Retail Therapy

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What comes to your mind when you hear retail therapy? I look at it in terms of how you can use retail to give yourself relief.

Let's break it down. What is retail? I see it as an exchange of goods and services between a willing seller and a willing buyer at an agreed price. How about therapy? I consider therapy to be any treatment that relieves a condition. When you hear someone has gone for therapy, don't you imagine the person has gone for help? Therapy is wanting to be understood and to understand. Seeking to be heard.

Therapy is using communication and interaction by speaking to somebody to be able to bear your mind. So, therapies are treatments intended to relieve a disorder, like a trauma - something that one is going through that is not so positive. Now, is therapy supposed to make the issue go away? To answer this, let's suppose you have stomach pain. And you take a pain reliever. Then you notice you're relieved. You feel better. On the other hand, if there is a greater issue, the medication may just provide temporary relief and you may need to seek further help. And that's what exactly therapy is supposed to do. It should help deal with difficult situations.

So then we can say retail therapy is using retail to relieve a condition. Retail therapy is when you use buying and selling to treat a condition. That's my own definition - the way I see it. And I believe retail therapy can be helpful, as long as you're exchanging within your means.

Let's take a look at comfort food. So, there's research that says that during the pandemic, a lot of people found comfort in snacks such as candy, chocolate, and chips. Especially chips. Not that they didn't want to stay healthy, they just got some assurance from these snacks.

So you see, you may find yourself reaching for comfort food even when you feel you don't have sufficient money. You may not mind spending that extra $5 on a bag of chips, right? Why? Because they soothe you as you snack on them. You're comforted. You're relieved. And so that's retail therapy.

If you're going through any kind of condition and if you have the resources for shopping, why not just go ahead and do it? At least, you control that. And you will be fulfilling a need. After all, you get to live this once. Hopefully, you feel relieved as you do this.

Even though you don't have that money in your bank account anymore or in your pocket, you have what you've exchanged the money for. And, as long as you need that thing, that should provide some form of relief to you. You never know, sometime in the future, someone else may need that which you have now, and give you cash for it. And the cycle goes on.

As you go out this week, I encourage you to consider how retailing may provide comfort to you and explore it.

Worry can weigh a person down, but an encouraging word cheers a person up. 'Cornish’s Cheer' hopes to be an encouragement to people who are under pressure, feel lonely, discouraged, or rejected. I hope these writings impart cheer, and hope and help you flourish with patience, love, and sincerity. Be encouraged and cheered. Also, practice 'speaking' positive affirmations, which can be a powerful tool to help boost confidence.

Nothing in this blog is intended to serve as life, career, health, or financial advice. Do your own research.