Do you want to be that person who is super-carefree, easy, enjoying every day and super-efficient, lots of free time, lots of creative excitement, lots of love and magic everywhere?
Don’t we all?!
Those people have one thing in common: they don’t hold on too tightly to things and they’ve become, at some point, good at letting things go that are heavy.
This is all pretty easy, I mean, how hard is it to, even slowly, get rid of junk?
There are no special skills required to accomplish the actual dumping…
But yet, things linger.
Why is some clutter so hard to clear? And how do you clear that seemingly-impossible-to-clear clutter?
After working with thousands of people to clear their homes, cars, offices and lives of clutter in every way possible, and after confronting my own hard-to-clear stuff, I know many reasons why clearing can be so tough, reasons that once eluded me.
I’ve also seen the path that can be blazed past that challenging clutter in life, and the gifts and blessings and joy and abundance that comes once it’s done!
Whether it’s paper clutter, appliance, pots and pans clutter, books, journals and computer data clutter… or the more noxious clutter piled up in closets and drawers… a stuffed schedule or a stuffed garage… there are so many big underlying reasons why this stuff piles up.
Here are a few surprising ones that may set off a light bulb for you:
Feeling undeserving. After all, it’s such a seeming self-indulgence to spend time clearing and cleaning for yourself and creating beautiful space with openness for yourself and making your life flowing and powerful for yourself. If you feel unworthy of the time it takes or the greatness it will bring you, chances are, that clutter will sit there or it will repeat itself all over again once it’s cleared.
Not wanting to accept or confront the present moment. Clutter keeps us in the past so that we never need to see the present fully until we are forced to when the stagnation builds up (or the drawers and closets are overflowing)…!
A belief that there’s not enough. After all, how could you donate perfectly good things that you’ve never used… because… what if you’ll never have the money again to re-purchase them if you need them. (P.S.: this is how people stay broke, reinforcing these beliefs.)
Denial of issues (i.e.: burying one’s head in the sand). By never looking at bills or mail or emails that demand attention, many feel they will, somehow, magically disappear. Same goes for all issues that build up as clutter: when you ignore it, it doesn’t magically fade away. It grows.
Fear of success. Way more noxious than a fear of failure, fear of success is a big deal. If you keep your mess around, you’ll always have a reasonable reason why you can’t pursue your dreams in any way.
Fear of being seen. You know what happens when you’re happy, glowing, radiant and wearing clothes that you love (that you can now find in your closet!)? People notice you. A lot of them. Being noticed and seen and recognized is a big issue for lots of us, and it keeps the closets and drawers and bathroom overflowing with stuff.
Anxiety over survival. I’ve seen pantries so over-run with expired foods “just in case” of an emergency, garages filled to the brim with stuff “just in case” it’s needed. There’s a difference between an earthquake kit and a home full of fear. Be really honest about whatever you stockpile.
Overwhelm of possibilities. Artistic Blocks can come when there is an overwhelm of possibilities. There’s so much to create, too many avenues, and instead of deciding on a path, we get blocked to stop-up the flow of what’s possible.
Risk aversion. If you have too many issues, too much stuff, too much to handle, manage, clean and constantly wrangle, you’ll have no time to think about all the risks there are to take in life in order to grow. Emotional risks, creative risks, business, fitness… fun… adventure. When you’re super-cluttered you won’t know what you’re missing, or so we tell ourselves until life becomes so stale and sinking that it’s hard to ignore.
A belief in noble suffering. Do you believe life can be easy? If not, you’ll likely hold onto clutter and tune out rather than tuning in. You’ll leave things laying around as obstacles because of the deep belief that suffering is noble. You’ll maybe even sacrifice your time to handle big problems that aren’t yours (even though you have so many of your own to handle), piling difficulty atop hardship.
And this is just the start. These have come up so many times that they stuck with me and I was challenged through each Catalyst Camp to bring tools to the group to work through each ones. (*you can sign up here to start the FREE Decluttering Video Class!) Every bit of science, every tool and feng shui shift and motivation and story all, at their core, comes back to one principle:
Love Yourself.
If you decide, every day, to love yourself deeply and completely in actions, you’ll find that there’s added energy to clean and clear and polish. If you let your love for yourself be the core of your being (and realize that it’s completely unselfish) and affirm that love every day in every way you can, you’ll find the energy lifting around you.
You’ll see resistance melting if you spend more time allowing yourself to feel great.
You’ll see that a dirty house is no longer the mirror you want to look into every day.
You’ll find that even though these reasons above- and many others- are underpinning your own messes, that it’s time to be rid of things that have overstayed their welcome.
You’ll find as you go forward, the momentum builds and your actual outlook on life shifts.
This is why I’m so impassioned about clearing life in every way possible: it’s total transformation rooted in love. And as you keep clearing… that love for yourself and that love you spread around just grows and grows, along with your magnetic abundance, ease and grace and joy.
xoxo Dana
P.S.: If you’re ready to take the energy around you to the next level, detox the negativity and make space for joy, the Joy Immersion: 30 Day Negativity Detox is here for you.
THE JOY IMMERSION is a commitment to happy-making, mirror-polishing, life-lifting and simple space shifting for 30 days. It’s loaded with lots of actions that can help you detox from your own negative stuff, uncover more of your greatness and light, and see happiness everywhere you look…!
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