Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The EASY way isn’t making you happy. It’s time to level up your life. | Clutterbug Podcast # 102

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

This podcast is a little tough love. If you are tired of feeling stuck and stagnant in your life, it's time to push through the hard things and level up your life.        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 about how to do hard things, how to actually make yourself do all of that stuff that you know you should be doing, but you definitely don't want to do, whether it's dishes, laundry, growing a business, going to the grocery store. I don't know what you have to get done, but today I'm going to share how you can make yourself do it. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about doing hard things and how to force yourself to do the things that you know you should, but you don't really want to and it's not so much motivation. I'm not going to talk about ways to motivate yourself or borrow motivation from other people. We've talked that to death. Today is a little bit of tough love.

It's about parenting yourself. It's about like suck it up buttercup. You have to do this. It's non-negotiable. You're a freaking adult. It's time to do it. And this is honestly how I talk to myself a lot. and it's how I need to talk to myself a lot. I think I spent the majority of my youth and teenage years and 20s sort of rebelling against the idea that you can't tell me what to do. You're not going to put me in a box. I left home at 15. I left home at 15 because I didn't want to have to listen to my parents' rules.

So I really resisted the idea of adulting and this like, stereotypical work that we're supposed to do in order to be a good responsible adult. I resisted hard. I left home at 15. And even when I got my own place and even when I got married to Joe, everything just seemed harder for me than it did for other people. That was my perception. Doing the dishes was hard.

Doing laundry was hard. Keeping up on things was hard. Paying my bills on time was hard. Managing my paycheck. Like not running out of money before my next paycheck came. something that just seemed so ridiculously hard for me. All these aspects of, I guess, being a grown-up I struggled with. And I'm seeing something, though, something so fascinating is that it's only hard because it's new. And so I'm part of this Facebook group, Take Your House Back,

because we have a course, takeyourhouseback.com. This isn't a shameless plug, though it is a great course. There's 6,000 people in the private Facebook group. And what I'm seeing is almost half of the people in that group are struggling to do their dishes every day. Like this is what we say to start with. We start with trash bag therapy, so decluttering anything that is obvious trash and just doing your dishes every day. And over half of the people in the group struggle to do their dishes every day. And I'm not saying this to shame anyone.

I'm saying this because that used to be me. That used to be like just getting my dishes done was hard. and I didn't want to and I really struggled with that and I didn't understand how other people could do that or want to do that or get it done and it was hard for me and now I read these posts from people who are like I just I don't know how you do it and I did my dishes yesterday but I didn't do them two days before that and I don't think I can do them today and I and I read these posts and I think oh my gosh like once you have that done this is no longer even register as a thing to do, right? It's like nothing anymore. You don't even think about it. You're just on autopilot. You do your dishes because it has to get done and you add a new hard. And maybe it's laundry after that, doing a load of laundry every day, but I can promise you eventually that's not going to feel like work anymore either. It's just going to be something that you do and then you add a new hard. And maybe that's tidy every day. And for me, my hosts, believe it or not, it's to a point where it's no longer hard, but that doesn't

mean I don't have hard. It just means I keep leveling up. It means I went from couldn't even get my dishes done to doing the dishes, to couldn't even do my laundry, to doing that, to managing tidying, to managing being a mom, to managing running a business. And now I have this whole other new level of hard that is only hard because it's new. And the only way to take something that's hard and new and make it easy and a routine is to parent yourself is to say tough nut mouse I'm doing it anyways I don't have a choice I'm doing this and it's only going to be hard for a little while until it's easy and then guess what I'm adding more hard and I'm not telling you this that life never gets easier because I want to scare you away I want to tell you that every time

you add a new hard, you level up. You level up financially. You level up just as a person. You become better in all areas of your life. But it's hard work. But there is nothing that is worthwhile that isn't hard work. So I'm watching a show called The Good Doctor. Joe downloaded a bunch of episodes for me.

It's amazing. I'm loving it so much. He says something all the time. he says tough nut mouse so he was raised in foster care and he had like an abusive household and everything and one of his foster parents said to him tough nut mouse like even if something's bad tough nut mouse you're doing it anyways and my mom used to tell me all the time suck it up buttercup you know she'd give me chores to do or i'd have to do something awful and i'd whine and complain and she'd say it up buttercup and i remind myself of this all the time like i say to myself

suck it up buttercup you got to do it anyways because life is hard new things are hard it doesn't seem fair sometimes it doesn't feel natural it feels like we're just aren't meant to do things whether it's the dishes or the laundry or run a business or be a parent or homeschool your kids oh man that's hard doing online school while trying to work full time from home is hard but it's hard because it's new and it will get easier and once it gets easier we'll have another hard thing but we will be at a different level now personally right every time we are going to get better as a person and our life is going to get better we have to bust through that hard wall that's standing in our way first and maybe yours is doing the dishes every day or maybe you've already busted

through that wall and you have a new one. And I want to tell you that the walls get thinner or, you know, more fragile and easier to break through, but that isn't true. But they're all so worth it. And we can either be the person who just resolves to the fact that we don't want to work hard in life and we want to just rest, we want to sit on the couch and we just want to enjoy our lives or take the easy route. But it isn't happy. Easy doesn't equal. a life that you love and that you cherish and that you're proud of, easy just means you're getting out of work, but at the end of the day, easy makes you miserable. And the reason you're listening to this podcast is probably because you no longer want to take the easy route.

You no longer want to put things off, procrastinate, make excuses of why you don't want to go after the things that you know deep down inside you really want to go after. We don't take the easy route. We can do hard things. You can do hard things. Hard doesn't equal bad. It doesn't equal bad. Hard equals happiness. And I can't even believe I'm saying this, but the truth is structure, routine, discipline.

Those are things that do not come naturally to me, but I can force myself to do. I can parent myself. and say enough is enough you're not having any more TV time you're not having your bedtime snack you're not you know getting to and do any of the things that you enjoy until you've done xyz i have to parent myself and you have to parent yourself too you cannot wait until you feel like doing stuff because spoiler alert you will never feel like doing it there will come a time maybe that you're feeling so guilty that you're you're parenting yourself and getting up and and doing it, but by that point, you've already gone so long and so far trying to take the easy

route that not only is doing the thing you're doing harder, but you're beating yourself up and you're feeling like crap about yourself even though you're doing the task. So why not parent yourself in the beginning? Why not do the hard stuff in the beginning and keep leveling up? A big part of parenting yourself a big part of breaking through those walls and doing the hard stuff is changing your mindset, is faking your mindset until you make it. It's telling yourself, I'm, I'm great at this, or at least I'm going to be happy when it's done. I need to get this done. I deserve more. My family deserves more. It's time to stop procrastinating and putting this stuff off. It's time to stand up and do the work that I need to do.

And I don't know what level you're at. I have no idea. But everybody starts at level zero. So if you are struggling to just do the dishes, you are not alone. You are not alone. I have been there. And half of the group of the Take Your House Back course is exactly where you are. This isn't a competition.

We're not looking sideways to see where other people are in their lives and in their heart. We're staying in our lane. And we're focusing on the task that we're, need to do. And managing your home, managing that, I feel like that's the first step, the first wall that you need to break through. Because for me, personally, my house affected every aspect of my life. When my house was out of control, I felt out of control. When my house was out of control, my finances were out of control, my relationships were out of control, my self-worth was out of control. I didn't have anything that was manageable when I could.

couldn't manage my dishes and my laundry. And I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg. Maybe you can get other aspects of your life in control and then your house will follow. But for me, I just found it was really easy to start with what I could see. It was easy to start in my space instead of getting counseling and dealing with my mom issues or whatever other things were changing my mindset. I kind of shortcutted it, I guess, by tackling my house first and parenting my mom. and realizing that nobody is going to come in and fix this for me. I got to do it.

And I built confidence in myself that way. I made changes that were that were that were hard. But then they were easy. And that's the so amazing thing about tackling your house. Yes, doing your dishes every day at first seems hard. But a month later, it seems like no big deal and you're not even thinking about it anymore. It's just something you do as part of being a grown up. but I'm not saying it's fun and I'm not saying that you don't still have to parent yourself to do it,

but it no longer feels hard and I can promise you that. And then you're moving on and you're moving on. And this crazy thing that happened was once my house started getting under control, I think I started feeling more confident in myself maybe as a grown up. I don't know. Or like I could tackle the bigger and harder things because I had done this. And I added managing my finances. I read Dave Ramsey books and a bunch of financial books.

and I started managing that. And then I started running a business while being a stay-at-home mom and then adding another business and adding blogging and then writing books and all of those things at the time seemed so hard. And now looking back, I feel like now that they're done, they weren't a big deal at all. And I could do that again. And I've just leveled up and added new levels of hard to my life.

And each one that I break through, each wall that I break through, always leads to more hard, but it always leads to a better and more fulfilling life too. And I'm so proud of myself and I think that's the biggest blessing that comes from parenting yourself is the pride that comes with actually accomplishing those things. And so wherever you are in your life, I want you to pick a heart and I want you to push yourself through it. In five days, it's national give up day. In five days, that's the day where like 95% of the people give up their New Year's resolutions. They give up wanting to change. Even if they haven't made a New Year's resolution, let's be honest. When the New Year starts, we have big goals and big

dreams for ourselves. And by January 17th, 95% of people have stopped doing it and they're just going back to the person and the life that they were before. They're just resolved to the fact that they can't change. So why bother trying? That isn't going to be you. You're going to keep pushing and keep trying because you're worth it, because you deserve it, because doing hard things is worth it.

Taking the easy route is not making you happy. It's time to try something new. It's time to bust your butt and guess what? you're going to fail and you're going to have some nights where you don't do the dishes or you're going to have some times where you try something new and it doesn't work out and it's an epic failure and if you're organizing your house you might be in the messy middle which means your house looks worse than it did before you started because you've pulled everything out and you're doing rearranging and you're looking around and you're feeling overwhelmed you haven't failed you just

haven't finished yet you're in the messy middle and we don't sit down and we don't give in to easy and we don't stop just because it's hard, you can do hard things. I want you to push through and keep pushing through until it becomes easy and then we move on to the next. Maybe this is not a very encouraging podcast. If you're like me and you've spent a really long time in your life, I mean, I spent years just taking the easy route and that's a hard habit. break, right? It's a hard habit to break. And I find even now with the shutdown, I fall back into

those ways where I would rather just like watch TV or lay in bed. I would rather not do the hard things. But I know that life is a climb. And as soon as I stop climbing, I start sliding back down. And I'm not saying that to you to scare you or to discourage you. I'm saying that to you. I'm saying that to you because climbing feels a whole lot better than sliding down. And so every time I think that I'm going to love taking a break and laying around and doing nothing, I also get in the habit of laying around and doing nothing and that's a really hard habit to break. And so I'm not telling you you have to work 24 hours a day or to bust your butt or to add more onto your plate, but 15 minutes can move a mountain. Bust in your butt for 15 minutes, setting a timer and doing the day.

dishes or doing the laundry or sending that email or writing in a book write for 15 minutes if writing a book is your dream 15 minutes can move a mountain but it is going to be hard but you're worth it and so write down a wall that you want to break this week write down a goal that you have for yourself that that you are not going to give up on that you are going to do it past january 17th that you are worth it. I want you to write down that goal and I want you to parent yourself to do that at least 15 minutes every day for the next seven days. I hope you're feeling motivated, you guys, to do hard things.

I hope you're feeling motivated to level up to the next level of your life and not just be resigned and be happy with taking the easy way. The easy way isn't making you happy. Thank you.