I spent $45 on pizza last night. The decision to eat the food was completely conscious – but the decision to spend the money was completely unconscious and I realize now this morning I hadn’t even looked at it as spending money till now – when I have gone to do my money journal (my focus coming into scholars is money). It is a decent amount of money (same $ as my monthly phone bill) and I hadn’t even considered that it counted as spending money whatsoever which is so fascinating to me. When I get really curious Some thoughts come up like:

T – Spending money on food is necessary (even though I know intellectually it’s not necessary and I did have food to eat in my fridge)
T – Money doesn’t count when it comes to food
T – Food is worth spending money on
T – Buying food isn’t shopping

I feel no shame, guilt, regret or anything negative about it at all. But I have this knee jerk feeling that I kind of want to? I am also having the thought:

T – if I feel negatively about spending money on food then I won’t do it

… but my entire experience of the model that shown me that’s never the case.

I’ve used the model to lose 20 lbs and it definitely was not the case with food at all. Guilt & regret led me to keep over eating and I had to let those go in order to get rid of my over eating … but somehow this feels different ? It’s almost like I want to generate regret / guilt for myself and feel it in this scenario…in order to make myself conscious about purchasing food in the future.

When I plug one of my thoughts it in to the model it looks like this for me:

UM
C – $45 spent on pizza
T – Spending money on food is necessary
F – Content
A – Not even look at the pizza as a purchase
R – Unconscious spending

IM
C – $45 spent on pizza
T – That was not necessary at all, it’s the same price as your monthly phone bill
F – regret
A – Pause before purchasing food, acknowledge it as a purchase first and then ask myself some questions (e.g. is it really necessary?)
R – Conscious spending

Is it OK to use negative emotion as a fuel to change a behavior such as in this scenario?