Overspending Does Not Persist Because of Willpower — A Way of Thinking That Does Not Add Surveillance

Introduction: The Day You Resolve, an Examiner Moves In

Let me use money properly. So you decide. You set a budget, keep a record, try to cut out waste.

But from the day of that resolve, a strange thing begins: each time you open your wallet, you grade yourself. On a day you spent a little more, you grow restless when night comes. After buying, you recheck — was this necessary? The self-inspection after spending, more than the spending itself, comes to occupy your heart.

Material on how to cure overspending is plentiful. What this article treats is the ground beneath it: why, the moment you resolve to use money properly, it becomes, on the contrary, harder — its mechanism.

Let me give the conclusion first. Because setting a feeling or a behaviour as a target adds one whole extra job of surveilling it.

A Command “Feel This Way” Has No Escape

First, check the nature of the command.

I must not be careless with money. I must not overspend. These look like instructions to behaviour but actually work as commands to feeling and impulse. And a command to feeling has a peculiar cruelty.

With an ordinary command, when you cannot obey, there is room to seek the cause on the side of the act or the situation — my method was bad, the conditions were not right. But a command do not feel this way has no escape when you cannot obey. Since feeling is the innermost thing in you, being unable to change it, the cause is attributed wholly to your very existence.

Not I could not do it well but a beeline to the conclusion I am that kind of person. Precisely for this, a command aimed at feeling, however gentle in form, differs in the depth to which it pierces.

From the Moment You Resolve, a Grader Takes Up Residence

What, concretely, happens inside the person who received that command?

From the moment you resolve let me use money properly, you begin a certain job: ceaselessly inspecting the movements of your heart. Wanting to buy something on impulse, you notice it came out again. Spending a little more, you correct yourself this won’t do.

This habit of grading is the true form of the overlooked load. Before resolving, the person was merely overspending. After resolving, on top of overspending, another job is added — find and dock points from the overspending self.

The impulse itself has not lessened one bit, and yet a whole job of surveilling and evaluating it has been added. A prescription that was supposed to subtract is adding the obligation of surveillance.

This addition comes with a hard-to-see secondary cost too. To keep surveilling, you must keep a viewpoint slightly apart from your own feeling, observing it. While using money, you are ceaselessly checking how do I feel now? This double work thins the very texture of the experience.

The money-related scene turns from lived experience into an exam graded pass or fail. Instead of being absorbed in the exchange before you, an examiner who grades your reactions is always peering over your shoulder.

The doubt but is holding a goal itself not a good thing? is natural. What to distinguish here is the difference between holding a goal and entering self-grading surveillance. An outward goal — finish this by this time — needs only occasional checks of progress, not watching the everyday movements of the heart one by one. But the moment the goal’s object is placed on the inner impulse itself, it turns into endless self-surveillance.

A Standard From Outside Impersonates Your Own Voice

Here another mechanism works.

The self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan described “internalisation,” the process by which rules and values given from outside are gradually taken into the interior [Deci & Ryan, 1985]. This working itself is a mechanism indispensable for living in society.

But when this same mechanism works on the standard I should use money properly, a troublesome thing occurs. At first it was a standard cast from outside — a book, someone’s words. Bathed in it repeatedly, the person takes the standard inward. Then, though no one is saying it any more, each time they use money, a voice rises from within — this won’t do.

What is troublesome about this settling-in is not only that the voice’s owner becomes invisible. A voice that echoes from within has the property of being harder to talk back to than a voice from outside. Told by another, there remains room to retort no, I have my reasons for thinking this way. But when the same words issue from your own interior, talking back becomes the twisted job of arguing with yourself.

Self-determination theory grasped this internalisation as stages. Among them, the one people fall into easily is “introjected regulation.” You accept the standard in your head, but it is not bound to your true values. You obey merely because a pain of self-reproach runs through you if you defy it.

The decisive feature of this stage is that a violation of the standard immediately produces self-criticism. With an integrated value, even on a day you cannot keep it, you can refrain from judging yourself, because you know it is truly your own. But defy a borrowed standard and you sternly blame the self who cannot keep it. The less the standard has become fully part of you, the more, rather, a violation hurts.

Let me clear up a misunderstanding here. Introjected regulation is not a stage only the weak-willed fall into. If anything, the more sincerely a person tries to take on the given standard, the more deeply they sink. One who can let the standard slide does not hurt when they violate it. Precisely because you impose it on yourself in earnest, the self-criticism when you cannot keep it grows sharp.

Forbidding Sharpens Attention to the Object

Furthermore, the suppression itself has a reaction.

To try not to think of it is itself an act of directing attention to that object. The more strongly you are conscious of let me not want to spend, the more consciousness sticks to money and desire. The force trying to suppress, on the contrary, drags the object out to the front of the heart.

This structure becomes clear replaced with a sleepless night. The more strongly you chant I must sleep soon, the more, on the contrary, your eyes stay wide. Because sleep is not something obtained by will but something that comes from the other side when you release your force. The very will let me sleep produces tension and pushes sleep away.

The affair around overspending has the same shape. The moment you try to control it directly by force of will, the object flees in the reverse direction. Because you are trying to thrust the will into a domain the will does not reach.

Thus, a single burden at the starting point multiplies into several — the more sincerely a person practises the command. On top of guilt over overspending, guilt over the self who cannot stop piles up in two storeys.

Conclusion: Before How You Use, Look at How It Comes In

Overspending does not persist not because your will is weak. Because setting a feeling or impulse as a target installed only a device of surveillance and self-criticism, while the impulse itself went untouched.

Let me make it clear, to be safe: I am not denying designing how you use money itself. If you decide spending after consulting your own life, it is the exercise of sovereignty. The problem arises when it mutates into an obligation and you begin to judge the self who cannot keep it.

For the same refraining, whether it is choice or obligation, its meaning is the opposite.

And to say one step further: however much you devote yourself to inspecting how you use money, you touch not a finger to by what structure money comes in. As long as the tension I must earn stays stuck to your back, guilt over spending, too, wells up again in another scene.

So you must set the order right. Before grading yourself, first look at the structure you stand on. On this turn of order, see the true nature of the guilt around earning.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation” (2000) American Psychologist, 55(1)