Lately, I have been stuck on change. (If that isn’t a paradox, I don’t know what is.) I have been receiving messages from people who want to talk about a change in their lives: transitions they are in the midst of, events that they hope to have happen; the conversation inevitably leads to their feeling of being stuck.
This I can totally relate to.
In fact, I almost fell off my chair while reading Transitions by William Bridges in which he describes a phase of murky confusion that exists between the ending of one event and the beginning of another. I had just finished describing to someone close to me this very phenomenon that I have been experiencing increasingly over the past year. I couldn’t believe how true to this theory I fit. I have become so accustomed to this “whirling eddy” that I call it, that now I almost get excited about it. I know it leads to something wonderful even if at the moment all it is doing is giving me a headache and possibly insomnia. So when I am approached by people who are in that state I feel equally excited and tell them this – I’m sure they’re glad that somebody thinks this turmoil is beneficial. (FYI, here’s a definition of eddy that absolutely describes how I feel in that state: A current, as of water or air, moving contrary to the direction of the main current, especially in a circular motion.)
I am going to spend a few posts talking about this and giving you tools to discover your relationship with change. But first things first.
It can be difficult to think about change when we feel stuck. So, today I want to focus on blocked creative energy or that feeling of being stuck. As summer ends and fall begins (an ending and a beginning are the 2 other phases of a transition), this is a Tuesday Task to get the energy flowing even if it just begins as a trickle escaping from behind a dam. We have been hearing about the benefits of de-cluttering for awhile now. De-cluttering your space = de-cluttering your mind. It makes room for grand ideas and positive energy. It’s been made popular by those home improvement shows in which a Type-A personality comes in and has homeowners reduced to tears and only one box of memories that they are allowed to keep. While I think this is a great long-term idea, for today’s task I am suggesting you give away one item that you have been holding on to for some time that you really don’t need. A-ha…there’s that tricky word “need”. When I say you don’t need it, I mean you never use it, it doesn’t go with your decor, if you didn’t have it you wouldn’t be the least bit crippled. That kind of thing.
Select your item, say adios and thanks for the good times and toss it into your donation bag. We keep a large, black garbage bag in my husband’s closet in which we drop clothes and household items when the itch to get rid of something creeps up on us. Then we head to the closest thrift store when it’s full. By the way, my de-cluttering is more like rampage style. One item so does not do it for me and with practice I have gotten very good at chucking without lingering.
Don’t look back. If you think you may be prone to going back into the bag, get rid of the item right away. But I think that you are going to enjoy the feeling so much that you may even toss out something else…and something else. Practice this regularly. You’d be surprised where energy gets stuck. I’m a firm believer that the act of physically moving energy around in your environment stimulates changes within. Try it and let me know what you think!
Pull out your journal or your task binder and answer the following prompts (also logged here):
- Which item did you select and why?
- Did any particular emotion get stirred up as you tossed it into your donation bag?
- Do you see yourself doing this more often? A major overhaul over a couple weekends? One or two items every week?
- Over the next week, note any changes in your state (physical, mental, emotional) since tossing this item. If you haven’t noticed anything…keep tossing!
