecurities. And if you don’t have any, they’ll be glad to give you a few.

—George Carlin

I
t’s Christmas day. By the explanation given, you’d think it was my mother’s best friend, not QVC, who supplied her with the thirty-seven Lock and Lock containers for each of our extended family members.

The house is brimming with flameless candles and Today’s Special Value appliances. Mama unveils the handy pocket LED light/pen she’s gotten each of us. No more fumbling to open our car doors, and if we ever need to sign an autograph on the fly, we’ll be in luck.

Most of my nephews and nieces are too busy on their screens to bother to look up and remind her there’s already a flashlight built into their smartphones-turned-appendages. No one has the heart to bring up keyless car entry. Or how picky and nerdy I’ve become about my pens.

Mama has always been the ultimate gift giver. She can sound off our favorite colors and taste in jewelry like she’s a Scripps National Spelling Bee champ. Kristen likes g-r-e-e-n, Kellie purple, no hoops for Melissa.

And, like all of us, QVC loves Mama and her generous spirit. QVC and Mama have been chatting things over, living room to living room, for a long time now. QVC’s learned a lot about Mama over the years:

In turn, Mama knows all about the QVC hosts and their guests—the vineyards they own, the countries they travel, and even the secrets behind their glowing skin. Their gorgeous lined $29.99 plus tax mouths tell her that shopping is “best enjoyed with friends.” It’s a fitting slogan, since they rake in billions of dollars from jolly new playmates every year. In 2016, QVC made $6.1 billion and HSN (Home Shopping Network) $2.5 billion.

The network hosts are so smooth and shiny, they make us think we can surpass Dale Carnegie’s how-to-win-and-influence advice, with just the right pair of ankle booties and pearls. They never bring up that life is transient, always changing. That all of life’s treasures are short-lived, and that the best aspects of life aren’t delivered off big brown trucks. Instead, they are masters of the art of “parasocial marketing,” stoking illusions of connectivity. They bring us into their must-have in-group, promising ease and status so that they can unload onto us the fifteen football fields’ worth of goods behind the scenes.

With over 50 million customers worldwide, QVC’s quest to convince us how they can make our lives easier has become big business. We are friends worth keeping. They’re picking our pockets, but we’re too busy enjoying the glamour grommets on our organic cotton Capri pants that go with everything—and will make us the star of the cookout—to even notice.

The picture-perfect hosts receive more training than most people receive across their entire career span. Their performance is measured in real time; if people are calling, they are egged on to keep repeating their lines. They know exactly how to climb into our brains, pressing just the right buttons to light us up.

In 1960, Walter Mischel initiated one of the best-known early examples of measuring those instant gratification lights in us. His now famous Stanford marshmallow test gave preschool children the option to earn two marshmallows if they waited for the researcher to signal them. If it was too hard to wait, they were instructed to ring a bell, knowing that they would only get one, but it would be right away.

In 2011, Mischel and colleagues tracked down fifty-nine of the original subjects, now in their forties. The same levels of impulse control were in effect: those who waited for marshmallow #2 in the 1960s still demonstrated better restraint than their peers who couldn’t resist the bait of #1. One of the participants admitted she hadn’t saved any money for retirement because “when I see a hot motorcycle, I buy it!”

The experiment went on to become a springboard for the study of self-control. Many scientists and economists draw a similar conclusion to Northeastern University economist William Dickens’s take: “Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later.”

There are a lot of marshmallows in front of us. The clock ticks, and we worry we’ll miss the once-in-a-lifetime offer if we don’t hit the bell. It’s hard to get excited about the marshmallows we can’t see. We don’t realize that having the cool ice cream maker now might leave us short on a down payment later. It’s doesn’t matter that gadgets break or we’ll become too lazy to yank them out of the back of the cabinet. We have a hard time staying focused on building a nest egg for rainy days when there are so many bells to ring.

Know the Science Behind Buying

Neuroscientists are working to uncover why humans—especially Americans—have such an itch to spend. Delaying gratification has become increasingly challenging in our bell-ringing culture.

The measurable differences being noted between brains of spenders and savers are of great interest to scientists and marketers alike.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines have helped identify the regions that influence whether we tend to spend or save. The prefrontal cortex is an area of our brain that helps regulate decision making, and neuroscientists are demonstrating that the dorsolateral or back side seems to be helpful in slowing down our impulses to splurge.

Companies like QVC, HSN, and Amazon know that putting enticing marshmallows under our noses works wonders for their bottom lines. Not only are they offering less of a ripoff than other retailers, but they are master tantalizers. They give us overnight deliveries, easy-pay options, and loyalty rewards. They know just how to keep the pleasure of the purchase in the forefront of our minds—and the pain to our wallets in the back—so we keep spending to the point of no return.

Get Off the Treadmill

James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, says that in the face of our consumer society, our tendency to compare ourselves becomes “grotesquely exploited.” Keeping up with the Kardashians is hitting us hard. We’re saving 5 percent of our money every year if we’re lucky. Uncle Sam and his minions count on us to support 70 percent of the gross domestic product.

That’s a lot of stuff to cram into our houses and psyches. Consumerism and materialism lead to waste. Ninety percent of what we buy goes to the trash within six months. But somehow, companies convince us we need inflatable Santas for our roofs and heated seats to keep our super-size-me asses comfy. They want us to sport $25 Tervis cups to keep our caffeinated beverages tempered so that we won’t lose ours—except for when they break or we lose them and must buy new ones.

For those resilient enough to brave the stores in person to find that the Halloween candy is out by spring and Mother’s Day stuff by Groundhog Day, you have some serious warrior in you. Since there’s always another holiday or occasion that necessitates more stuff, the stores are always at your service, except for when it’s June 1 and you cannot find a bathing suit to save your life unless you’re a size 00 or 14, or happen to rock a purple leopard-print look.

The endurance for the never-ending Macy’s One-Day sale is a feat. It used to be that “one-day” meant just that. Now it means Wednesday to Sunday, four times a month.

This is the fun of living in a consumerist culture. In his book Consuming Life, Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says our departure from a time when we used to make things to one in which the prime objective is to consume them leads us to trouble. We’re in a permanent state of busyness and the constant feeling of being in a state of emergency.

We’re professional hunters for the newest style, latest upgrade and 4-D experiences. We pride ourselves on being smart consumers, which seems to be oxymoronic.

We flip for Groupons and 50 percent–off outlet purchases from stuff marked up by 62 percent to begin with. Look at this dress (to be worn only once because of social media) that was supposed to cost $375 only costing $150. OMG.

We’ve been baited into buying beyond our needs and means. We are ripe for the picking because we think stuff will help us secure identity and meaning. Speth says that “the stamina of shoppers is crucial for global growth.” We seem to be keeping pace, proving we are more than willing to shop until we drop. The trouble is, our stuff seems to be doing nothing more than pacifying us until the next want surfaces.

We’re running on a treadmill that’s hard to dismount. And the more stuff we have, the less it seems to matter to us. We fall prey to getting stuck on a hedonic treadmill, a metaphor that psychologists use to debunk the myth that more is more.

Our “Will Work for Stuff” signs aren’t making us happy. The more we have, the higher our expectations climb, with no permanent gain in our well-being. University of California–Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirksy explains that happiness has a set point, remaining relatively steady—whether we find ourselves in the face of crappy or cheery circumstances.

During good or bad times, we are wired to get used to things. When the going gets tough, the agility comes in handy. But it can turn into a negative when we’re on the up and up. No matter how high we climb, it’s never enough. Stuff doesn’t magically wipe out our underlying insecurities and natural unsettled responses to transience.

Lyubomirsky’s research also revealed that our happiness is dramatically impacted by social comparison. In her book The Myths of Happiness, she unpacks some counterintuitive findings. She found that people in her studies were more willing to accept a worse end-result than to be outdone. Her participants were more willing to accept doing poorly, as long as someone else was worse off. In situations when they had a positive outcome, they weren’t any happier if people were doing better than them.

Watch Out for Social Comparison

Besides there being little time to share or appreciate what we have, our merry and bright grow dim in the face of social comparison. Even good-natured people who are happy to celebrate the successes of others are exposed to the germs of our day. The national affluenza contagion, complete with clutter, frenzy, and disconnect, seems inescapable, and to be spreading fast. Isn’t there some sort of fruity antibacterial gel for this?

Now we’ve got to show up ready to charm our friends with just the right hostess gift, even though everyone’s squawking about their messy, cluttered houses.

Gone are the days when we could show up with a six-pack and loaf of homemade banana bread. Handwritten cards have been replaced with airbrushed, professionally photographed family pictures with clever salutations.

We don’t feel worthy unless we arrive with an organic bottle of wine in tow wrapped in a perfect glittery gift bag that says something magical like “Live. Laugh. Love” on it; even though everyone in the room knows there will be no damn time to do such novel things, since this is only stop number two of seven of the holiday madness.

We’ve gone from giving our kids coloring books and A Barrel of Monkeys to handheld electronics that give them the entire world in their hands but only last for the next thirty-six days until the next must-have upgrade becomes available.

What happened to being able to sustain a full fifteen minutes of attention with Silly Putty and newspapers—when the highlight of the birthday party was the Carvel Ice Cream cake with the cone-shaped nose, not matching tablecloths, napkins, balloons, and $20 themed goodie bags from Party City.

The stuff that’s supposed to be making our lives easier seems to be having an opposite effect. We obsessively overwork, overspend, and overjustify. We deserve to pamper ourselves and take overpriced vacations, given how hard we friggin’ work. But our overstimulated brains, fragmented souls, and exhausted bodies don’t seem to be responding well to retail therapy.

Know the Difference Between
Wants and Needs

Wants are things that we hope to get but are not necessarily for survival and won’t live up to their promises—they are more the goods life than the good life.

Needs are things that we required to stay healthy, like water, nutritious food, shelter, and so on. Everything else is a bonus, and remembering that actually boosts our health and helps us live with simplicity and allows us more generosity—markers of the good life.

Dr. April Benson, an expert on slowing down want impulses to better determine needs, says when you’re about to make a purchase, ask yourself: Why am I here? How do I feel? Do I need this? What if I wait? How will I pay for it? Do I have something like this already? Benson says that putting time between the impulse and action helps prevent unnecessary indulgences.

We even spend money on stuff that helps us with stuff, like plastic totes, storage space rentals, and personal organizers. Marie Kondos’s 2014 book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, became an international sensation, with over 2 million copies sold. (I lost my copy under a pile somewhere.)

It’s hard to get unhooked from Lock and Lock when it starts so early. There are now Baby Keurig machines and toddler bidets. Kids are getting iPads and smartphones before they lose their first tooth, at which point they’re greeted by a twenty-first-century tooth fairy who has upped the ante of its two-quarter-giving predecessors.

As adults, we can become like kids in the marshmallow test experiment, impulsively downing all the first marshmallows with little thought about the long run. We forget that stuff breaks—that even though it can make life easier, stuff makes it harder, too. You’ll be too tired to dig out the password for your lifetime guarantee. You’ll trip over your stuff and become a slave to it. Then when you go to resell stuff, you’ll only get four cents on the dollar on eBay. What you consume can end up consuming you.

Even with designer nursing pillows and ergonomic carriers, parenting will still break your back. Special reading glasses and antiwrinkle creams might assist with the sting of aging, but can’t stop time. Having smoky eyes, rock-solid abs, Rihanna X Puma sneakers, and Givenchy shades won’t be the magic bullet. Even really cool stuff won’t meet our deepest desires for connection and meaning. Rising numbing behaviors like over- or undereating, cutting, drinking, drugging, hookups, and benders might be our rebuttal to the pressure to have it all.

It’s not that Veggetti, the right eye-shadow palette, or new smartphones don’t have their redeeming value. Returning to the days of washboards and flip phones would have its own perils. But the nonstop trips to Stuff-Mart we hope will build us up seem to be tearing us down.

No matter how full our guts are, we are like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, gorging ourselves on a consumeristic, materialistic diet that is leaking out as fast as it goes in. Buddhist tradition names people with intense emotional needs that act in animalistic ways as “hungry ghosts.” When we live our lives this way, the deeper pain we’re trying to mask goes untended. We barely pay attention to the things that could bring healing to our minds and souls.

Focus on Gratitude and Giving

Practicing gratitude is a start toward shifting our attention to mind and soul care. Gratitude is rarely controversial. You never meet anyone who explicitly balks at it. It’s one of those rare instances where science and religion agree. Spiritual people call it counting your blessings, a way of expressing thankfulness and appreciation. New science is showing that practicing gratitude is more than just minding your manners or being a polite-bot.

Robert Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude describes gratitude as the “queen of the virtues,” and ingratitude the “king of the vices.” He warns that our accumulation of “things” and hyperfocus on materialism are bought at a cost. He believes that our transactional ways of making purchases spill over into relationship domains, making us even see each other as disposable.

In his Expanding Gratitude Project at Stanford University, Emmons and his colleagues have reported new findings that affirm priceless returns for people who practice gratitude regularly. Their research discovered stronger immune systems, higher levels of positive emotions, and less inclination toward loneliness and isolation among those who gave intentional thanks. These are all things that money cannot buy.

Know the Science Behind Gratitude and Giving

In the first set of studies designed to solicit expressions of gratitude, Emmons and colleagues asked one group of participants to write down five things they were thankful for once a week for ten consecutive weeks.

The control groups were instead asked to take note of their hassles or to track random everyday events. The studies revealed that those asked to express gratitude reported higher levels of optimism and satisfaction with their lives than those in the control groups. They also reported fewer physical symptoms and better lifestyle behaviors such as exercise.

Sonja Lyubomirsky found similar results in her lab, with the caveat that her participants reported more positive results through a once-a-week practice versus three times a week. The practice was at its highest impact through weekly practice, not several times a week, when it seemed to take on the nature of a chore. Her findings are not suggesting that merely scheduling a rigid weekly ritual will be the magic bullet, but that keeping our strategies fresh without overpractice can help. The key is to avoid becoming rote in gratitude practice. Lyubomirsky emphasizes that “variety—the spice of life”—is extremely important to helping us accomplish this.

Social psychologist Liz Dunn reported that, in her control groups, those who held onto the money they were given had higher cortisol levels than those who donated it. Stephen Post, professor of preventative medicine and bioethics at Stony Brook University reported that brain scans of people who were merely planning to make a donation already became happier.

Besides the many returns on practicing gratitude, giving is another pathway to the good life that reaps benefits. Lynne Twist, philanthropist and author of The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life, warns that we have assigned too much authority to money, even when science proves it brings more happiness when we use it to help others. Some scientists are calling this the “givers’ glow” and “helpers’ high.” Stephen Post, author of The Hidden Gifts of Helping and Why Good Things Happen to Good People, says that “when the happiness, security, and well-being of others become real to us, we come into our own.”

In addition to money, we can be generous with our time. Volunteering is another way to boost individual and collective resilience. When we pay it forward, the rewards are priceless. Even when we’re cash- or time-strapped, there’s often a way to give up something we don’t need to make room for something that would bring higher social impact.

Practicing gratitude and giving turns out to be an amazing seal for us to use as our own version of Lock and Lock, helping to preserve and store optimism. Each day, we’re given the opportunity to indulge in the true jewels of nature, whether we have a cent to our names or not. Barely noticing is perhaps the biggest waste of all. When we offer thanks to earth and sky, seaside and laughter, we are more inclined to recognize that the most beautiful aspects of life seldom involve consumption. When we share, we move closer to the good life. We enjoy presence with one another, being lost in timeless moments when we are creating, relishing in their value. These are what help keep us full—not stuffing down every last marshmallow coming our way.