Declutter Your Thoughts

Season 6 Episode 89

 

Check out this episode to find out declutter your thoughts to  tame the racing in your head!

 Show notes: 

 Episode Summary:

Do you ever feel like you have so many thoughts running through your head that you can’t really get a grasp on any of them? Do you feel like all of these thoughts keep you from thinking the happy and peaceful thoughts you want to think? We certainly do.

In this episode we explore how we can take 5 simple, common, home-decluttering strategies and apply them to decluttering our thoughts.

Decluttering our thoughts isn’t nearly as difficult as you might imagine, AND it will give us all more time to focus on the thoughts that really matter.

 Introduction:

In the past few years, we have all either heard, read or listened to experts telling us how to declutter our homes.

Can you hear Marie Kondo’s voice in your head or are you imagining the tv show Hot Mess House on Discovery Plus?

Because of her decluttering advice, Marie Kondo’s name has become a household name, in some cases even a verb, as in “I am going to Marie Kondo my closet today.” What is so amazing about Marie Kondo and others is that their simple wisdom about what could appear at a quick glance to be about decluttering a room or a house, was actually life-changing for millions of people.

What Marie Kondo and other decluttering experts helped us to see is that if you have a lot of clutter, it can prevent you from feeling good about yourself and your life. We all started realizing that if we reduce the clutter in our lives, we can improve our mental health and decluttering also can help us to focus on what we really value.

Marie’s philosophy on clutter and life, is probably best summarized with this quote, “To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. To throw away what you no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful.”

That is great advice for decluttering our houses…. and all those thoughts spinning around in our head every day!

Let’s rewrite her famous quote just a bit to apply to decluttering our thoughts:  “To truly cherish the thoughts that are important to you, you must first discard those thoughts that have outlived their purpose. To throw away thoughts that you no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful.”

What we see in this is the connection between the decluttering of our physical space and also the decluttering of our thoughts. In the crazy, busy world we are in, information is coming at us like water from a firehouse. Our brains rarely get a change to slow down. They are cluttered with too many thoughts. Decluttering these thought is good and it is necessary.

So, we share 5 tips, designed to help declutter your home, that will work perfectly to declutter all of those thoughts we are experiencing as well! Mental clutter can build up quickly, so let’s Marie Kondo it out!

Decluttering Tip #1: Declutter Regularly

We learned from the organizational gurus of the last few years that decluttering on a regular basis can help keep your home clean and make the process of maintaining the sense of zen easier. Decluttering can’t just be a “one and done.” It needs to be an ongoing and intentional process.

The same can be said for decluttering our thoughts. Think of the volume of thoughts that come into heads every second of the day.

This is where habits and living mindfully connect.

Paula: We have both talked about how we like to have our quiet time in the morning. For me, that is a time to declutter my thoughts. Over a cup of coffee, I can journal, allowing me to focus on specific thoughts and shut out the others that don’t matter at that moment. I get up before everyone else in my house, every day, so I can have that time. My best thinking of the day happens at that time, because I can declutter using some of the strategies we will discuss here today, but most importantly, I do it daily. If I decluttered my thoughts early in the morning once per year, it wouldn’t have nearly as much of an impact as it does doing it daily.

Michele: My brain often feels like it is exploding with too much information. I take in a lot of information intentionally. I read a lot. I make lists endlessly. Once I have written something on a list, I can usually stop the panic in my head. Of course I usually have multiple lists so I can keep things organized- a work list, a home to-do list, even lists of books I want to read or lists for individual projects.

Decluttering Tip #2: Start Small

 The home decluttering experts emphasize repeatedly how important it is to break down your decluttering task into smaller, more manageable chunks.

For example, if you want to declutter your bedroom, they suggest you start small- choosing a small area of your room to organize- one dresser drawer for example. Or if you are starting with your closet, they say not to try to tackle the whole thing in a day- start with 5 minutes at a time.

If you’re new to decluttering, you can slowly build momentum with just five minutes a day, or maybe you start with 5 minutes on the first day and add an additional minute to your decluttering tasks each day until you are decluttering 10 or 15 minutes each day.

The same theory is true with decluttering your thoughts. If your brain feels like it is going 100 miles an hour, all day every day, saying that you are going to meditate for 3 hours each day to clear your thoughts is going to lead to failure. Start small. Break the decluttering of your thoughts into smaller, more manageable chunks of time.

Paula: I have gotten into a habit sometime over the past few years of setting the timer on my phone for 1 minute or 2 minutes if I feel like my thoughts are racing and it is impacting my thinking. I just sit for that 1 or 2 minutes and breath, following the meditation process of not thinking anything on purpose, letting thoughts flow in and out of my head like passing clouds but not focusing on them. I am always amazed at the difference I feel after just 1 or 2 minutes.

Of course I can’t do that all day, and we could never do that while teaching, but there is something to be said for the power in finding 1 or 2 minutes to declutter our thoughts. Trying to do that same exercise for 30 or 40 minutes whenever I feel like my thoughts are really racing would never work. I don’t have that long of a chunk of time. Try it in the car or taking a minute or two alone in the bathroom to just breathe.

Michele: I wish I could do that- let the thoughts just float by me. A few minutes organizing my calendar or my lists helps. It also helps to journal- or just write things down. If it is written down, I know the thought is safe or that it had been attended to. Then I can either let it go or deal with it later.

Decluttering Tip #3: Take Out the Trash

Decluttering experts warn that before you can organize the things that are important to you, you’ll need to get rid of the stuff that isn’t. They suggest going through the space you want to organize with a trash bag, stuffing the bag with things you know you don’t need. They encourage people to be ruthless when clearing out your space. If it’s expired, you don’t need it. Throw it.

The idea is to not organize the junk!

When decluttering your life, the experts suggest trashing the apps on your phone that you don’t need. Look at the apps on your phone. When was the last time you used some of them? How many subscriptions do you automatically pay for that you no longer need? Deleting what you haven’t used in the past few months is a good way to quickly declutter your devices and give yourself some extra space.

Some experts suggest you throw away, or give away, one item away each day. This would remove 365 items every single year from your home. If you increased this to 2 per day, you would have given away 730 items you no longer needed. That’s a lot of stuff.

Now, let’s think about what this means for decluttering your thoughts. It means you have permission to trash those thoughts that are expired. What are the thoughts you no longer need? Get rid of those first. Getting these thoughts out of your head will give you space to examine the remaining thoughts more clearly.

Michele: The thoughts I often need to trash are the ones concerning other people. I can’t control other people. I have to let go ideas about what they should do or how they should handle something. I can’t solve all the problems, it isn’t mine to solve. I have to let it go! It’s hard to do sometimes, it’s a practice and it is evolving.

Paula: For me, the expired thoughts, that I need to trash, are negative things that people have said to me in the past that stick in my head but are no longer relevant. These may be criticisms that were legit that I have fixed or they may be unfounded remarks that were trash from the beginning but I have held on to them and they reemerge when I am doubting myself. They don’t serve me. I need to throw them out and stop allowing them to come back in. These thoughts take up space that the positive thoughts could inhabit.

Decluttering Tip #4: Sort and Organize Items

Home decluttering experts often tell us to sort items into piles, grouping similar items. Create categories and keep items that are similar together so you know where to find them. They suggest that you don’t skip a single item, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. This exercise helps you see how many items you really own and you’ll know exactly what to do with each item.

For example, you could organize your bathroom drawers into categories such as “medicine,” “beauty products” or “nail care.” However, you choose to organize, be sure to think about whether this streamlines your use of those items which is what you want to do ultimately to make your life easier.

The same can be said of sorting and organizing your thoughts. For example, if you are driving to work thinking about supper ingredients you haven’t put together yet, the materials you need to prep for your first lesson, you child’s soccer forms you haven’t filled out yet, and a million other things. Start sorting those thoughts. For example, the categories could be “things for work today”, “things to think about on the way home”, “things for the weekend” etc.  Then you can work through the most important first- like the “things for work today” on the way to work and put the others off until your drive home since you can’t do anything about them on the way to work anyway.

Paula: I make lists of my thoughts. If I am worried I am going to forget something I write it down or email it to myself. That way I don’t forget and can focus on the most pressing category of thoughts without the distractions of other categories. For example, yesterday I emailed myself a list of 3 things I needed to ask my husband to do. Once I emailed them, that category of things, I could focus on the category at hand.

Michele: I do this naturally with many different lists. It helps me to then do one list at a time.  This usually works, but it is dangerous if I have so many lists that my lists become overwhelming. One of my lists is always a top three things I must do today, and that has been very effective.

Decluttering Tip #5: Limit New Items. 

When you buy something new, try to get rid of something else.

 This decluttering advice is pretty self-explanatory. When you bring something new in, take something out. We don’t want to be hoarders. We can’t keep all the things or it can be overwhelming.

The same is true with our thoughts.

Decide which thoughts can have real estate in your brain and which can’t. Some thoughts just be let go when you bring a new thought in. They can’t all have space there.

Paula:  I went to the ATM to get cash and my PIN number was just gone. I kept bringing new thoughts in without getting rid of old ones, so my brain did the work for me. Unfortunately, my brain decided to get rid of my PIN number. I wish I would have made an intentional choice of the non-essential thought to get rid of.

Michele: Yikes! Your brain is deciding what to let go of. I haven’t done that. I have let go of things that I might regret someday. I no longer know anyone’s phone numbers. I don’t know birth dates either, unless it is on my calendar. I also stopped thinking about things on my husband’s lists or his to-do items. For whatever reason, I used to get things like his prescription refill notices.  I need to get that out of my brain. He can control that!

We hope that these decluttering tips are helpful. Maybe you’ve found one in particular that speaks to you.

We end with this quote by writer Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe:

“The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”

 Recap:

In this episode we explored how we can take 5 simple, common, home-decluttering strategies and apply them to decluttering our thoughts. By decluttering regularly, starting small, taking out the trash, sorting and organizing and limiting new items,  it will give us all more time to focus on the thoughts that really matter.

Quote:

“The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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