Last July I went to a winery in the Willamette Valley Region that really caught my attention. Yes, the wine was lovely, but what really grabbed my attention was the landscaping and, interestingly enough, how it made me feel. It was the perfect combination of frills and fluff coupled with structure and organization. As pictured in this post, each horizontal row of Lavender was neatly separated and terraced by a row of stacked railroad ties. Then on the vertical plane, were tall Cedars interspersed here and there, thus interrupting the pattern of Lavender and railroad ties . As I took in the beauty I noticed my mind immediately slowing down and my breath relaxing. You know that feeling when spring is coming and you open the windows to allow the fresh breeze to come through? There is a sense of freedom and space that encompasses the mind and soul. You feel lighter, like you want to take in a deep breath and ‘let it all go’ with a sigh of relief as your mind and emotions sail off to a sense of freedom.
Coming to a place where you can sigh that sigh of relief is very important for the body, mind, heart and spirit. We live in an age where everything is at microwave speed which leaves us little, if any time at all, to get organized and clear out the clutter that so easily entangles us and weighs us down. Clutter (of all sorts) has the ability to act as a dead weight that prevents us from getting what we want out of love and life. We find ourselves being rigidly preoccupied by things as they swarm around and around in our heads keeping us from engaging in and enjoying the moment at hand.
Clutter, as we all know, comes in many different forms: stuff around the house, bills, not enough savings, relationship issues, appointments, kids’ schedules, etc. Basically anything that weighs our mind and heart down is clutter and is our greatest obstacle to moving forward in love and life. Therefore we must start taking steps now in getting rid of the dead weight of clutter; even if they are only baby step. To continue procrastinating will only add more ‘emotional’ clutter to our already massive ‘to do’ list.
The main problem with procrastination is the power it has over our mind and emotions. As time goes by, our “insurmountable” list appears more and more impossible. To even start whittling our way through it seems insurmountable in itself. And so the story goes for many of us: we pile more and more guilt onto our already cluttered mind and emotions causing us to downward spiral into an ineffective mess. So for those of us that fit in this category, we need to interrupt the pattern of our downward spiral by taking in a deep breath and exhaling slowly, gaining perspective on the reality of the here and now and trying to embrace the moment that is in front of us. “Moments” exist around us all of the time, such as the innocence and preciousness of our children, the sunny bright sky, the ‘moody’ colored clouds, or even a beautiful garden outside a winery.
I recently watched my husband play tennis and as he was winning point after point over his opponent, the tournament’s No 2 Seed, his opponent kept getting more and more agitated. The more agitated he got, the more mistakes he would make, which in turn fed his ‘downward spiraling’ mindset all the more. Had he just stopped, taken a deep breath, gained some perspective and engaged in the moment he was in, he could have turned the game around in his favor long before he lost 6-2, 6-0 in the semi-final! It was sad yet entertaining to watch this downward spiral happen to a normally fine-tuned tennis player; yet many of us are ALL to familiar of our own ability to ‘downward spiral’ when pressure hits, even if that pressure is only perceived. We create lists upon lists with good intentions and then as time goes by and clutter begins compounding, we add fuel to the fire by taking on emotional clutter in the form of guilt – which then makes us ineffective.
With minds and emotions relaxed, simply taking one baby step at at time towards clearing out clutter, is a big step toward breathing that sigh of relief and turning our game of life around to our favor! Scott Smith with Motivation to Move, did a podcast about clearing the clutter. Here are some of his tips that really stuck out to me:
- Organize the areas in your life that you work in right now: office, kitchen, etc., and keep it so it is workable – it doesn’t have to be perfect – just functional.
- If it is not something you need right now, then close the door as sometimes it could take a while. Such as people (relationship) clutter or clearing out the spare room. You may not see that friend that you need to resolve a conflict with in the next couple of weeks. Or the spare room that needs to be organized is not necessarily something you need done right now.
- As you clear out the areas in your life that you need right now, it will then free you up to get to the other areas that are weighing you down in the back of your mind.
- Use Dave Ramsey‘s Snowball Method to reduce debt. His method is based on paying the minimum amount on larger debts while paying off the smallest debt first. Once the smallest debt is paid off, then move on to the second smallest debt. Continue until all debts are paid off.
Keeping perspective is key in clearing out clutter from our lives. Remember the interspersed Cedars in the beautiful landscaping? Had those “pattern interruptions” not been there, it would have been a rigid, dull, organized and structured garden; offering no sense of balance. It was the ‘interruptions in the pattern’ that the interspersed Cedars provided that made it captivating and beautiful. Therefore, stopping to take a breath, gaining perspective on the reality of the here and now and engaging in the current moment is what makes clearing out life’s clutter more effective and more enjoyable. Yes, we need not to procrastinate in untangling ourselves from life’s clutter, but we also must interrupt the rigid pattern of keeping our nose to the grind and take in life itself. After all, isn’t that in itself moving forward in love and life?
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