You know what...the very reason why the Audiophile community is so limited is because its only the handful of us who spend beyond our means for audio and thats the reason these forums, those audio companies etc are all existing.
Otherwise with the numbers that we all make up, if we had that mindset to STOP or even HALT, the dealers would be no where:lol:.
OTOH, I know guys who do not upgrade for years, but they are extremely rare. They dont try "not to upgrade" its inbuilt within their mind. They are lucky

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I agree that we have been caught up in a viscious loop where its very difficult to control our senses unless we simply cut off ourselves from any Audio related forum or discussion, do not visit showrooms or other audiophile's places or get too busy in our work schedule to do anything in audio.
Some very serious audiophile friends of mine are so busy in their work schedules that they do not turn on their system for weeks and sometimes month. Obviously they do not have the time to upgrade !!!
Another way that I have found to be very effective in controlling oneself is by buying high quality music...by high quality I mean your favourite music which are very well recorded and manufactured (XRCDs, Mofi, Japanese pressings etc). They will make you sit back and listen to music so much and so well that you would stop bothering about bettering your system. Your system will always call you to spend time listening rather than testing.
Hope this helps.