Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Easily Shift your Mindset and Transform your Life | Clutterbug Podcast # 113

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Let's talk more about how to shift your mindset and completely transform your life. Replacing those negative thoughts about yourself is so much easier than you think! Listen to this podcast to learn how you can shift your mindset today.      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're talking more about mindset and how simple shifts can have a huge impact in your life. Hey, Clutterbugs and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I want to talk more about mindset today because, listen, when I think about all the areas of my life where I really used to struggle and now I'm having success in all of those things when I think about what was the domino effect, what was the one thing that I did that sort of changed everything? I changed the way I thought about myself and I changed the way I talked to myself. I think that honestly had the biggest impact. And I know, listen, people used to always talk about mindset. And even when I was making mindset shifts and didn't realize that's what was happening, when people would talk about this being mindful. And I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about.

This is what people who do a lot of yoga and eat a lot of quinoa say. But what does that really even mean? I had no idea. And I used to always call that sort of woo-woo stuff, you know. know, like some new age hippie, dippy nonsense. But what I've really discovered is what mindset really is is how we're our thoughts, how we're controlling our thoughts. And I'm not talking about being positive all the time and looking everything as turning every negative into a positive and that toxic, you know, toxic happiness all the time. crap. What I'm talking about is how we speak to

ourselves and how we think of ourselves and really catching ourselves when we're being mean, when we're being bullies, or when we're having thoughts about ourselves that are not true. And I'm going to give you some examples of mindset shifts that have had in the past that maybe you can relate to and ones that I'm going to be working on in the future. And it's really easy. These are things that are easy to say, but really hard to do. And so I'm going to talk about sort of how I made some of those shifts without even realizing that I was doing it. And hopefully you can sort of learn from some of these little things that have happened to me from my old age.

Listen to me in my mid-40s friends. So I've picked up a few tricks along the way. But I'm just having the self-awareness now to realize why I'm doing well in some areas of my life and why I'm still failing miserably in others. and it comes down to mindset and the mindset work that I did on those things. So let's start with one of the biggest shifts that I had in my life. Maybe we won't start with the worldy biggest ones. I'm not going to get into like, oh, whoa, childhood drama with you. But I had a really hard time managing money.

I really sucked at money. I claimed bankruptcy at 22 years old. I was in so much debt. I had no idea how to make a budget, let alone balance a budget. and I was always broke, always in debt. And I started shifting my mindset when I read a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad and then I read The Wealthy Barber. My husband was like, you need these books, just trust me. And it started making me look at my money differently. It started making me look at my money not as something that I can earn to spend, but how can I get my money to earn money for me?

how can I turn the money that I'm bringing in and make it a tool to continue to generate wealth for me instead of just being something I can spend money on and it started like that's a small shift and when you're making minimum wage or even less than that that can seem ridiculous right but but the way all these books that I was reading they were like you only need a few dollars to get started put it in a high interest savings account when you get enough slowly lowly invest, make sure you're paying off your debt first because you don't want to be paying interest. I really learned about how money works. And it shifted my mindset. So before I went and wasted $50 on something frivolous and stupid that I didn't really need, I was like, I could invest

that and turn that into $60 over the next three years, right? And it was little changes like that in my mindset about money that helped not only get me out of debt, but help me save and invest, have a nest egg that really protected me for the rest of my life and for my future. So, yeah, and when I realized how did I make that shift, it was by educating myself and by really just reading, listening, I would listen to Dave Ramsey all the time, and reading, looking up websites on money management, and borrowing, not. from people who were way wiser and knew way more than me. And it really didn't take long until the thoughts I was having about money were mirroring the thoughts of these money experts that I was reading.

So I was replacing my old thoughts that I had, who knows where I picked those up on, probably just myself or my parents or whatever. My old thoughts about money were, I'm always going to be broke. I'm bad at money. It's not fair that rich people have money and I don't. And that money is to buy things that I want in life. That's what you do. You work to earn money so you can spend it on cool stuff. And it shifted to how can I get out of the rat race? How can I create passive income for myself? How can I not live under the crutch of debt? I realized how terrible credit cards were. And that if I didn't have the cash to pay for something, I wasn't going to buy it because it wasn't worth the interest that a credit card gave me. And so all of these thoughts that now replaced my old thoughts, they weren't mine. They were ones that I borrowed from money experts. And the same thing happened to me with my housework. I really started just changing it from, listen, I was the only one to do any cleaning. I had a bunch of kids. I ran a daycare. My husband did not help. And I'm going to be honest with you, there was years of my marriage with Joe.

where I contemplated on a daily basis leaving him. I felt disrespected. I felt unloved. I felt resentful about the fact that I was doing all the cleaning and all the cooking and the grocery shopping and taking care of the kids. And I was working too. And it didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair.

And I was really, really wanted to pull the plug in the relationship over that. but instead I just made the conscious decision listen I'm doing this for me and I got to just focus on what I can do and I have to stop pointing fingers at him because then I'm still doing the housework but now I'm mad and I just have to keep realizing like he is a different standard of clean than I do and I'm doing this because it makes me happy and I deserve a clean house and it's really a gift to myself and I don't care what he's doing, I'm doing this for me. And this crazy thing happened when my mindset shifted, he started helping out more. And I think it was because I was pointing fingers and blaming and I was making housework to be this horrible, negative, nasty thing for both of us that he just didn't do it.

He was going to get yelled at anyways, so why would he even bother? And when I started showing that it was and like treating it like it was this gift and it was enjoyable and it was pleasant. He also was like, hey, man, maybe this is fun. Like, I don't know. We've never actually discussed what happened. But when my mindset about housework changed, so did his. And the truth is, he does just as much as I do now around the house, if not more, because I stopped nagging, I stopped begging, I stopped complaining, I stopped asking.

I just did it for me. And so that was a huge mindset shift that everyone in my house sort of also had the same mindset shift. And let's talk about organizing. I used to think that I sucked at organizing until I realized I just organized differently. And guess what? Throwing things in a basket, even if it's paper, is still organization. Organizing just means that everything has a home and that I know where that home is and I'm putting it back there when I'm done. and that was like so huge such a huge mindset shift going from somebody who was messy i was messy

my whole life i'm disorganized i suck it organizing um i really was mean to myself i talked really nasty to myself and then one day i was like guess what i am organized i just organized differently and it might not look like traditional organization but that doesn't matter i'm still good at this because I know where my stuff is and I'm putting it back when I'm done. And that shift made me love organization. And I still don't organize in a traditional way. And if you were to come in my home, you would never think that I was an organizing expert because, yeah, I chuck stuff in a basket.

Under my sink kind of looks like a hot mess. But my house is tidy and it's perpetually functional. And it stays in a state of where I don't have to like clean before I clean. You know what I mean? And that came from a mindset shift. Let's talk about ADHD. My entire life, I thought I was stupid and flighty. Just everyone used to make fun of me. You're all over the place. You can't focus. You can't concentrate. And people would joke and say ADHD to me all the time. Or I was hyper. I don't shut up. I don't stop talking. But it wasn't until my doctor said to me, hey, I think you might have ADHD and I started doing research about ADHD and learning that

there isn't something like I'm not stupid. My brain just works differently and seeing as all the positive that can come with it too like the hyper focus and and learning little tricks to help with my lack of executive function and learning just just educating myself shifted my mindset and gave me the confidence to do things that I never would have been able to do before, like create a website or do sales funnels on ConvertKit and like complicated, boring things. Write a book, okay, you guys, write a book. That was so epically boring to do. It was sitting at a computer typing for hours. It's all of these things that my brain has always told me and I've told myself my entire life I could never, ever, ever do because I can't sit still for five

seconds and I'm certainly not smart enough to do anything that when it comes to technology, when I realized you're not stupid, you have ADHD and here is how you can really learn to use it as a tool and to learn ways to, you know, compensate for the things you suck at and learn to use it as a superpower for the things you love that you're good at so you can hyper focus. Everything changed in my business and my productivity and time management. Again, I shifted my mindset by just learning about it, by educating myself. And so when I was having that negative thought, it was being replaced by the experts thoughts and the experts advice and the experts that I was reading and learning, whether I was watching YouTube videos about it,

or I was listening to people talk about it, having audio books or reading paper books about it. My thoughts were being replaced by the right thoughts from people who knew a whole lot more than I did. And so mindset matters. And I'm doing a new boot camp right now. I de-cluttering boot camp. It's free on YouTube. You can go to my clutterbug channel YouTube. And this boot camp is all about changing your mindset.

about decluttering. From it being this negative anxiety inducing thing where you have to let go of your stuff, which feels so wrong and so negative, to gifting things to other people, to helping out someone in need, to sharing with people who don't have as much as you do. That's one of the mindset shifts that we talk about that can really turn it from a negative to a positive. But we're also talking about toxic clutter. We're going to be talking about that next week, which is looking at your stuff not for the money that you spent on it or what it could be someday, but instead for what it's doing to you right now. And how it's talking to you right now. Your clothes that are too small are an example of bullies in your closet because every morning when you go to get dressed, your clothes are telling you that you've gained weight, that you're too fat, that you're no longer attractive, that you should be working in.

out your exercise equipment that you don't use is probably bullying you that protein powder you bought that you hate the taste of is is toxic it's telling you you should be doing this you you're not good enough you're failing to live up to the expectations you've put on yourself oh there's so many things in your house and it's being aware of those things that can change our mindset about our stuff and we can say you know what we deserve to have a home that's that's the thing that's filled with things that are kind to us that make us feel good about ourselves and anything in our house that's a bully and is toxic it makes us feel bad has to leave that's a mindset shift that can change everything and there are so many different ways that we can have mindset shifts about

decluttering but it really comes down to just educating ourselves and being open to learning new things watching YouTube videos about decluttering until something clicks or reading books until something clicks listening to podcasts like you're listening to this right now until something clicks until your negative thoughts about yourself or about the thing whether it's money housework cleaning your ADHD decluttering until those thoughts shift from a negative to a positive so we just submerge ourselves in in listening to people who are going to to shift the way we're thinking, shifting our mindset. And I really need to work on this. When I think about, okay, so I had weight loss surgery two years ago. It's two years ago,

almost to the day that I had weight loss surgery. And I'm struggling again. I'm struggling to live a healthy lifestyle. The surgery changes the size of your stomach. It certainly doesn't change your brain. And when I think, why are all these other areas of my life? Why was I able to change those? But I can't get a handle on food and fitness. Why? Why am I struggling with that? I realize, guess what, Cass, you're not doing the work. Have you read any books about fitness lately? Are you listening to podcasts? Are you educating yourself? How are you changing your mindset, Cass? Because guess what? It doesn't come from within. I can't change. I can't change. say to myself, I'm going to have a different mindset about fitness today or food today.

It doesn't work like that. You have to replace the thoughts that you have in your head now with new thoughts. And the easiest way to do that, you can try journaling or an easier way is you can replace those thoughts with the thoughts of experts. So what I need to do is buy books on fitness. I need to start listening to self-help books and podcasts when I'm cleaning or when I'm doing things about that, right? I think that's why I tried Noom while I was in New York and it was so expensive. I was like, oh, this feels gross. But the truth is, that's why it works. And it was working. I lost seven pounds in just one week. And then I canceled the trial because I was like, I don't want to spend the money on this. But ever, so many people who are like, this works, it isn't because you're

spending the money on it. It's because you're listening to the lessons that come along with it and it's shifting your mindset, but you don't have to pay Noom to do that. I don't have to pay that either. What I have to do is actively say to myself, okay, it's time to replace my thoughts by start listening to audiobooks, by journaling, if that's what I want to do, by reading books, by watching YouTube videos on these topics. So that's that that knowledge replaces the current knowledge that I have, which is candy and brownies taste good. So that's what I want to talk to you in this podcast today, is your mindset. I want you to think of something in your life that you want to change.

We're not going to do all of them at the same time. We're going to pick one thing, which is maybe for you it's money, maybe it's housework, maybe it's organizing, maybe it's decluttering, whatever it is. I mean, the fact that you're listening to this podcast right now means that you probably want to make a difference in your home when it comes to your clutter, when it comes to organization, or you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. So you're already doing it.

You're already taking that first step. So just keep doing it. Borrow books from the library about organizing or about clutter. Listen to other podcasts too. Take action. on your home. Declutter something today. Organize something today. But the biggest thing that you can have, that you can do is tell yourself that you're not messy. You organize differently. And you're not bad at housework.

No one is bad. How can you be bad at housework? It just hasn't been a priority to you. And you're going to start making it a priority because you deserve this. This is a gift to you. You want to have a clean and organized home and it didn't get messy overnight and it's not going to get clean overnight and every day you're just going to keep with the positive mindset that this is for you and you deserve it and you're not bad at it. You just do it differently and you're going to keep trying and failing until you figure out your system and that's okay. All right. So, I hope you're feeling really inspired to identify a mindset shift that you want to make in your life

and that you know the best and easiest way to do that is to borrow the thoughts from other people who already have made that shift. So you can start replacing your negative mindset with a positive one today. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you guys next time.