Mistakes that keep us from decluttering

Here are some common mistakes that keep us from decluttering and keeping what’s left over orderly:

Mistake #1: Waiting until you can devote an entire weekend to decluttering.

Dedicating an entire day to sorting through your home may not fit into your schedule—and Sharon Lowenheim, a certified professional organizer and the owner of Organizing Goddess, an organization service in NYC, says that's just fine. She's seen clients make great headway by taking a small-zone approach. If you're unsure what qualifies as "small," Lowenheim says to take an empty paper towel roll, look through it and identify one messy area. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and only work on the space you saw through the tube until the timer goes off. It could be a spice rack, a basket of magazines or a cluttered corner of your desk—she says you can even do some tasks while watching TV or waiting for a load of laundry to finish. Do this for a few days, refocusing your paper towel roll on a new spot each time and clearing it in a 15-minute segment and you'll make significant progress.

Mistake #2: Relying on a storage unit.

There are times when renting a space to stash your stuff is necessary (maybe you're temporarily relocating, or you just need a spot for your canoe all winter). Still, many people never go back to access their items, Lowenheim says. A 2017 study by the Self Storage Association found that almost 10 percent of U.S. households rent a storage unit, at an average cost of about $90 a month, (though it varies depending on how big the unit is, and what part of the country it's in). Yet 15 percent of people who rent units say they're storing items they no longer need or want. Before you make another payment on your space, consider if those folding chairs, baby clothes, old Christmas ornaments and tennis racquets are worth the nearly $1,100 a year you might be paying for someone else to store them.

Mistake #3: Keeping that $45 face cream, even though you hate the way it smells.

Pro organizers are used to seeing abandoned, barely-used or half-full bottles of moisturizer, sunscreen and facial serum in bathroom cabinets, and it's typically not because clients have simply forgotten about them. Andrew Mellen, an organization expert, speaker and the author of Unstuff Your Life, says the people he works with frequently tell him they spent so much money on a product, that even though they don't like it, they feel guilty throwing it away. Clutter isn't the only reason to toss products you're not using, though: many of the products actually expire way sooner than you might think. If you've already opened, say, a tube of anti-aging cream with retinol, it's only good for a year.

Ask Yourself 3 Questions When You Go Through Your Belongings

So, the first step to a clutter cure is to write down your favorite pack-rat phrases. My clients' top three are: "I have to go through those," "Someone could use that," and "But I need it!" Unless you use the object in question at least once a year, such righteous exclamations are actually symptoms of dysfunction. Obeying these protests will keep you overstuffed and off balance forever.

Instead, use your powers of analysis to outwit the primitive logic of these phrases. When I ask clients what they long for, the most common responses are "peace," "space" and "freedom." Clutter keeps us from achieving these goals, and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars buying larger homes. Empty space is more valuable—psychologically and physically—than almost any object.

With this in mind, walk into any room of your home and focus on 10 random objects. As you consider each, ask yourself (1) Do I truly need it?; (2) Do I truly adore it?; and, (3) Would I trade inner peace for this? The answers can help curb your pack-rat impulses, allowing you to clear out and move on.
— Martha Beck, life coach and author of Finding Your Own North Star

Is your mind your haven? Or your hell.

Is your mind your haven? Your safe place? The element of yourself that motivates you to lose weight, declutter our lives, go for new goal, enjoy rewarding relationships?

I was doing my yoga and listening to some wonderful guided meditations by the Honest Guys. They have some soothing yet powerful thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e33dETmxAr0#t=563.269666

Or, my favorite guided meditation for letting go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG71OxOoqEM

Our minds should be a safe place, our haven.

But is this so? Are we perhaps our own worst enemies?

Does your thinking empower or weaken you?

Do Something Extraordinary Daily

I was lying in a hot bath (which is for me, a daily shower person, extraordinary) reading Vogue Business (which I haven’t read in more than 10 years) and saw the headline “Something Extraordinary Daily”.

Wow! My creative brain was ready to grab the ball and run with it. But my boring yet sensible left-brain asked “What is extraordinary? Can you do that EVERY day?”

Not to be outthought, my creative brain tossed me out of the soothing warmth (I was suffering from muscle soreness due to a new workout last week – here we go again – extraordinary.). What can I do and think to flame my EXTRA out of the ordinary?

Is this just a mental deal, I contemplated. My brother says I have his DREAM LIFE, which surprised me. What’s so special about my life? That’s why I feel like I need this Extraordinary Challenge – to get me out of any complacent rut I might be in.

I really want to LIVE MY BEST LIFE!

Yes, I travel to exotic places and take long trips several times a year. I’ve experienced Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Bali, Hong Kong, Italy, France, Prague, Austria, Scotland, Ireland, Britain and more.  I’ll be going back to New Zealand this Christmas and take an overland tour. Last year, I was in Singapore, Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand but lots of that was on a ship stopping at important ports. I slept in a typical Japanese hotel on the floor.  I learned to meditate and practice yoga in India.

I am an American living in Germany. I bought a house in Florida but sold it the next year because I didn’t want to retire. I’ll be doing seminars at other German destinations and plan to look around while there.

I can speak two languages fluently and am working, albeit inconsistently, on Italian. French is still limping.  I’ve written books and developed several careers.

I decided at 65 that I don’t need to retire to have the Dream Life. So I keep working.

I am still not completely sure what my Dream Life should be. Perhaps seeking the Extraordinary is a key.

To make things easier and more practical, I deemed EXTRAORDINARY something that I don’t do every day or haven’t done at all.

Today, I plan to get 6,000 steps on my fitness tracker in one hour.

I want to write about the EXTRAORDINARY subject on this blog. (check!)

I want to read a book in one day (definitely not a fiction book). I’ll be doing lots of skimming here.

I want to put something together. Actually, I did that yesterday.  I assembled a flip chart to hold my yearly vision boards. They were rolled up in a corner for three years and now I can revisit my goals, achievements and visions of the last 10 years. Plus, I immediately cut out the headline “Something Extraordinary Every Day” and pasted it on my new Dream Board.

I want to cook up a completely new recipe. That might be good for tomorrow when the stores here in Germany are open again.

I want to draw a picture and just use crosshatching for values instead of my favorite blending tool.

And so it goes.

These tips might be helpful to attract your attention to the extraordinary in your life:

Pay attention. When you are distractedly staring at some sort of monitor, it’s impossible to notice the extraordinary things around you and how you feel about your life. Unplug, look up and be present.

Be grateful. Feeling and expressing gratitude will help you stay focused on the magnificent happenings of your day to day life.

Stop comparing yourself to others. Someone will always have more or less than you. There will always be someone who is better or worse at what you do. Even your past and future cannot be measuring sticks for your life today. Keep your eyes on your own paper.

Let go. Don’t be afraid of space and the absence of all the things you think you need to be happy and secure. Less things to care for, less personal emotional baggage to suffer from, etc.

Enjoy unfilled space. Clear out the clutter and the excess. You need space and room to pay attention to what matters most.

Slow down. The extraordinary life you’ve been waiting for is happening right now. Don’t wait until you retire! Don’t wait another minute! While you are speeding around, making plans, keeping up and getting by, your extraordinary life is patiently waiting for a hearty welcome. Slow up your pace and look around.  Perhaps come to a complete stop and fully appreciate what is right in front of your nose.

Enjoy tiny marvels. Extraordinary isn’t always in the grand gestures and big impressive changes or events. Enjoy small pleasures and find love in the little stuff.

Write it down. Keep a journal to record some of the extraordinary things in your daily life. Maybe just a Haiku if time is limited. This will be a reminder to notice and the more you observe, the more you will perceive.

Act like a tourist. You might get used to your surroundings and daily events and forget about the extraordinary parts. Be a tourist in your own life and see things for the first time. Remember how that view used to wow you, or how the way someone treated you used to make your heart race. I like to walk around, gazing at well-kept gardens. There is something different each season.

Be extraordinary yourself. The best way to live an extraordinary life is to be extraordinary. Be extraordinary in how you treat people, including yourself. Be extraordinary in how you choose to spend your time (maybe it won’t be hours of surfing or TV-binging). Be extraordinary through your thoughts, words and actions. Keep learning and expanding your horizons.

All of the extraordinary moments I experience while traveling, working, communicating, and teaching remind me about the extraordinary in every day. You don’t have to leave home to find it, but you can. Extraordinary is in all places.

Try to edge out the “busy” and replace it with the extraordinary for a while. For extraordinary to enter in, there needs to be an awareness of how much margin you’re living with. You might find that when your family simplifies things (with a packed schedule at the top of the list), there is a great chance of sharing adventures and experiences full of joy.

What’s extraordinary in your life right now? How can you enjoy EXTRAORDINARY every day?

Upsize Your Life - Step by Step

THE ‘PLUS ONE MINUTE’ IMPROVEMENT PLAN

I was watching this video this evening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DbvSl_C_kY

It reminded me that reaching goals doesn’t have to be hard.

Get 1% Better Every Day: The pleasant Way to Self-Improvement

Instead of trying to make radical changes in a short amount of time, just make small improvements every day that will gradually lead to the change you want. Just like compound interest, you start with a small amount yet you end up with riches by taking what you’ve saved plus interest. Repeat...

So, each day, just focus on getting 1% better in whatever it is you’re trying to improve. That’s it. Just 1%.

If you want to learn to play an instrument, practice 10 minutes. The next day, you practice 10 minutes plus 10x1%= 11 minutes.

You want to improve your core strength by doing planks for a certain time, say 10 seconds.  The next day, you do your plank for 11 seconds. The third day, 11x1%. It won’t exhaust or frustrate you but you will get stronger daily.

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens — and when it happens, it lasts.” —John Wooden

• Want to start the exercise habit? Just do a single push-up as soon as you roll out of bed in the morning. The next morning, add another. And so on and so forth. In two months, you’ll be doing 60 push-ups in the morning. Or run in place for 10 seconds. Add one second each day.
• Want to establish a morning and evening routine? Start with the evening, and concentrate on the 10 minutes right before you go to bed. Plan what you’ll do during those 10 minutes — it might be meditative breathing for one minute, brushing your teeth, then stretching, and reading for 7 — and make it a habit. Every day, add 5 more intentional minutes until your whole evening becomes a satisfying routine. Boom! You have a great evening ritual. Then work on the morning.
• Want to start writing? Instead of making it a goal to write a page each day, just start off with writing for a minute. That’s all. You might only get a sentence or two down, but that’s okay. The next day, add a minute. In a month, you’ll be writing for 30 minutes.
• Want to start meditating? Begin with a minute of breathing exercises. Or being quiet and still for one minute. Or start with 10 seconds and add 1% each day.
• Want to lose weight? Cut out one fast food meal. Or a sugary soda. Or cut your usual dinner portion in half.
• Want to have a neater house? Declutter one small surface or shelf. Clean out one drawer. Day by day, you'll get closer to your goal.

Avoid the temptation to get impatient and start rushing forward and taking bigger leaps. Take it slow, steady, and consistent.

Simply try to do a little bit better than you did the day before.

Losing Weight is a Mental Challenge

Losing Weight is a Mental Challenge that you can WIN!

There are many reasons why we let our weight balloon:

You’ve Developed Poor Habits

You associate crazy eating with social acceptance

You Eat for Comfort

You Like to Push Your “Feel Good” Buttons

You avoided fats and didn’t notice the increase in sugar

You Think “Why Even Bother?” confusing that with „I Am Good the Way I Am“

You’re Embarrassed to Go to the Gym

You Think Black and White/All or Nothing

You’re Depressed

You’re Comparing Yourself to Others

These are solid, but not insurmountable, hurdles.

We know by now that vegetables and fruits plus lots of water should make up the largest portion of what we put into our mouths.  We also know the dangers of fast food, sugar and pre-prepared foods. Then there’s the exercise we need to be getting, even if not as difficult as Navy SEALs training.

Okay, it’s a cinch.  We know what we need to do so we do it.

Daggone!  It’s not a cinch at all!

It’s not which „diet“ you chose.  In the long run, it is the diet you can stick to that will be the perfect diet for you. If you plan to be on your diet temporarily, if you are shooting for a specific weight and then back to „normal“ eating, your weight loss will be temporary.  Which diet aka “healthy way of eating” do you want to marry until death do you part?  That question is up to YOU, not researchers or diet gurus trying to sell books, courses and products.

Weight loss isn’t about finding the perfect diet, it’s about changing your life.  

Aye, there’s the rub.  What you’ve been doing up until now has been so pleasant.  We are hardwired to do things that make us feel good.  And that __________ (pizza, ice cream, beer, MacBurger – you fill in the blank) is promising to do just that.

If you think of it, you weren’t born craving those things.  You learned to love them.  And you can learn (re-learn) to love foods that are real foods and not junk.  Sure that is harder than if you’d gone through your life with other habits.

It’s a challenge!

Everyone has to make the decision for himself or herself.  It’s a mental process, not a physical process… You need to pour yourself even more into changing your mental attitude towards food and exercise.  Having a mental plan is not as hard as it sounds.

Begin by looking at damaging habits

You may have learned to eat candy and pizza from your family and friends but you don’t have to keep doing that.  It’s all about changing habits that are destructing your success.  You might be dipping into your secretary’s bowl of goodies.  Or perhaps you spend your evenings in front of some sort of screen and absentmindedly munch something unhealthy. Maybe your portions are just too large.

Write down all the habits that are keeping you from being slender, from sleep deprivation to chocolate bars in your desk.

Pick one of those habits, maybe a relatively easy one, to change.  What do you want to do instead of that habit?  You can replace the bad habit with a good one. If you’re craving that morning pastry, for instance, eating a piece of sweet fruit instead might be easier than just going without altogether.

Bad Habit	What I do now	What I want to do from now on?	How am I going to go about it?

Questions you might ask yourself:

... am I eating the rest of this meal because I’m still hungry or am I eating it because it’s there?

... do I really need to reward or comfort myself with crappy edibles? Or is there another way?

... do I feel in control of my eating habits? 

... do I know how to deal with negative thoughts?  Your thoughts are not necessarily correct, just because they pop into your head! („Oh, I just ate a donut. Well, my diet is down the drain now so I might as well eat another one.“)

… how can I avoid unhealthy carbohydrates and processed sugar (baked sweets, candy) today?

You might also take an approach in which you lose about 10-20 pounds/kilos at a time, and then maintain that weight for 4-9 months before trying to lose another chunk.  In that “maintenance” period, try to figure out how to eat to keep that new weight.  Once you prove to yourself that you can maintain it with ease, restart your effort to lose further weight.  This way you are very confident in your ability to maintain what you’ve already lost and only need to focus on the new challenge ahead.

Tuning into our bodies is the secret.  What is really going on?  As soon as we are aware of the weight and its consequences plus the reasons we eat, we have a great chance of developing the motivation to persevere.

Find out what other people have done and decide what is right for you. Get support from your family, friends and co-workers.  If they know how important it is, they will back you.

As I’ve suggested earlier this is much more of a mental challenge than a physical one.

Wake up everyday and think, “What do I have to do today to be healthy?”  As you can see, you are rewriting your story!

4 Secrets of Mental Toughness

What we can Learn from Navy SEALs’ Training

I love to watch YouTube videos of Navy SEALs training. No, I don’t like combat. The part that fascinates me is the training.  Many candidates start the training but only a very small portion actually make it through without giving up.

Since this blog is about upsizing your life (while and after decluttering), I wanted to find out the mental secrets of the soldiers who succeeded.

It took the military a while, but they finally got psychologists and brain experts to help them find out what the successful candidates did differently than the quitters.

4 Ways to Acquire Navy Seals’ Mental Toughness

It turns out that there are 4 “secrets” of success in this endeavor and they can definitely be used to help us in ours.

The four pillars of success are:

Goal Setting

Visualization

Self-Talk

Emotion control

Goal Setting

SEALS learn not only to set long-term, mid-term and weekly goals, they set micro-goals.  The training is so strenuous that they often think only extremely short-term: “The next 100 sit-ups”; “Make it through until breakfast”, etc.

If you have trouble with snacking, set a micro-goal like “I can make it this next half-hour snack free”, can help enormously. Of course, it helps to distract yourself, drink water and move, too!

Write down your long- and short-term goals. Perhaps, long-range, you want to achieve a certain weight, muscles toned, and wear a certain size in clothes. Short-term you might set the goal of having only healthy foods in the house or making your own meals with fresh produce.

Or perhaps your long-term goal is to have the garage so cleaned out and organized that you can actually park your car there! A short-term goal could be the right side of the garage. A micro-goal would be decluttering one square meter of the floor.

Using the next technique will increase your chances of success.

Visualization

Visualization is mental rehearsal, which means you practice in your head.  You can do this in three ways:

1) Imagine running through an activity successfully. Picture yourself doing what you want to do in the best possible way. Do this many, many times and your brain will learn what to do when the “real” (unimagined) opportunity comes.

I remember in Mark Phelps’ book how he described his mental preparation. He was a winner even before getting into the pool. Everything was taking place the way he knew it by heart: the diving board, the water, hand movements – he’d practiced it all thousands of times in the pool and in his mind.

Even when water started to enter into his goggles in a very important race. He could not see…. But Phelps had also trained this scenario in his mind. Sight would not be a problem for him because he knew by heart how many hand movements he needed to make until reaching the final wall. He dealt with the problem as he had rehearsed in his mind over and over, then went on to win the race.

This is the power of mental rehearsal.

Confront the adverse situation in your mind numerous times and it will come naturally when you face it in reality.

2) Watch other people successfully doing what you want to achieve. This is called observation training. Then, close your eyes and watch the same scene in your mind. Step into the picture or movie and experience doing the successful activity yourself.

3) There is another way of using imagery to increase your self-confidence and self-efficacy. Think of all the strengths and resources you have now that you didn’t have earlier in your life.  Enjoy the feeling of strength and competency. Feeling this strength, go back through an unpleasant (no traumas here, please) experience and change the outcome so that you feel better about it. Go ahead, just change it so that the outcome makes you feel satisfied.

Self-Talk

There is a great possibility that positive, motivating self-talk can override signals from the amydala. The amygdala is part of the limbic system and its purpose is to regulate emotional reactions such as fear and aggression and it developed prior to our neocortex (the thinking brain).

Whenever in peril, the amygdala kicks in as the first commander; it sends signals to the hippocampus (another part of the limbic system), which in turn releases stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline; they prepare our body for the fight or flight response.  Thus, all the energy available is hijacked and directed to the feet for running or to the hands for fighting the imminent danger.

According to a new study, giving yourself advice and encouragement in the second-person before an upcoming task may actually boost your performance more than first-person self-talk.

Researchers also asked 135 students to write down advice to themselves in relation to exercising more often in the next two weeks. Those who wrote in the second-person, again, reported a more positive attitude toward the task and even planned to do more exercise than the students who referred to themselves in first-person. (This study was published online in the European Journal of Social Psychology on June 23, 2014.)

Emotion control

This is more of a physical exercise. It focuses on breathing and it requires to deliberately breathe slower as it would help counteract some of the effects of panic. When you panic, you take faster, shorter breaths, which is a forerunner of hyperventilation.

Two ways of breathing

Long exhales mimic the process of relaxation within the body.
Long inhales provide much more oxygen to the brain which results in better cognition processes.

4X4 breathing

Breathe in, slowly, counting to four.

Breathe out slowly, counting to four.

Repeat until calm

The Lengthened Exhalation

My favorite way to relax myself is to let the body inhale of it’s own accord and then lengthen the exhalation gently. Breathe out slowly and as long as it is comfortable. Don’t force. Just follow the breath.

Why shouldn’t we use the same techniques of mental toughness that successful warriors use? We don’t have to plow into combat; we just need to harness the power of our minds.