Growing, Growing, Gone

Greetings:

Growing, Growing, Gone

Okay it has been a few weeks since I have posted about the pile. Whew! You wouldn’t think a little pile would take so much time and energy but it did. That is why clutter is not a good thing to have around. It is just way too draining. Even if it is just one pile it takes up too much room in your space and in your mind.

Well as the saying goes “It gets worse before it gets better.” Well that is true with the pile. It started to grow! Oh no, just when I thought I was getting it down it started to expand. I had to stop and ask, “What is going on?” I realized that out of habit I was sticking things back on the pile. I was just use to putting things there. The Lesson – Clutter is a habit.

Clutter is a habit that needs to be replaced with a better habit. You just can’t get rid of a habit. The Universe adores a void and if there is nothing to fill the empty space left by a habit the Universe will fill it, usually with the old habit. So instead of just trying to stop the habit you have to find one that can replace it that has a more positive outcome. So what is my new habit? Putting things away or finding a home for whatever it is before it becomes clutter. Rita Emmett author of The Clutter Busting Handbook says if you don’t have a place for something it is clutter. And no she doesn’t mean pile it up on the floor!

That leads me to my second lesson. Everything has a place and everything should live in its place. When you use something put it back where you got it. If you are like me you can hear those words ringing in your ears from when you were a kid. My grandmother use to get on me all the time to put things back where I got them so I could find it the next time I was looking for it. Great advice and it only took me 40 years to finally understand the true value.

Well I got the pile under control and finally decided to get rid of it once and for all. It took more than fifteen minutes but I stuck with it until it was gone. What helped me get rid of it? That is the next lesson I learned.

Accountability. Never underestimate the power of accountability. I don’t know why telling someone else that you will get something done has infinitely more power than just telling yourself but it does. I set myself up to be accountable by posting my results on the Blog. And yes I had a few people email me asking how it was going! Oh if that didn’t help to get me going.

Whenever you set out to reach a goal get yourself an accountability partner. It can be a friend, a coach or even an on-line buddy. When I was a student at Coach U I took a class led by Thomas Leonard, the founder of Coach U. The class lasted a week and was designed to get rid of tolerations. Tolerations are anything that drain your energy and get in the way of you being your best. Each morning we would call in and tell the group which five tolerations we would get rid of that day. In the evening we would call in again and report our progress. It was amazing how many tolerations I got rid of that week just because I knew I was accountable to the group.
Another trick I used to help me was the reward system. There were several times I didn’t want to work on the pile so I bribed myself. I would tell myself that if I worked on the pile for a certain about of time I could watch television for a certain amount of time, or go shopping or do something else that I wanted to do. It helped to get me going. I looked forward to the reward and it made it worth spending the time on the pile.


So the final result. Ta-da! The pile is gone. Yes it took a tad longer than I expected and it was a lot more work that I figured but now that it is gone, it feels great. I am now inspired to tackle a few more tolerations that are piling up!

Take Action Now…. Is there a pile or two you want to bust through. Make a plan for getting rid of it and get an accountability partner. You will be amazed at what you can do with a little planning and someone looking over your shoulder.

Rachelle