By Deanne P Wells, http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Deanne_P_Wells
“An optimist is the human personification of spring.”
- Susan J. Bissonette
Spring is here! It’s time to throw open the doors and windows to let the fresh air in! That means, not only in our house, but into our minds and bodies, too! Spring is the perfect time to clear out the mental clutter of what’s holding us back in our lives. Every year, spring brings rejuvenation all around us and it only seems fit that we join in with healthy growth and renewal. House clutter, mental baggage, and overloads of paperwork can pile up quickly like weeds, so while we’re clearing out our office, garage, house, and garden, it only seems fit to do a little work on our minds.
Spring cleaning isn’t just about discarding material clutter, it’s also about clearing out the compulsive mental hoarding we’ve accumulated in our lives! Storing months and even years of unnecessary worries, guilt, and fears can cause unwanted health risks, impaired judgment, adverse effects on one’s job, finances, family, and friends. We might think that people aren’t visually exposed to what has built up inside our minds (like we would see in their garage), but we are! We know when someone’s walking around with a black cloud over their head, carrying extra weight on their shoulders, or have a lot on their mind. Just like a hoarder’s kitchen that’s piled with useless garbage, a person’s mind can also be filled with toxic trash that’s not even worthy of a recycle bin. Fear, anxiety, depression, and mood swings are all signs of mental hoarding. Imagine for a moment having to climb over boxes and boxes of waste inside your head, boxes that have been buried and unopened for years. Hoarding does not only exist in someone’s garage, house, backyard, or basement… it can also exist in the attic of our minds.
Many compulsive hoarders have trouble admitting when they’ve accumulated too much clutter. They believe that their items are of value whether they’re old or new, broken or intact. Hoarders tend to hide their compulsiveness and remain in denial even though they might know there is a problem. Hoarding can fall into every facet of our lives. Hanging on to past hurts, guilt, obsessive thoughts, negative affirmations, criticisms, unfinished business, procrastination, indecision, dysfunctional relationships, or overwhelming responsibilities are all part of mental clutter. When we allow weeds to grow freely around the environment we live in, eventually they will spread into every weakness, crack or crevice, and finally to the inside of our minds. Imagine a building that’s abandoned, the weeds and vines will slowly engulf the unmaintained building until someone finally accepts that it needs maintenance. Think about someone who has trouble getting rid of things because they feel there are too many sentimental attachments… imagine for a moment what their mind might look like! Longing and daydreaming over someone from our past who doesn’t want anything to do with us can also be considered mental hoarding. Again, being in denial plays a big role in whether or not we want to be clear-minded and it’s important to accept when it’s time to do a mind sweep and let clutter go.
Disorder comes in all shapes and forms, not just as boxes. Not all clutter is clearly labeled, nor does it have a flashing red light to tell us what needs to go. But, if we pay close attention to our intuition (what our gut is telling us), more than likely we will know what needs to go. It’s important that we stop replaying different scenarios over and over in our heads, such as, “if I would have done this, or I should have done that, and I could always do this.” Those phrases are only a waste of more precious mental energy. By recalling the woulda, coulda, shouldas, we’re not being productive and just creating more clutter. Imagine your mind as a computer hard drive that eventually uses all its memory, so you go out and buy an external hard drive to back up all your important data- so this way you don’t have to delete anything. Many people are hoarders mental or physical, we just don’t like to throw things away. So our “stuff” just keeps piling up and piling up, and before you know it we can’t keep our head above clutter!
The problem is… where do we begin decluttering? Most of us would agree, excuses are the biggest factor that keep us from accomplishing anything in our life, e.g., “I don’t know where to start. I need help. I’m confused. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t have time.” And so on. It’s time to stop making excuses and start living our life! Start somewhere! Start anywhere! We all have time to clear out mental clutter. Hit the delete button on the mental negativity that’s holding you down from living the life you want to live. Get out the weed whacker and cut down those weeds! It’s an everyday process, and just like weeds do, they always come back, but it’s up to us to keep up with our mental maintenance. No one is going to maintain your mind for you, we can get guidance and education, but ultimately, keeping up with the maintenance is always up to you! We all have busy lives, but if you didn’t do your laundry every week it would continue to pile up. Nobody wants to do your laundry for you… we each have our own responsibilities. It’s your dirty laundry and it’s your mental clutter. Accept it and deal with it. Wash it or leave it pile up, the choice is always yours. Ask yourself, “What is holding me back from growing and flourishing to my fullest extent?”
We all deserve a chance for renewal… a chance to join in with the growth around us. It’s time to dust off usable items, pull out the weeds, do a little pruning, and feed our minds and bodies with the right nutrients to help us grow stronger. We must be optimistic that we can make time to improve our lives for the better and cut back on what we don’t need. So, when we’re feeling overwhelmed- there’s a good chance we’re being smothered by unnecessary clutter and the red warning flags are telling us that something needs to change. We put a lot of maintenance into the things around us in our daily lives, but we can’t forget take care of ourselves- in order for us to truly flourish we must trim back on the overgrowth of clutter. It’s time to clear out the weeds to allow positivity to grow.“A beautiful flower deserves to stand out from the weeds.”
- Deanne P. Wells
Deanne P. Wells is the owner and Editor of the South Texas Women’s World Magazine, a life coach, speaker, and author. She has published several self-improvement and motivational articles on life empowering topics. She assists women in business and personal to provide insight, structure, and encouragement in reaching their full potential.
Contact her for a complimentary coaching session: Editor@stww.net
Visit virtually: http://www.stww.net
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