Time to get rid of the things that no longer fit your life.
This is typically the time of year when everyone talks about spring cleaning which usually involves a purge of our closets. This year we are already in 24/7 hyper-cleaning mode, wielding spray bottles of alcohol like six guns in the old west, bleach bombing the house, hand sanitizer bottles about every 6 feet and mask wearing every time the food driver arrives or we venture to the store … so we got that covered. Psst, you missed a couple of spots, you still didn’t do the windows or get the dust on the molding above the doorway. Sorry, I digress.
In addition to all of the current clean-living activities we are all engaging in, I believe this is a great time to engage in cleaning your mental closet. You know, all that stuff that just doesn’t belong in your life anymore.
We have all been given a gift, time to think. Time to plan what we want our life to look like beginning in about a month. How you use that gift is up to you.
You can watch the news 24/7 and track the rising counts, politicians finger pointing and catch interviews highlighting the extremes of heartbreak and compassion. I respectfully suggest limiting your intake of ‘news’ to a small amount of time per day from a source you can trust, if there’s one left.
A better use of several hours per week would be to look around your home. What’s physically there that creates anxiety or stress? Pictures of the ex, gifts from people you no longer want in your life, shelves lined with comfort foods that you shouldn’t eat, you know all the things that create an emotional trigger when you see them.
Now is a great time to redecorate and remove those trigger items. You can choose to shop differently and start eating healthier.
It’s also a perfect time to see who is on your list of 1,456 ‘friends’ who trigger angst when you see them comment, post, like, or message you. Perhaps blocking, removing and further distancing is the right thing for you to do.
There is a very real benefit to social distancing … those toxic people that you were around way too much, you’re free of them. If you choose to stay that way is your call.
You may be cocooned in your house, or if essential, you’re going to work and then home again but in your down time …
You can spend hours on social media commiserating with everyone else, or you could spend some time taking an online class, learning something new.
You could binge watch every season of every show on Netflix, or you can order a couple of really good books from Amazon, outside your normal genre, and give yourself a break from screen time.
You can sleep in every morning and burn the days, not shower, and stay in your bunny slippers or you can stick to your routine, get up, shower, get dressed and be productive.
If you want to clean out the mental clutter, use this time to make room for new things, new learning, join a new group of like minded individuals and make some new friends.
The world will continue moving, the virus will go into remission and you will be able to go outside again … will you just jump back into your old ways or will you be ready to embrace something new?
I am writing, learning, connecting and planning for what I will no longer allow in my life that I hadn’t had the time or energy to work on before now.
We’ve been cooking at home rather than eating out, having dinner as a family, some board games have even come out of hibernation. In short, we’ve been getting back to basics, you know like talking without using our thumbs.
Oh yeah, I’m cleaning my closet too.
Not sure where to start, what direction to go or how to proceed? Let’s talk about it. Connect with me @ www.TakeTheStrongRoad.com.
