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The Conscious Consumer: A Guide to Zombie Free Spending"Zombies and consumers?" you ask. "I don't see the connection?" you say. Read on, there are things you should know. Things that don't filter in past our mass marketing induced ideas of what it is that we need, and what will make us happy. Most people, myself included have found themselves doing the mall shuffle like blank-eyed zombies at one time or another. Instead of being competent consumers, or even conscious ones, we wander in a daze falling victim to any number of traps laid by clever marketers, to snare consumers who are less than alert. Am I exaggerating? Ask yourself a few simple questions to determine if you are in full command of your purchasing decisions. Have you ever looked at some of the clothes doing hard time in your closet, that you have never worn, and wondered how they got there? Are the shelves in the deep recesses of your bathroom lined with half full bottles of shampoos, row upon row of broken promises? Have you ever brought home a five-gallon can of catsup that you bought because the price too good to pass up, and realize that it won't fit in your cupboard, and will expire before you can use it up because you really don't eat much catsup? How many remote controls do you own, and do you frequently become confused over which remote controls what? If you can identify with one or more of these examples then you need to confront the zombie within. We all can use a hard look at our unconscious spending patterns and gain the upper hand in the buyer/seller relationship. At one time or another, we've all been unequal to the task of making conscious and informed purchasing decisions, when pitted against the merchandising giants who seen to know us better than we know ourselves and are two steps ahead of us most of the time. If you're above doing the zombie shuffle you won't recognize any of the blank-eyed pitfalls in the consumer landscape I write about, and can be smug in the knowledge that you are a consumer of the conscious variety.
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