Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Declutter Challenge - Part One - Self Awareness | Clutterbug Podcast # 119

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

In this podcast, we will try something a bit different! Let's do some written self-awareness exercises from my guided journal, "The Declutter Challenge". Together, we will discover your negative core belief, change your perception about housework and do some REAL inner work on how to talk to yourself! Grab a pen and let's get started.          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

Hey, ClutterBuds, welcome back. I thought we do something a little different here with this podcast. I'm also going to put this in the course. I thought it would be really fun to go through the declutter challenge in an audio style with you. So the declutter challenge is a book I wrote a few years ago. It's actually a guided journal that helps with the mindfulness part of decluttering. So it's going to help you overcome the mental challenges that come with letting go of your things. and getting organized and cleaning because here's the honest truth. The roadblock in your way is 90% in your head. Yes, it's hard work decluttering and it might be that you don't have the time or the space or the money or the physical ability. But I'm going to tell you the honest truth, 90% of what's stopping you is yourself in your mind. And that's what this declutter challenge is all

about and I'm going to walk you through it and read this book to you and do the challenges with you step by step. We're only going to go maybe a chapter or two at a time. Grab a notebook, grab a piece of paper, pause this right now, grab something to write with, grab a pen, and let's start doing these exercises right now. So the first step is mindfulness. Listen, I'd says here, Zen level Baby Yoda. I don't know if you watch the Mandalorian, but baby Yoda is super zen and we want to get Zen too and when I think of mindfulness and I think of meditation and all of that I don't know I've always just been sort of turned off by the idea I'm like oh that that's for hippies or whatever you know what I mean that that certainly isn't me but the truth

is being mindful just means being aware of our thoughts that's all it is it's being aware of our thoughts and we don't have to even meditate to be aware of our thoughts we just have to get to a place where we're asking ourselves, what am I feeling right now? What am I thinking right now? When we're in a situation that's causing us happiness or anxiety or sadness or anger, we really ask ourselves why we're feeling this way. So I don't personally meditate. I'm not into essential oils. I don't have a bunch of crystals. I definitely don't do yoga. I should. I should, but I don't. But I'm a strong believer in the power of mindfulness. It's a strong believer in the power of mindfulness. it's just taking time to be aware of my thoughts and feelings and recognizing how they're affecting

me so that I can change them if it's affecting me in a negative way. Here's an example. If every time you need to clean the kitchen, you get upset and think, this isn't fair. I don't want to have to do housework after working all day. You've made it into a horrible chore before you've even begun and now you're way less likely to actually clean the kitchen. If you catch yourself having these thoughts, you can acknowledge them and then change them to, if I spend 15 minutes tidying now, I'll have the rest of the night to relax. It's this small change in the way you self-talk that can actually change your motivation. This is what I did when it came to every aspect of home management.

I was a stay-at-home mom and then I started running a daycare and at one point I was working more hours than Joe who was working outside the house and yet still I was in charge of all the cooking and all the cleaning and doing the dishes and the laundry and grocery shopping and I was so resentful. I was so resentful. I'm like cleaning poo off the toilet cursing him and doing his dishes and picking up his dirty clothes off the floor and I'm here's the truth I got to a point where I many times considered leaving my marriage over this because I felt disrespected, I felt trapped, I felt just horrible, and I rebelled by just not wanting to do any of those things. I started working with a counselor who started doing mindfulness work with me and she was like you got to focus on what you can do and your feelings and and how this stuff makes you feel and so I started looking at it as he honestly didn't care if the dishes were piled up he

would do them if they got really bad but his level of bad and my level of bad were very very different and I was doing it because it made me happy and so I stopped nagging and I started just focusing on the positive I'm doing the dishes because waking up to a clean kitchen makes me happy. I'm doing the laundry because not having piles of dirty clothes all over makes me happy. And whether it's right or it's not, and yes, he should be helping and yes, I shouldn't have been doing it all. That is I put that aside and I focused on the things that I could control. And that was me and the way mind was going. So anyways, I'm getting off topic. I'm rambling. The point is, mindfulness is the first step in the decluttering process and every thing we want

to change in our life, mindfulness is the first thing we need to do. So the first exercise we're going to do is really focus on what we want from our house, how we want it to make us feel, the positive aspects of it, why we want to declutter in the first place. We're really going to put these things down. We're going to be, what are we grateful for in our home? I want you to write a list of all the positive things about your home now and how you're going to feel when it's decluttered. And just take a few minutes. You can pause this if you want and just like positivity dump on the page. Just put down all the good stuff that's coming from your home and from cleaning it and from decluttering it and all the good feelings it's going to give you. Because these are the core things

when we start feeling a little ragey or a little overwhelmed or anxious or mad, we can have these to come back to, our positivity core that's sucking us back down and really grounding us in the moment when we need it. Okay, so we've talked about mindfulness. Now let's talk about self-awareness, which basically is another word for mindfulness. It's all the same thing. But being self-aware is so important because you need to really identify how you're thinking and feeling and talking about yourself and how to change the narrative. So are you kind to yourself or are you a giant bully? Do you clutter your mind with a lot of negative self-talk without even realizing it? And are you sabotaging your own success before you even start? And this also goes for your home. Are you being

kind and loving to your home? Perception shapes every single aspect of our life. Remember I just talked about the kitchen? So the kitchen's a mess, right? And do I leave it and say to myself, this isn't fair. I don't want to do housework after working all day? You know, do I whine about it? Or do I tell myself, if I spend 15 minutes tidying the kitchen now, I'll have the rest of the night to relax and I get to wake up to a clean kitchen tomorrow. The kitchen is still messy no matter which statement you choose. It isn't fair. I have to do it. I have worked all day. This isn't fair. Why do I have to do it? Or if I do this now, it only takes 15 minutes. I can relax the rest of the night and wake up to a clean kitchen tomorrow. Both of those statements, while they may actually be true, both of them,

one makes us feel negative and one makes us feel positive about the situation. It's how we are responding to the same situation. And if two people were presented with the same kitchen mess, but one whined about it and said it's not fair, and the other looked forward to relaxing and having a clean kitchen in the morning, who's more likely to actually start and finish the task? Who do you think is more likely to wake up in the morning to actually a clean kitchen and the other person have an even messier kitchen to deal with the next night? Nothing changes. between these two people, except their perception. An awareness is the link between the internal negativity and the external clutter, and it gives us the opportunity to change both of these things.

But I'm going to tell you the truth, okay? It's not going to be easy. This isn't also just about how you perceive your messy kitchen or your messy bedroom. This is about digging deep into how the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself impact how your home looks. Before we start, before we start, okay, grab your pen. I want you to pause this again. And I want you to write some things that you are great at. I just want you to get into the mindset of complimenting yourself and recognizing things that you are good at. And for some reason, especially for women, I mean, men could fill a novel with the things that they think they're good at. Most men, I'm generalizing. But,

women really struggle with this. So nobody else is going to read this just for you. I want you to compliment yourself and write some things that you are great at. Okay, now we're going to do a self-perception exercise, which it can get complicated. But basically, what I want you to do is to write down the biggest issue that your home's current state is like the biggest issue you have about your home in its current state. Maybe it makes you feel overwhelmed. Maybe it makes you feel overwhelmed. Maybe it's stressing you out. Maybe your kitchen's super messy. Whatever it is.

What's the biggest issue you have? Okay, so under that, under the biggest issue you have with your home, I want you to write what the worst thing about that is. So here's some examples. My home is messy. The worst thing about that is, I don't have enough space for the things that I want. And then underneath, you write again,

the worst thing about this is, I'm not giving my children the home that they deserve. The worst thing about this is, I'm a bad mother. The worst thing about this is, I feel like I can't do anything right. Which again, comes down to the core belief. So you write down the issue and then you break it down the worst thing about this. What's the worst thing about that? Until you get to a core belief. A core belief is a negative thought that we have about ourselves. like I can't do anything right. I'm stupid.

I'm really bad at something. I don't know. I don't know what your core belief is. But it really is how we self-sabotage. We use this core belief to stop us from trying things because we assume we're going to fail anyways. And identifying that core belief is so important. I mean, I have so many, listen,

I've done this exercise a million times. I have so many core beliefs. But a number of this core beliefs are for myself, like I genuinely used to believe that I was a very dumb person. I wouldn't try new things. I wouldn't do anything that was really hard. I stayed away from technology. I really thought that I,

because I had always struggled with math as in high school, that I was stupid. And it stopped me from trying a lot of things. I also had a core belief that I was messy, that I was just born messy. And that I could never change. And that stopped me from getting. organized it stopped me from trying even to bother getting into cleaning

routines and anything like that and I still to this day have a core belief that I just am a naturally unfit unhealthy person and it's a core belief that stops me from even trying exercising and continues continues to have me self-sabotaging when it comes to my health I have this core belief that I'm just a person that can never change so right down your core belief, the core belief about yourself. Now what we're going to do is flip it on its head. We're going to find evidence for the opposite. I want you to shut that negative thought down and I want you to prove to yourself that it's wrong by listing five things that proves it's not true.

So I can't do anything right. Well, I'm doing my job. I'm raising my chance. children. I can drive a car. I can do that right. I mean, not overly well. But we can always find evidence. It could be something super small to show that the opposite is true. I want you to really dig deep. If you're feeling like you're a messy person and you've always been a messy person and it's hard for you to five things to say that that isn't true, I want you to like think of okay, everything's a disaster, but I'm really good at using my planner. Or I'm good at delete emails from my inbox or my car is relatively clean or I'm really good at cleaning the kitchen when I do it or I don't know my my purse is organized I don't know what yours is but I want you to

find five things that proves that your core belief isn't true okay we're going to do one more fun and quick exercise really quick grab a piece of paper and a pen and I want you to draw a diamond so a big diamond not big big ish I want you to write three words inside so a diamond is just a square turn sideways you want to point on the top you want to draw two point sides there and then a pointy bottom so it's like a square it's just a diamond i know i'm i'm overcomplicating this just draw any symbol you want in the top in the top corner i want you to write your goal so maybe it's to have a clean organized and tidy home maybe it's you want to declutter your entire house maybe it's something else, but I want you to write your goal in the top. Now in the middle, I want you to write

how this will make you feel about yourself. I want you to imagine that this goal has come true. Your house is super organized, very clean, gorgeous, tidy all the time. You're able to effortlessly maintain your house. How does this make you feel? Proud? Happy? in control? How does this make you feel about yourself? Write that in the middle. And at the bottom, in the bottom corner, I want you to write the date that you want to achieve this goal by. Six months, one year, one month, I don't know. I want you to write the goal at the bottom where you want to have achieved 100% your goal. Now you're ready for this? I want you to stretch out the goal. Scratch it out. scratch it out. And I want you to really ask yourself, with the goal gone, why would you wait

until the date at the bottom to feel this way about yourself? Look at the middle word or words that you wrote about how you are craving, how you really want to feel about yourself. And then look at that bottom and say, why would I wait till then? You can feel this way about yourself right now. You don't have to achieve that goal in order to feel that way about yourself. You can choose to feel this way about yourself right now. And feeling this way about yourself is how you're going to achieve that goal. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the first two chapters, well pieces of the first two chapters of the

Declutter Challenge. Come back and we will keep reading other chapters. And together we will practice mindfulness and we will overcome the mental challenges that we struggle with when it comes to taking back control of our home. We'll see you next time.