Spring is in the air — it’s time to get ready for new experiences, projects, relationships, and more “stuff”. The best way I know to open yourself up in order to receive is to let go of old clutter and outdated ideas, and get organized both personally and professionally.
Sound easy? For some, maybe — however, for the majority of people a trip to the dentist seems to be a better prospect.
One thing for sure, holding onto clutter and outdated situations can bog us down. It drains our energy and limits our ability to change since it represents old ideas.
What are the obvious reasons behind our resistance to letting go?
- Lack of time – you just never get around to it.
- You don’t know where or how to start.
- It looks like a big job and creates a negative feeling of overwhelm.
- It’s hard to decide what to keep or not.
- It’s difficult to let go because of emotional ties and feelings of connection, as well as practical reasons in that you may need it at some point.
Then, there’s the not so obvious reasons that lurk below the surface…
- The need for security – most of us want to feel secure. In fact, we seek out this feeling oftentimes by surrounding ourselves with lots of “stuff”. In this way our clutter represents our security, which on some level insulates and protects us from the outside world, being analogous to carrying extra weight on our bodies for very similar reasons. This however, is just the story that we choose to tell ourselves because the reality is that this just an illusion. We live in a changing world with many variables and true security can only come from within…it’s a state of mind.
- We hold on to clutter to resist change and therefore, play it safe by keeping things the same. We crave familiarity.
- We want to feel filled up. We love abundance and the feeling that we have enough. We don’t want to feel lack or emptiness in our lives. We’re afraid to let go of our things because then we might have to confront our emptiness, so we try to cover it up by holding onto to our “stuff”. Taken to the extreme, this behavior would be characterized as hoarding. This scarcity thinking is called the poverty paradigm. It’s all about avoiding lack, which can correlate to other areas of our lives such as lack of love, money, time, and food. Many of us have grown up with this thinking and still focus on this belief, which keeps us stuck since we can never have enough “goodies” to compensate for these feelings. Confront this type of perceived thought and put an end to this vicious cycle.
Letting go of clutter can do some amazing things. It can help open us up to our creativity and to new ideas propelling us forward in our lives. It can give us a positive feeling that is freeing, energizing and empowering. This allows room for new thoughts and sets the stage for exciting changes and for new things to enter into our lives. And if you’re looking for an easy way to diet, you will definitely feel lighter when you rid your life of clutter and situations that no longer serve you.
Ask yourself, what are you not willing to let go of…clutter/stuff, old ideas, or relationships that are draining you?
And then get started by following these steps:
1. Get honest and acknowledge your feelings about this area of your personal life or business.
2. Then make a decision to create change and choose to tackle it. This step is very empowering.
3. Plan the exact date and put it on your calendar or “to do” list.
4. Make a plan of action. If it’s clutter, do it in steps. You can choose to do this room by room or allot a specific set amount of time such as two hours to work. For relationships, consider both the positive and negative aspects of staying connected. Putting limits or boundaries on the relationship first might create enough positive change before having to end the relationship entirely.
Be more committed to letting go and taking action rather than being more committed to staying the same.
I wish you the best with your Spring cleaning!
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