#19 - I Will Take that Pair in Every Color

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

buffering, shopping, buying, trisha, feelings, life, feel, discovering, thought, shoes, podcast, create, color, awareness, experience, store, talking, noise, pair, socially acceptable

SPEAKERS

Trisha Barita

00:02

Hey there, I'm Trisha Barita. I'm a mother of twin girls, a wife, an entrepreneur, a psychology major, a lawyer, and a coach. With all these different roles in my life, in the past, I truly struggled with limiting beliefs in my ability to adequately juggle all these roles successfully, I often would be frustrated that time and again, I let my goals and dreams always take a backseat to everything else I was trying to do. And those dreams always seem to be on the horizon, just out of reach. Until I discovered tools and thought work to help me tackle and learn to balance all of it. Now, I don't let these titles define my limits. I define my balance in life, by how I choose to show up for myself, every day. Am I perfect? Hell no far from it. But I do work every day to believe in myself, and to be present with whatever I experienced in this life, The Good, the Bad, and The really fucking ugly. to own my truth and own my thoughts. I created this podcast to talk about how that noise gets in the way of our goals as women. And now I help women and teach them tools to cut the overwhelm of noise in their life, preventing them from getting the balance they want. If you like this podcast and want to take my free course to get started on designing your balance, and saying fuck that noise, go to Trisha barita.com, forward slash free course. Now let's get after it.

02:07

Hello, fabulous friends. All right. So have you ever gone into a store? And you find like this shirt or maybe a dress or pants? pair of shoes, some other accessory? And you're like, Yes, this is like the perfect fit? Or it's like, the exact thing I was looking for. And then you're like, you know what? I need it in every color. Or I want it in every color. And I mean, I don't know, maybe maybe you do need every color. No, no judgment on your shopping habits here. That's not what this podcast is about. But I guess what I'm talking about is the thought of needing it in every color. Have you ever checked in with yourself about why you're buying something? And I'm just using buying an item and every color is an example. But sometimes shopping for women, it can be an emotional experience. Now in my house, my husband is the typical husband like stereotype who doesn't like shopping without a purpose. And in he's like, why are we going into that store? He's like, What do you need in the hair? And, and it's funny, because I just look at him like, like, this is obviously the silliest question on the earth. And I'm always like, I don't know yet. I mean, I just thought we would wander around. Or say we go in for one thing and located and then I'm like, Hey, let's go check out this other section on the store. And the look on his face is like a computer that doesn't compute. I'm getting like an error message from his facial expression. He's like, why would we do that? Now after many years being married, we don't we don't argue or debate about it. Not, you know, not much more than the conversation I just said. I think there's this mutual understanding in our marriage. You know, I could totally walk around Target or Crate and Barrel or Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn. Really all kinds of different stories, you know, or whatever, just looking at stuff and even walking out on buying anything and I could really have joined myself. But you know, it's so clear from my husband's no compute face to me. About what I want to do this and he's with me that he gets no enjoyment from that. So the mutual respect comes in that he gets that he doesn't get that and I get that he doesn't enjoy that. So I spend little to no end energy trying to convince them otherwise and vice versa. And I'm certainly not saying this is just a man and woman thing. I mean, I have women friends that don't enjoy shopping with our purpose either. But I do think a lot of women like shopping. I'm always lean on the retail business, but I think the numbers will show that and, and what I wanted to talk about today is that sometimes, that emotional connection we may have created with shopping can become something a little more. Sometimes we can use shopping to do something called buffering. So what is buffering? Well, if you don't know or haven't heard this phrase used in this way, let me let me just put it in like the simplest of terms, buffering can be the doing of something to seek False, false pleasure. This can be happening when you have the urge to not feel your feelings. Or when you have the urge to avoid experiencing something uncomfortable that or something that you don't want to experience. And I get it at this point, the podcast you may be like whoa, hold up Trisha, I thought we were here to talk about all the different color pairs of shoes that I and if you saw my my Instagram page or the website on this podcast, the new saw the the cover of this podcast is like this gorgeous picture of brightly colored and jewel toned, you know, high heels. So I can see why you thought that. But and while I would love to talk all things fashion today, I don't really care how many pairs of shoes or bags or whatever that you have in however many different colors.

06:51

Well, I mean, I mean, I care in the sense that I love shoes and bags, of course but like, but for here today for the purpose of this podcast and for you, what I care about is helping you connect with your true authentic self. To create a life you love to design a balance that fits you. So if that's a pair of Christian Lu baton, red sold pumps, or black converse, or Chanel purse, or a flea market, find, you know, whatever I say awesome for you, you know shopping and fashion and styles, so unique to the person and even to the place of where you are in your life. And it can be a way for you to express who you are and what you think and feel are beautiful. You know, buying these things can come from a place of expression and art even. But the chopping piece of all of that can have this different angle. You part of designing the balance in your life of who you are and what you want is discovering your true feelings and the thoughts related to those feelings. And to get to those you may need to identify where you buffer those true feelings in your life. And so today I want to talk about just one of those ways that some women do it and that's through shopping. But because shopping can be not buffering, let me sort of explain how you can identify the difference between you know, we're in the middle of shopping and and then shopping when you're really using it in sort of this buffering idea. So when I wander through some shopping place like for instance here in Houston they have Houston Texas here they have the Galleria which is the like this massive indoor upscale shopping mall type experience. It's like 375 stores or something like that including luxury with you know, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci Versace, Tom Ford, etc. And then you got you know, your Macy's Nordstrom Saks Fifth Avenue Neiman Marcus, Tiffany's, Victoria's Secret, Apple Express, and Taylor, oh god going on, obviously, and a ton of boutique stores. It's got two hotels and ice skating rink, a bunch of restaurants. I mean, you get the idea. Places kind of crazy huge, and it's inside, so the weather doesn't impede your shopping experience. And you could basically spend hours in this place and see only a fraction of what is being sold there. Right. It's like a playground for spenders and shoppers and wonders maybe like me, right? And so if I'm wandering through this place, maybe going in and checking out this or that maybe buying something maybe not, that's not necessarily what I'm talking about when I'm talking about buffering with shopping. That could just be shopping without purpose, which I already mentioned my husband does not care for, but that's sometimes I just like to do and and there might be no urge I'm feeling note no feeling I'm trying to avoid nothing and procrastinating from just having an experience that you know I enjoy. But buffering is more directly related to how How you feel before you even step into the store? Maybe even why you went to the store to begin with? The question really is, are you taking an action like shopping to avoid feeling something that you don't want to feel, or even avoid dealing with something you don't want to deal with, because you would rather feel the feelings you get when you go shopping. And actually, you can do this, you know, with ever without ever leaving your couch. A lot of people buffer feelings by online shopping. And, you know, as we're talking about this, you may identify with this, or you may not be sure, or you may think you don't do this. And I just want to say if you if you do realize, though, that you do buffer, whether it's shopping or with whatever else in your life, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with you. Most if not all people buffer in their life in some way or another, at some point in their life or multiple, many times in our life. Some people on the daily actually really think that shopping is an easy way to buffer. And an easy way for a lot of people not to even realize they're buffering was shopping, because of a couple pretty simple reasons. First, everybody shops, so it's like socially acceptable habit to have and to do. Second, it's joked about is being okay, you know, when people were like, Oh, my day was so awful. So I had some retail therapy. It's like a socially acceptable joke. So, of course, you had a bad day.

11:35

So you went and bought a bunch of stuff to improve that day to improve your mood, you know. And third, there's a lot of feelings and emotions with buying things, and what you can make them mean in your head. So I think it's super easy to like, go there to get that hit of, you know, pleasure rather than feel some unwanted emotion or experience something unwanted. I mean, realistically, which one sounds better, thinking about your feelings that you didn't have a great work day, or you didn't have the best mom moment? Or you're frustrated with something one of your family members said to you, or going out buying a new bag. Most people are gonna be like, it sounds better to go buy that new bag, or whatever. I mean, what is wrong with buffering with shopping anyway? Right? And, and that's the key like, of what I'm kind of talking about the why why would you not want to do this, who cares? Like whatever, Trisha, like, if you say I do buffer with this chopping thing, you know, it makes me feel better I go on with my day. Look, it can create a separation from You getting in touch with what you are feeling. And it's not that the bag makes you feel better, or the shoe or the whatever blouse, it's your thoughts that it's giving you pleasure, which could be okay, but then if you're buffering, where it gets kind of complicated is that you can sort of create this, you know, feeling and then you could even be like chasing that feeling, could be leading you to buy more than you want, or even to buy those shoes or blouse in every color. Or to spend outside your budget. Or to just buy shit you really don't want or need because it makes you think, you know, it makes you think it makes you feel better. So I'm not here to ruin the experience of shopping, I already told you I love shopping, as I already mentioned, right? So I just nudging you to become aware of this concept of buffering. Because the awareness is such a first big step. Just the awareness alone can start to unravel an unconscious habit you have created to sort of check out from your feelings. Some trick, it's not a gimmick. It's you choosing awareness, you choosing being present. It's you choosing to work towards taking mindful action in your life so that you're building a life that's made up of what you want. So you can get past the noise and get to what really matters to you. One of those pieces is doing that and doing that is unveiling what is truly going on in your mind, and how your mind is reacting everything around you. One of the things I work on with my clients with buffering is you know, how to see it in your life, the visualization of it, the recognition of it, the awareness, what to do with it, and then how to discover the feelings you may be avoiding or the other things you may be, you know, not wanting to experience and then how to process them once you do see that. So when you created a habit of buffering by using whatever means food booze or like today I'm talking about shopping. It can be such an ingrained habit that it can feel so natural to do it. Which is why I love help bringing more awareness can at least make you feel more connected to why you do things in life and the motivations behind your actions. So do me a favor on this? Don't Don't make this complicated. All right. Discovering buffering around shopping could just be as simple as pausing before you buy something and saying, Why are you buying this sweater? Or this pair of shoes? Or why are you in the store? Just pause. Whatever comes into your head. Know this, if it's if your head is your brain is telling you this item will make you feel something. joy, happiness, sexy, powerful. Then ask yourself this, is that the item in your hands that you really want? And it could very well be, there's nothing wrong with that. Or is it the emotion you given the item that you really want. Because if it's just the emotion, that feeling that you want, you may not really be recognizing that you have all the power to feel that feeling right now before you even buy it. Without ever buying, to feel the joy, to feel the happiness to feel the sexy to feel powerful, all on your own. And you don't need this physical treasure you found in that moment to create that for yourself.

16:32

And you may in fact be buffering a little with shopping. And then you can start to process through why you may be doing that. Now there's other ways to buffer and other issues around buffering, but identifying it is the first step. And now that I've ruined all of your shopping experiences, just kidding, totally ignore me go buy that well. It's in every color. And like I said, I'm actually not saying don't buy it in every color. I'm saying ask yourself why first? And if you're satisfied with the answer, have at it. And I'll leave you with that. No, go get after it. You got this

17:20

Hey, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, and are a woman ready to say fuck that noise, so you can start designing the balance in your life. Go take my free course to get started at Trisha barita.com forward slash free course. Now Have an awesome day and I'll see you next week.