“Clutter is not just the stuff on your floor – it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living.”
— Peter Walsh
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Sumati has really gone on a binge on decluttering reality TV shows at the moment.
You know … when a team of experts come into an overloaded house and show the family how to get rid of the rubbish and organise everything else.
This one sorts according to two criteria: “Is it useful?” and “Do you love it?”.
(Great guides, them!).
They are obviously transformational for the family, and inspirational to Sumati as she loves them – but I can’t watch.
I did join her a couple of times to hang out, but my dreams were filled with anxiety about drowning in clutter.
(I am a neat freak though. I’d rather get rid of something than have it hanging around for too long. Probably why even watching someone with too much stuff is like nails on a chalk board for me. Ha!)
But these declutter experts are right.
When your external space is clean and clear, a huge chunk of inner calm and clarity comes with it.
It’s the simple, even mundane, tasks like making your bed (as Navy Seal Admiral William McRaven points out in his famous Youtube video on how to change the world, https://mindisthemaster.com/admiral-mcraven-speech-transcript/), that have a profound domino effect.
Life is so much easier and lighter when your external space, whatever that might be, is in some sort of order.
The trouble is we feel like time is so short, we focus on the urgent tasks and not necessarily the important tasks that actually give us the time, space and energy to do what moves us forward.
Right?
Now, the organising of our internal space is just as important as our external space.
Consider an audit, a decluttering, of your attitude.
Attitude is so important because it’s a key lens through which we experience life. It's the intersection between you and your life – when your attitude is clear and clean, all of life is better, easier, more fun.
Hence a conscious organising of how we see and interact is so useful, and makes life so you love it. Actually, consistently practice and you’ll love the quality of your inner space too.
It will take time, awareness, and intention to get back on the horse when we inevitably fall short, but even a little practice goes a long, long way.
How, specifically?
Well –
We’re constantly judging everything in life as happening “to me”, or “for me”:
Good/bad, right/wrong, going to plan/going badly.
This affects our entire experience of life:
Happening to me has one set of results.
Happening for me has another.
Declutter your internal space by becoming aware of your attitude, of what you're telling yourself.
When you think it’s “happening to me”, find a way to swap that around to “happening for me”.
Try it; just assume it. Choose "for me".
Why?
This small choice has a profound domino effect.
Ultimately you’ll see you can perfect all the present moments that make up your life. Perfect them!
You see …
When you assume life is happening for me, can there be anything “wrong”?
How can there be, if all is for you?
And if there’s nothing wrong, perhaps you can see that everything, right now, is perfect?
Maybe it’s unexpected and unwelcome, that much is true, in which case your response will not be a judgement of wrong or bad or no good but grow to be, “How fascinating!”.
Maybe, just maybe, all is well.
That's what I get, even in the middle of the unexpected and unwelcome – the ability to assume all is well, and to focus not on what I can't control but what I can do with what I can.
I can’t tell you what you’ll experience, you’ll just have to declutter and rearrange your internal space and see what happens.
But give it a shot.
See what you see when you choose to define life as happening for you.
It’s the simple, even mundane, choices that make all the difference.
Have a useful, beautiful attitude.
Go there first. Make it the foundation for everything else.
Go well,
Arjuna