If you have clutter - in your home, your car, your office, or anywhere you spend time regularly - it’s hiding more than the occasional dustbunny. Behind that real clutter is some metaphorical junk, and you are in avoidance mode.
This may sound superficial, but it goes reaaallly deep. Don’t believe me? Consider the following:
Pretend with me for a moment…you have just spent a full weekend cleaning out your car, your home and your office…including the garage and the basement (insert your personal ’scary’ areas here). You have now inherited the money to get help in keeping everything spic and span. Everything is organized, and everything you own has its place. When you need something, you will now know exactly how to find it. Time will be saved on all fronts…and you will have agreat weight lifted from your shoulders as the ‘I should’s’ leave their familiar place in your mind. I should clean the kitchen…I should organize that junk drawer…I should organize the closets…
Now, the question becomes: what will fill that void? This is the real scariness that many of us are avoiding, often without consciously realizing it. We have a list of things we think we’d do with all our extra time if/when we become rich, but we spend out REAL lives avoiding extra time. Clutter is the tool we use.
If we had extra time, what would we REALLY do with it? We’d have to think about our lives, our goals (or lack of them) and what we want to do with this precious asset. By having to-do lists and I should lists, we create the illusion that all of our time is used up, indefinitely into the future. In this way, we can avoid really thinking about things we want and perhaps why we don’t have them. Thomas Edison is quoted as saying, ‘There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.’
If you think a life-changing, confronting challenge would do you good, look no further than your own life as it is. Clean everything. EVERYTHING. Pare down, organize, throw out, donate…and when all is said and done, spend a little time thinking about what you want to do with your life. The thoughts which will come to you will be FAR clearer than those you now entertain - the ‘I should’s’ will be about the really important stuff, which you have been avoiding. Try it and see!
Tags: clear clutter, organize, paring down
