You're listening to the Heal With Affirmations podcast and this is Episode 10, Outside In: Healing With Decluttering.
Hello and welcome back to the Heal With Affirmations Podcast. I'm delighted you're back and I'm really excited about this episode.
I hope you're enjoying the affirmations process and you're discovering what affirmations can do for you.
Download your free guide if you haven't already and check out the resources that I have for you across the different areas of life.
In today's episode I want to tell you about how decluttering can help you heal.
When we're doing affirmations we are working on changing our mind, our consciousness, and our inner patterns from the inside out.
If you've listened to a few of my podcast episodes, you know that I emphasize the need to clear the patterns from within so that our actions become a natural extension of our new consciousness, and as a result of these changes, the world around us changes.
We cannot start the change process by just focusing on behavior or following some kind of manual for how we should act in the world around us, because our circumstances are unique and one size fits all action formulas are often topical, superficial, and only skin deep. People often come across as inauthentic and shallow when they follow actions without being genuinely aligned with them.
So the affirmations work helps you change from within so your actions genuinely align with you and your highest good.
But there are some techniques that involve doing things with our bodies and our surroundings that can have life changing effects on our consciousness.
The obvious one is what you eat. It is amazing how, in this sadly materialistic world, people have next to no conception of how their food can heal not only their physical bodies but their mind and souls.
Any understanding of what a healthy diet is is pretty shallow these days, and people would rather get extreme surgeries and get organs removed instead of giving alternative diets a real chance.
It is no surprise that people who eat a violent diet often end up getting aggressive medical procedures. A violent diet is a terrible affirmation that negates life, and as a result, it upsets the body’s balance in more than one way.
What you eat is an obvious avenue to make real changes in your body and your soul. Diets and fads and the ever changing quote unquote “scientific” discoveries don't cut it.
Passing trends are not truths. Truths are unchanging, science changes every other day, often in accordance with the private interests that fund so-called scientific research and medicine.
What heals is a transformation based on ethics and compassion. This is what heals the heart and the body and the soul. Not some passing trend based on the latest scientific buzz words.
Another physical way to make deep changes in yourself is exercise. But as with diets, there are all sorts of shallow and superficial ideas about what it means to exercise. It is almost always about weight and appearance.
It does not occur to most people that the body is a vehicle of energy. Understanding the home of our mind and soul as a vehicle for energy has completely fallen through with the tragic materialism of western medicine. And the world has followed as though these are good ideas.
Again, what drives these ideas is a mentality of trends and the quote-unquote “latest” discoveries, not the wisdom of the ages.
The body needs to be exercised and moved as a vehicle of energy for healing to be possible. And again it is not only the body that heals, it is the mind and the soul that also heal.
The mind-body connection cannot be understood by science which is why scientists dismiss the idea of an inner body. But we know firsthand that we have an inner body and we don't need anyone to confirm this for us.
And nowadays, with the advent of artificial intelligence, they want to tell us that the idea of the soul is obsolete. Another indication of their limited and failed thinking.
The best that modern medicine has been able to produce with regards to the mind-body connection is that stress causes problems in the body. Not very impressive for people who tell us that they've landed on the moon!
And a third way we can work on the outside-in to make real changes in our patterns is by working through our belongings.
The practice of clearing out our belongings is popularly known as decluttering. It has gained much attention in recent years and it is truly a wonderful thing.
However, because it is often seen as a home organization technique and is sold by people who want to make their homes look picture perfect like in a magazine, the healing that can be achieved through decluttering has never been heard of in the mainstream media, at least not in a serious or genuine way.
As with diet and exercise, decluttering has been taken as a superficial thing, and because of the way it is sold, it attracts similarly superficial and cosmetic applications.
But decluttering can be nothing short of miraculous. Changes in consciousness are very possible with decluttering and a complete change of life direction can ensue as a result of clearing out our stuff.
So in this episode, I want to talk about this outside-in tool that is decluttering, what it is really about, and I want to address some specific areas to drive home the impact that looking squarely at your stuff can have on your consciousness.
MY BACKGROUND WITH DECLUTTERING
I want to tell you a little about my background with decluttering.
When I graduated from my bachelor's degree to pursue a master's degree, I moved out of the dorms I had lived in for 4 years. This was the practice and requirement to make room for younger women.
I moved to a place that was just across the street, but in the process I somehow managed to lose several boxes and make a mess of a short move to just a few feet away. Go figure!
In my new place, I had hundreds of books, and my stuff was scattered in three other locations, including another country.
My journey into decluttering more or less began there. And by that time, I had also started my affirmations work and my divination practice which I offer today through Lenormand Reader.
It took some years to gather my stuff from everywhere and clear it up, up until I finished my master's degree.
But I wasn't done then. The summer I graduated from my master's program, my father passed away and I moved back to live with my mother for some years, and together we decluttered the family home.
Decluttering as a family was very eye opening and was a true gift. It gave us a very precious opportunity to revisit our past and examine the patterns we had created together, the good and the not so good.
We could look at our life from many different angles, look at the relationships we had together, the relationships we had with other people, the problems we went through, how all of it impacted us, and how it imprinted our inner lives.
And of course, we could see so clearly the mistakes we made, how more mistakes were made on top of them, and the many layers that become so clear as they get peeled off with the decluttering process.
Today, I am a traveling minimalist, working independently at something that I love. My life has become a clear list of things I want to do before I die, things that are deeply meaningful to me, and that I know are part of my purpose.
I have a deep appreciation for the passing of time and have accepted the things I cannot change. Indeed, I have released them from my consciousness altogether.
Looking back, it is all too clear to me how different my life would have been if I had remained attached to all of that stuff and all the ideas associated with the clutter.
The power of decluttering does not stop at home improvement and lifestyle changes. It goes all the way to forgiveness and releasing all sorts of patterns and identities that keep you stuck. It covers everything from broken things to relationships, to grieving and more.
Clutter blocks the flow of your life in a literal way - not in a magical way. And it prevents you from conceiving of and embracing the many possibilities that your life can be.
We can spend a lot of time talking about the obvious things to declutter like clothes and kitchenware, and we will. But these simple categories are a basis for the deeper decluttering.
Instead of approaching it like a home organization tool, which is how it is popularly marketed, I prefer to look at this with more heart and mind and soul, so we go beyond the obvious and align this work better with its higher potential, which makes it ideal to overlap with the affirmations work.
Of course, I encourage you to have fun with the process, but I also care that you develop your vision and be honest about why you have this stuff around and why you’re hanging on to it.
WHY WE START SMALL
Let’s start decluttering.
Decluttering experts often propose decluttering your stuff by categories, starting with the easiest category to the most challenging. This normally starts with clothes and ends with sentimental stuff, and then goes beyond to deal with relationships and pending projects.
Other experts might suggest decluttering different spaces, often starting with the entrance to your home.
The reason for this is based on the Feng Shui idea that the entrance to the home is critical because it is the metaphorical mouth of the home through which the rest of the house is fed.
Having some guidelines and a more structured approach to decluttering can be helpful and there are plenty of books out there to help you do this.
I encourage you to read a couple of books about decluttering and decide how you might like to adapt these methods for your situation. But I don't encourage you to read every book you find about the topic. This is probably a delay tactic from doing the work and a subtle form of resistance.
More often than not, people know what to do and can adapt different decluttering approaches to suit the needs of their stuff and their spaces. It is not rocket science. For the most part it is common sense, and you can just get to work on it.
The main obstacle is often finding the motivation to start and continue, which is often a cover for the unwillingness to change.
If you are stuck, revisit the episode on the Willingness To Change, and affirm, I am willing to change.
Those who are genuinely clueless about the decluttering process tend to have other obstacles in the way, and it is not uncommon that a mental health condition is at play, in which case the better starting point is appropriate help or doing affirmations, although pairing it with decluttering if possible would be wonderful.
To get started with decluttering, I suggest you follow your intuition or where it makes sense for you to start.
You have probably already decluttered before and you do it every so often even if you don't realize it or if you don't call it decluttering.
Throwing out garbage, donating what you no longer use, fixing broken things or giving them away for someone to fix, and selling stuff are all decluttering.
The difference between everyday decluttering and the big decluttering is in breadth and depth.
The big decluttering involves decluttering all of your spaces and decluttering every category of things you have, as well as going beyond physical stuff into decluttering your errands, your to-do lists, your relationships, your bad habits, paying off debt, and forgiving the past, to name a few.
Essentially, the real and big decluttering brings you into the now, by having your stuff and surroundings be a faithful reflection of who you are today, living in the present and working toward the goals that are authentically yours, unfettered by the ball and chain of the past and all the stuff that reflects it.
However, it is best to start small, and indeed for many it is virtually impossible to start with the bigger stuff.
For starters, there may not even be an awareness that these things, physical and not physical, are even clutter to start with.
And second, it can be so overwhelming that we wouldn't know how to even deal with this, which leads us back to denial and staying stuck with the clutter.
Denial often expresses in the home as things hidden away somewhere. Out of sight out of mind!
But the truth is that it is never out of mind, it is somewhere in the mind, usually the subconscious mind, and it affects us in ways we are not always aware of. It even drives our behavior.
But again, you have to develop your vision in order to see all that. And no, you cannot pretend to see when you don’t. You have to practice, practice doing affirmations and practice decluttering in an honest way in order to see.
That is why it is better to start small, because we know how to deal with the easy stuff. And even if we don't, the small stuff is a much easier starting point than say, sentimental items.
One of the key outcomes of decluttering is that you are practicing and sharpening your decision-making skills in ways you may not have experienced before. You are building a very important muscle that will enable you to deal with the bigger decluttering decisions down the line, including those involving non-physical things. And this too is part of having vision and discernment.
This decision-making ability is also part of what enables you later on to predict whether something will bring on more clutter into your life or not. It will help you say no to things and people and projects from the get-go, before you get entangled in a chain of subsequent clutter. This foresight comes with practicing decluttering.
So start with the smaller things in your life and build your muscle from there. It will soon snowball and you will be able to make bigger decisions.
I suggest you get to work on clearing your stuff at the soonest possible. Even if your space is not messy or filled with things, go around your home and examine everything you have - and I mean every single thing.
There are many ways you can approach this, but regardless of your method, your decision to keep or discard is based on whether you use something or like it. The rule of thumb you have probably hear of is, if you haven't used it in a year, then you can get rid of it.
So here are my suggestions. Declutter these categories in this order, and get rid of what you don't use or don't like or is past its expiry date:
- Clothes and everything else you wear
- All things fabric like towels, bedsheets, etc.
- Everything disposable with an expiry date like food, cosmetics, and detergents
- Kitchen tools and electrics
- Other tools and electrics
- Electronics like computers, tablets, and music players, and their cables and accessories
- Toys, games, and hobby items
- Other categories of things that you might have
- Furniture and bigger items
Deal with these things first before you move onto paper clutter. And notice that you want to get rid of things before you get rid of furniture because then you can get a clearer picture about how much or how little stuff you need to store.
Appreciate that this can take months depending on how much stuff you have. My own decluttering took several years, and it wasn't because of sheer quantity. It was because the decision-making was hard and I also had my stuff in different countries.
Being thorough pays off. Being thorough and really getting in there is part of what can take your decluttering from a simple home organization thing to a genuine personal transformation.
PAPER, BOOKS, AND DIGITAL CLUTTER
When you're done with stuff, then move on to paper clutter.
Paper clutter can be very challenging.
Start with easy things like magazines and clippings. Remember, if you haven't looked at it for this long, you won't in the future.
You might have random notes in booklets, loose pieces of paper, and post-it notes. Collect them all in a box and go through them one by one. Throw out those you don't need and keep the ones you do in the box.
I don't suggest that you start thinking right away of how you will organize the papers you keep just yet because it could distract you in the moment. Just do the sorting and later on think of how you will record and keep the notes you want.
With paper, there are many categories, but a big one is the legal documents category. This can be a huge deal.
Again, gather all your legal documents in a few boxes, see if you can divide them into big categories from the get-go.
You will probably need to consult with lawyers, accountants, bankers, family members, and other people before you can discard documents so be careful.
And you will need time, effort, and dedication, to sit down on this so be patient and disciplined. But you do not want to avoid this, you do want to get around to it.
Legal and administrative documents can be heavy emotionally and psychically in many ways, so it is important to clear them up and bring them up to a level of sparkling clarity. It is very empowering to be on top of this area of your life.
And also in the paper category, there are all things books. Books were a huge deal in my family, we inherited the obsession with books from both sides of the family, but I'm happy to say that we no longer do, and we now approach learning and caring about knowledge in a totally updated way.
This can be really life changing because it affects our intelligence and how we process information. I became convinced that intelligence can be obstructed by emotional blockages and associated clutter, whereas we popularly believe in incomplete theories like IQ and other limited beliefs about what it means to be smart.
The main issue with books I find is the need to feel and look smart. Books can be deeply tied with our ambitions and self-image.
But as you declutter your books and other things that symbolize your desire to be someone special, you will bring yourself up to date with who you are today and you will be able to let go of failed projects and projects that are unlikely to pan out.
Yes, this can involve some serious grieving. And I appreciate how difficult it can be to make some realizations about your own limitations.
But I want to encourage you to let go of these expectations of yourself. And I want to tell you that it is precisely releasing these identities that can unleash a greater you.
But as with affirmations, it is not my job to convince you and convert you. You have to own your process and you have to have faith in your own path. Your willingness to change is in your hands, you are completely responsible for it.
And then there is digital clutter. The digital world has made it much easier to amass clutter. Not only is it all over our devices, but apparently the paperless movement has produced more paper and printed material than ever before!
Digital clutter also needs a lot of discipline and staying power to get through. There is a lot of decision-making involved and you might even need to reinvent how you store and organize your digital life.
Hopefully it is now clear why it is a good idea to start with the small and easy stuff before you immerse yourself in paper and digital clutter.
SENTIMENTAL CLUTTER
When you're past the easy stuff like the dirty and broken things due for the garbage, clothes you can donate, and tidbits here and there. And when you’ve gone through the discipline of clearing paper and digital clutter, you are likely ready for letting go of the sentimental stuff and beyond.
Sentimental items are one-of-a-kind items associated with special moments or phases of your life. There are many possibilities for the kind of things these might be as everyone is unique and has their own journey.
But to give a few examples, we could be looking at souvenirs, decorations handed down by someone, special books, diaries, certificates, prizes, and really any item that has a special memory attached to it and evokes certain feelings.
It is very important for you to notice how you feel. You might feel sad, upset, or regretful of something. Often, these feelings involve a longing of some kind, which usually tells of something unfulfilled or incomplete. The key is to see what that is. And from there you can decide how you might move forward.
By the time you’ve covered all the categories we mentioned, you would have already gone through quite a lot of your sentimental stuff because these items can be from any of these categories.
Any object, from a piece of clothing to a digital document, can be a sentimental item for you. So you might have tackled it when you were tackling that category.
But if you come across something that has sentimental value that could overwhelm you and stop you from moving forward with your decluttering, then my advice is to pu it aside. Do not lose your momentum.
This isn’t to say that you should declutter mechanically like a robot. On the contrary, I want you to use your decluttering process as a way to develop your vision and deepen your heart connection with your life.
The idea is that you want to get through your stuff with enough momentum so you can get yourself to a point where your space has lightened up. You want that experience of lifting off.
So you don’t want things to come up that delay this, or make your decluttering so intermittent that you don’t experience the noticeable difference it makes to your energy and your space.
And also, sentimental things take a lot more time to process.
So whatever your sentimental items are, put them all aside in one box, and when you would have cleared most of the easy stuff, then sit down to ponder these special things.
It is also interesting to see all the sentimental stuff you have in one space. You could get a really interesting picture of your life when you see these things piled up in front of you.
I suggest you take some pictures of your stuff every so often as you declutter.
Now that I travel more, I like to take pictures of the places I stay at and my packed suitcases every so often. They tell me how much I’ve downsized, and affirm to me what my focus is right now. I have downsized so much that I travel with everything I own these days, with just a few items left behind at my family’s home base. Life is ever changing isn’t it.
Sentimental stuff needs stronger decision-making and a lot of heart because these things are deeply tied with our identity, our hopes, and our regrets.
Grieving is usually needed at this stage as you let go of the past and the many emotions you invested in these chapters of your life.
So create space for your sentimental category, and sit down with these items.
Have the courage to ponder what it is you think you missed out on, what you regret, or what didn't pan out in the way that you hoped. And otherwise process whatever memories and emotions come up.
What have you become since those days? Are these desires still relevant today? Will you let them go or do you really want to pursue some of them?
Going through the stuff that is associated with these feelings and those parts of your life can help you work out your feelings more easily than if you didn't handle these physical things at all.
That's because these objects are triggers that help you access your thoughts and your feelings directly.
They're like a gateway into those parts of your inner and outer life. They are a key that unlocks that box where you've kept or hidden these feelings and experiences.
I appreciate that sentimental things can be a big deal, but I do want to suggest that you bring yourself to a point where you can significantly trim down the stuff in this category.
I know you're going to tell me that you can't get rid of your medals, your parents' decorations, these special letters, and the many other things you may have in this category.
No one can tell you which objects you should get rid of, and I advise you to run from anyone who specifies this for you.
But I know what I'm saying and I mean it. And I can guarantee that your work isn't done until you have truly moved on and can part with the item.
When you have truly moved on, your mind and your consciousness would have changed, and you can let go of the stuff.
At that point, these items can either easily leave your space, or you would have re-integrated them into your life in a new way, giving them - and yourself - a fresh start.
I know this can be very challenging, and it doesn’t happen overnight, and never force yourself to get rid of things especially in this category, because they are a one-of-a-kind and you can’t replace them.
But I want you to keep chewing over them until you’ve truly processed them. You will know when you have.
One thing that is for sure is that you're not taking any of it with you when you die!
So take the time you need, but don’t forget about it or postpone it. Do the work. Declutter now, and live today.
Decluttering and letting it all go brings you into the now. Become urgent about your life, you have things to do before you die.
Time is the most precious thing you have, and it will declutter you soon enough!
LETTING GO OF IDENTITIES
To close this episode, I want to mention one more area that we deal with when decluttering, as we do when doing affirmations, and that is our identity or what we perceive as our identity and aspects of it.
This can be quite a complex and layered topic and there are endless examples of what might pass for an identity to someone because every journey is unique.
Some examples are our identity through the work we do, the groups we identify with, the kinds of interests we pursue, and the appearance we like to have, to name just a few.
We can become extremely invested in our identity and this can get very personal.
We may not even question that our identity is a choice or that we can one day become someone else.
But seeing our identity as a choice can be very eye opening because we are then able to see ourselves in ways we haven't before.
Of course the idea is not to release your identity or whatever aspect of it just for the sake of it, but to let go of what is no longer supportive of you so you can bring yourself into the present and live your life authentically.
When you go through your stuff, you will find lots of things that reflect your identity or the identity of someone you want or wanted to be.
It's a good exercise to go through your stuff with the quest of identifying the things that you feel most reflect what you consider your identity.
If it does nothing else, it brings you closer to who you are, who you want to be, or wanted to be.
If you are not that person now, you might be regretting it, which would tie into the discussion we just had around sentimental items and the difficult feelings they often bring up.
But recognizing this as the identity of someone whom you wanted to be, can really drive the point home and get you to come face to face with your present reality.
There are many identities we could get attached to.
A common one is about being smart or special, which is often reflected in having many books and papers and other items that suggest expertise.
Another identity revolves around being popular and special among friends and family, which can be reflected in any kind of items depending on our specifics, like being the center of our community and gathering everyone at your home for dinner every time, or feeling like we need to rescue others because we think we're the expert.
We knew someone who was insistent on running lunches every weekend for family and friends, which for her meant she had everything from several sets of plates and dining items, children's toys, musical instruments, books, and a whole lot more.
Being messy ad an identity is also not uncommon. Here, the idea is that we're busy with a lot of things and are creative through all sorts of different projects.
There are also many lifestyle identities that we attach to. These often start in our earlier years. They're connected with the different groups of people we identify with, the activities we engage in, the things we wear, the music we listen to, and even the language we speak.
Our behaviors and the things we speak also reflect who we feel we are at the time. Pay attention to tour affirmations!
Of course, the point is not to change our identities for the sake of change, but to examine our attachments.
The point of decluttering is to release ourselves from attachments. And yes, it is possible to transcend our identities, which brings us closer to who we really are. You cannot know if this is your real identity unless you do the work.
Claiming your identity, usually out of defensiveness, doesn’t cut it and certainly tells you that you haven’t done the work.
People who are free from attachments are not defensive and don’t try to prove themselves to anyone.
How we come to our identities is unique because every journey is unique, but at the bottom of it all, there is often a need for love and appreciation.
I encourage you to do affirmations to love yourself, like we talked about in a previous episode. No one will be to you the friend you can be for yourself. You owe it to yourself so start today.
When you sit down to examine all this, you can get some amazing insights about your life, how you lived it, and what you've become.
It is also very valuable to think about how you took up these identities in the first place.
Looking at your life with the fresh pair of eyes that the decluttering and affirmations work can give you is very exciting, even if a little heavy on the emotions.
And what is more important is that you think about how you feel about your identity, or what you perceive as your identity, and some aspects of it.
Maybe at this point you didn't think that it is even something you can question or look at. But remember that everything is an affirmation, and we can change all our thoughts and patterns with new affirmations if we want to.
If you're done with living and being a certain way, then make changes. Declutter the items that reflect the parts you no longer want to play, and choose an affirmation to help you along.
Of course this can be challenging. These changes are the heavy lifting of the decluttering and affirmations work. And they’re not achievable overnight, although you can make some realizations or insights overnight.
Clean up your space and clean up your past, and focus on the tough areas with courage so you can get to work on the things you came to do, and live your best life for the rest of your life no matter what you think is left of it.
Have the courage to open it all up and look inside.
I want to leave you with this thought.
The big decluttering happens only once in your life. This is a very precious experience. Remember this when you’re going through it all.
That is the present moment.