While browsing my Facebook feed, I found a lot
of funny memes saying. “Decided that my 2017 starts again on February 1st...
January is a trial month”. But seriously, how do we even begin? With
goals in place and enthusiasm pump up, the question now is how to start. I’m a
believer that before we start anything new, a clean slate is a good start.
Decluttering your physical space, emotional space (I mean heart contents) and
mental aspect is a great starting point to whatever you want to pursue.
Physical Declutter
Try to assess what things in your life are important to you and make those available for you. For anything that doesn’t add value nor has no utility for your current lifestyle (not your dream lifestyle ok?) get rid of those. For example, do you really need two planners? Why not give away the other one so you only have one central place for planning. I’ve blog thoroughly about this in the past so I’ll leave the links below if you want an in-depth discussion of physical declutter.
Emotional Declutter
Let’s take an inventory of negative feelings in your heart. It
could be anger, hatred, envy or unforgiveness. Most of us tend to brush off
negative emotions in the beginning, keeping it inside and harboring pain in the
end. But that’s not the way to deal with negative emotions .We deal these
emotions by confronting it. Here’s how I do emotional declutter. On a paper
with three columns, write down the negative emotion and be as detailed as you
want. Next to it, write down why you feel this emotion. Be real and confront
yourself. Keep asking why until you get to the root, the real source. The last
column is the action item. Let’s say, the negative emotion is “I hate my boss”.
The why is “because he’s rude, unfair, won’t listen and rude”. Your action item
could be, talking to your boss so you will have a better understanding of the
situation or other action item could be finding another job. Granted, the action item will take time to
accomplish but the point here is the more you focus on the action item, the
less you focus on the emotion, eventually phasing out the emotion totally from
your heart and mind. This is the way to get rid of those negative emotions. It
will never go unless we confront it and decide to free ourselves from it.
Mental Declutter
One of the most cluttered spaces in the world is not our houses;
it’s our brain. There are so many thoughts floating around, and there are so
many thoughts coming in involuntarily. It is important to find a system to
organize these thoughts and free some brain space. We tend to hold thoughts,
and create mental notes. While the brain can definitely do this, the main function
of our brain was not fully utilized. Our brain’s purpose is to create,
rationalize and think. With this, we should get organized with our thoughts and
have a brain dump system. How? Write it down. Let go of the thought and write
it down. Now, you can choose the digital route through apps of your smartphone
or laptop, or physical route through pen and paper. If you ask me, I prefer
the digital route because I’m glued to my phone so technically, I glued to my
brain dump. However, nothing beats the old school pen and paper so I still keep
one notebook just in case I have a stroke of genius moment, then I have
something to write on . Whatever route you choose, what’s important is
consistency. Stick to the system of writing it down and free your mind.
Now with all that in place, let’s conquer February shall we?
Welcome to the love month.
- 9:44:00 PM
- 0 Comments
