Real Change Begins At Home – Part Two

Yesterday I told you about my attempt to declutter my living space in hopes of ultimately decluttering my life.   Today I want to talk about the next step toward organizing the clutter and chaos.  Now that you have eliminated the unnecessary items from your environment, it’s important to realize that you’re not done yet.  Even though it’s tempting to call it quits after removing the extraneous things from your home, everything you have left in your world has to have a place to belong so you need to find one or create one before you can truly claim that you are organized.  That’s where we are at now.

I started this process with my bedroom and we’ll continue there because your bedroom is the place you start your day and end it so whether you know it or not, you bedroom is setting the tempo for how each day of your life will go.  For example, if you wake up in the morning and you’re rummaging through clothes on the floor to find what you’re going to wear that day or stressing because you are going to be late because you can’t find your keys, you are going to carry that chaos throughout the rest of your day.  If you end your day in that same disheveled place, it will affect your sleep and set up the cycle of disorder for the next day.  Amazing that it took me 29 years to come to the earth shattering conclusion that I should keep my room clean J

However, organization goes beyond clean.  Messiness is caused by laziness and let’s face it, we are all a little on the lazy side at times.  I recently finished a book by Maria Menounos where she says, “lazy people work the hardest” and that couldn’t be a truer statement.  If I had just tried to keep things a little neater as I went along then cleaning wouldn’t be a full day or week long process.  Sure it might be easier to take the shirt off and throw it on the floor when you’re getting changed but how much longer does it really take to throw it in the hamper or put it back where it belongs? 

Now my question becomes, how can I set myself up so that it is just as easy to put the shirt in the drawer rather than throw it on the floor and that answer is simple.  If it seems easier to throw something somewhere other than where it should go, your space is obviously not set up to produce the best results.  By this I mean, after you have decluttered and you are left with the things you truly want to keep, you need to find a place for each of these things and they should fit there without being shoved or forced or pushed into that place.  If your drawers are over flowing and you have to pull everything out to get to the shirt you want or you have so many shoes that you can barely close the closet door, your room is set up for organizational failure.  Maybe you need to buy more drawers or rearrange your closets so that you are utilizing your space correctly but for everything you want to keep in your life, you have make sure it has a place where it fits and is easy to access so that you will be more likely to return it there when you need to.

Ok I’m sure you are really wondering why you wasted your time reading all about my cleaning but there is greater purpose here.  I want to be the best version of myself and therefore I need to set myself up for success.  An organized home can directly impact other factors in your life.  Since I’ve reorganized everything, I have not had to do any major cleaning days because I’m straightening up as I go along.  On top of all that, I have been getting to work earlier because I’m not rummaging for things and I can get ready quicker.  That is also allowing me to do things like make my bed or eat breakfast before I leave the house, which in the past were completely out of the question because I was always rushing to get out the door.  When I come home, I feel like I can just unwind from the day because I’m not overwhelmed by all the clutter and if something is out, I have a place to put it now that is just as easy to access as a pile on the floor.  Overall, I feel better about my world and more in control.  My diet is better, my mood is better, I sleep better, and I’m managing my time better. 

Cleaning and organization are little things but as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s the little things that help to paint the bigger picture.  We can say that they are too inconsequential to mention but if you think that, then you probably aren’t taking care of the little things in your life.  Once again, in order to achieve success in the bigger sense of the word, you need to set yourself up to succeed but handling the smaller details to create the most efficient environment for the life you want to lead. 

“There is no one giant step that does it.  It’s a lot of little steps.” – Peter A. Cohen

Real Change Begins At Home – Part One

So in the spirit of this whole laying the foundation concept I realized that I had to start my organizational makeover at the epicenter of my life, my home.  It is a common saying that home is where the heart is so you should always make sure you put some heart into your home because it is going to affect the rest of your world. 

You probably have no idea how important the set up and organization of your home is to the rest of your life but if you really think about it, everything you do is impacted by the quality of your living space.  Whether your living in a house or an apartment or simply in a bedroom of someone else’s home, you need to make sure that that space is appropriate for you and life you want to create.

For example, I live in an apartment.  I am not a naturally neat and tidy person.  I rummage through drawers leaving all the clothes in them wrinkled and crumpled.  Most of the time I leave my closet doors and my drawers wide open partly because they are overflowing and too difficult to close.  There is typically clothing laying all over the furniture and floor simply because I don’t feel like putting it away.  I don’t throw anything away so I have half empty or practically empty bottles of hair product, nail polish, or lotion all over the place.  Magazines are piled up in empty corners on the floor, junk is stashed under the bed with no sort of order to it, and my bed is never made.  Basically, I think you get the picture that my apartment lacks organization and I’ve only described my bedroom so far.   It’s no wonder that the rest of my life is messy and chaotic if this is the environment that I live in. 

As I said in my previous post, I’ve tried the extreme way of cleaning up my act and while it produces good results for a while, the neatness never seems to stick.  This time, I needed it to stick. So I made tweaks in my everyday life that were subtle but hopefully beneficial to overall goal.  My first step was to declutter.  Now I know you’re thinking, why wasn’t I smart enough to declutter my life sooner?  Well like I said in the extreme versions on my home makeovers I have decluttered but this time I changed my way of thinking when I did it.  Instead of being frustrated with all the junk and just throwing things out, I really thought about what I was letting go of. 

So when I started throwing away product and make up, I started a new trash bag.  By the time I was done, I had filled up the trash bag and it was almost too heavy for me to carry.  It became very apparent to me that this was more than just a bag full of old cosmetics but rather that is was a lot of wasted money and impetuous, unnecessary purchases.  I did the same thing with my clothing.  I removed items I didn’t wear anymore from my closets and drawers.  As I put things in give away and throw away piles, I mentally estimated all the money I had spent on these items vs. how much use I actually got out the garments.  Many of the things I was getting rid of were items that were either rarely worn or out of style only one season after I had purchased them.  By the time I was done with my decluttering, I had bags of things that had been extracted from bedroom and I was very aware of all the money that was now been thrown in the dumpster.  My hope was that the next time I would go shopping or be browsing in Ulta or Target for that must have hair product or nail polish, that I would remember those bags and make smarter purchasing decisions.  I will say that this like trick has worked.  Over the past month, when buying something, I have been able to keep the images of the discarded items top of mind and it has helped curb my frivolous spending.

Once the unnecessary items are extracted from your living space, you are ready to move on to the next step.  What to know what that is?  Well you declutter and I’ll write Part Two for when you’re done but while you simplify your surroundings keep this in mind.  My mother always said that there is a difference between needs and wants and as much as it pains me to say this, she may have been on to something. 

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."  ~Hans Hofmann

Little Less Talk, A Little More Action

Well lately it seems like I’ve been doing a lot of talking about all these things I want to do but from my posts it doesn’t seem like I’ve been doing much in the way of acting on these ideas.  Well guess again!  Sure I have been doing a lot of thinking and plotting but I’ve definitely started getting to it.  The main thing I wanted to do is make sure that before I wrote about it, I had something to write about. 

The other day I talked about having to do the little things to lay the foundation to work on bigger things and that is exactly where I’m starting, at the foundation.  In order to create a solid foundation for myself, I have to set myself up to gain control in my life.  To do this, I need to get organized.  Sounds like fun, right?!  Not really and typically I would be looking at organization like a chore, but this time I’m looking at it as a way to give myself the best chance to succeed.

To say my life is chaotic is an understatement.  You can just look at my apartment or my car and realize just how out of control I can let things get.  Of course, I have tired time and time again to clean up my act and get the insanity under control but typically, I slide right back into my old messy, scattered patterns.  If I was going to change myself and really make it stick, I knew I had to do it differently than I had before.

When we decide to change things about ourselves, we tend to go to extremes.  We decide we want to do something like lose weight or get more organized or save money and the very idea of it all produces a surge of adrenaline that propels us to take on our project.  Maybe we change our diets and cut out all fatty, unhealthy foods we love or we spend hours at the gym working out.  To get organized, we could do an intense full cleaning of our homes, throwing things away just because we need to declutter or obsessively reorganizing every drawer or closet we have.  And of course financially, you can stop spending money on anything and everything extraneous including going out with friends and pretty much having a social life.  These are all extremes.

The main problem with extremes is that while they do produce results, they make the outcome very difficult to maintain.  I’ve done the extreme way over and over again, each time with the same result.  This time I needed to approach this all differently in hopes that I will maintain my results.  What I’m trying to accomplish is a way of life for the long term, not the short.  In order to set myself up to truly achieve success, I needed to gradually ease myself into a more neat, tidy and organized lifestyle.

Well it’s been about a month now and I have to say, I’ve seen results.  Want to know what they are? Well that’s coming soon but the moral of today’s little story is that if you want to change, it’s all about setting realistic, attainable goals that allow you to gradually get used to a new way of life.  Setting extreme goals is setting yourself up to fail but if you set an attainable goal, you will create change because every time you hit your target, you will feel empowered which will renew your belief in the possibility of change.  It may even keep you moving beyond your original goal simply because of the motivation you feel having accomplished one objective. 

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Willing is not enough; we must do.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All The Small Things

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a lot about this idea of “visible change”.   I just felt I needed to see some sort of results in order to keep the momentum that I have going to evolve into the person I want to be but over the past few days as I tired to figure out how to create this "visible change" in my world, I realized that there is more to this concept then even I first thought.

I started this whole project because I felt that I was holding on to too many things that were letting me go.  I was stuck in revolving door relationships that were based more on the fictitious feelings that I had created in my head rather than real concrete facts.  My career and living situation were not where I expected them to be and I was constantly feeling the stress of running around in circles on a hamster wheel but never getting anywhere no matter how much I wanted to be moving forward.  The pretty picture in my head wasn’t materializing and it became very clear to me that I had to wipe out that image in my mind and be open to whatever came my way. 

So I started by letting go.  Letting go of the things I was desperately trying to keep but were never really mine to have in the first place.  Then I decided that I had to grow as a person by going for the things that I wanted but for some reason never really followed through with.  I started this with so many dreams and ideas and wanted to prove that if I worked hard and wanted them bad enough, they could happen.  However, it takes the little things to make the big things.  I was only looking for these big, over the top, life altering changes to happen and forgetting about all the little things that go into making those larger things come about. 

In order to build a house you can’t start with the roof.  You have to lay a solid foundation, which you then build upon and the same goes for people.  Every tiny step toward change makes a difference and you need to start at the beginning.  I wanted to see some sort of change in my life with this idea of visible change but these are things I should have started with.  These are the items that make up the solid foundation that I need to have in order to build the new version of myself and my life.  Letting go is a good place to start and personal growth is a good place to end but now it’s time to tackle everything in between.  It's time to take care of all the small things (thank you Blink 182!).

"It's the little details that are vital.  Little things make big things happen." - John Wooden

Defining Happy

hapŸpy  (adjective) – Delighted, pleased, or glad as over a particular thing.  Characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy.   Favored by fortune, fortunate or lucky. (Dictionary.com)

There you have it, the dictionary definition of happy.   Sounds like a pretty dead on synopsis of what the word truly means but I think it’s missing one very important detail.  Happiness is defined by each individual person, not a website or a book.  What makes one person happy may not be the same for the person next to them.  Creating your own definition of happy is imperative to creating the best version of you.

In regards to my quest to bring about visible change, happiness is defined by selecting what it is that I want in regards to the controllable factors in my life.  Once the things I want are determined, I need to set attainable goals and time frames to reach the levels that I feel will make me the most content with the things I can dictate.  Now the real trick is to not think of what would be “perfect” but to focus on what to change to make us happy.  We all want to be the happiest versions of ourselves, which will ultimately be imperfect to someone but if you're happy do you really think you will care what anyone else thinks?

So here’s some homework for you.  While I figure out the controllable factors in my life and how I would like to change them, I urge all of you to take a look at yourselves as well.  What bothers you?  Maybe it’s your weight.  Instead of saying I want to lose 50lbs and I want to do it in 2 weeks, try saying I would like to go down one pant size and I will give myself a month to do it.  Or maybe its finances that plague you.  Go over your spending and instead of vowing to give up everything extraneous you waste your money on, focus on the little ways you can cut back and go from there. 

Aiming for “perfect” is setting yourself up for failure.  Changing something but going to extremes is setting a precedent that is practically impossible to continue in the long term.  Little steps will change you.  Learning to make better choices or more informed selections will make a difference.  By setting attainable goals and meeting those goals, you will feel better, you will feel accomplished.   Maybe it will make you more motivated to take things another step further or simply content that you reached your goal.  Visible change is making a change to your lifestyle and by doing it gradually; you will have a better chance to maintain the progress.  So stop worrying about how you can be perfect and start asking yourself how can I be happiest?

Letting Go Of "Perfect"

Ok so the other day I mentioned that I was going to try to work on creating visible change in my life.  I decided to this because a lot of the things I was doing will hopefully impact me in the long term but I needed some sort of visible reminder that this process and a commitment to change can work and I needed it sooner rather than later.  However, there is something to keep in mind when you are aiming to achieve visible results.

Visible change consists of changing the things you can control that will allow you to see immediate results.  Basically what you put in will inevitably shape the end result because you are the only one who can impact these areas of your life.  You can’t will someone to hire to you for a new job.  That takes work and sometimes a long time before you see results.  You can’t force someone to date you.  Again that takes you putting in the effort and waiting out the losers and rough patches until you find what you are looking for.  Each of these are things that you ultimately do not have complete control over.  You are of course involved in the process but you can really only go half way.  In either of the aforementioned instances, you need either the employer or the guy/girl also in the relationship, to come that other 50 percent.   It’s frustrating to have such a large part of your fate in someone else’s hands but there really isn't anything you can do about that.  But, there are things in your life that you can control, which will be able to produce results for you so that you can see that impact of the change in your life.  Things such as your home, body, finances, self confidence, and wardrobe (just to name a few), are all directly dependent upon you and you have the power to change them without having to wait for someone else to come half way to meet you.    

With that being said, these things are tricky to change.  You see, there is no set standard to reach when dealing with any of these items.  In the sense of a job or a relationship, once the position is offered to you or the relationship is established as exclusive, you have succeeded.  With both of those items, there is a clear cut end result with not a lot of gray area.  When changing things about yourself, especially physical things, you have to remember that the end result is in the eye of the beholder, which in this case is you.  It’s natural to want everything to be “perfect” but when you accept that “perfect” doesn’t really exist, you will be able to achieve your goals and feel success.

I realized this theory a long time and go and I feel like it has been a huge difference maker in my life.  When I was 18 years old, I met a boy who I definitely felt like I was in love with.  At the time, I thought he was the kind of guy that most people dream about and I was really happy with our relationship.  However, he wasn’t so he decided to end things.  When he did, he couldn’t give me a real reason as to why so he told me it was because I wasn’t perfect.  Hearing those words come out of the mouth of someone I cared about was really tough and I will say that for a long time that moment haunted me.   Even when I would see him or interact with him in any way, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that he was judging me and I wanted nothing more than to gain his approval.   Although it did take a while, eventually I realized that I wasn’t perfect and more importantly, I didn’t want to be.  I had spent so much of time working towards becoming the type of person that someone else wanted me to be and never stopped to think that that might not be who I want to be.  Perfect is a nice idea but if I was perfect, I wouldn’t be unique and I would much rather be an individual than a bland, boring version of yet another person striving to reach an impossible standard that quite frankly, I didn’t even care to reach. 

In order to really change and see visible results, you have to let go of the idea of perfect.  The real trick to seeing results is to define happy instead of striving for perfect.  Decide what will make you happy and use that as your barometer.  But if you want to know about how to do that, check back at another time.  For now, realize that you don’t have to be “perfect” and let that go.  You need to be in the right mindset before you embark on any attempts to create visible change. 

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.” – Harriet Braiker

“The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do for an encore.” – Unknown

Creating Visible Change

I’ve spent the last few months really trying to focus on the idea of change.  I’ve worked a lot on myself and while I feel like I’ve definitely been committed to making things happen, lately I’ve begun to feel like it might just be true what they say that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I think the fact that I felt like I was doing the things I set out to do but wasn’t seeing any huge difference is what was really getting to me so I came to the conclusion that maybe I was missing a key part to this whole process.

Yes, it is important to change yourself internally, for example your outlook on life or the way you approach achieving your desired outcomes and throughout this process, I’ve definitely worked on my internal self.  I’ve tried new things, checked some things I wanted to do off the list, identified the things that I really want out of life, and reevaluated my priorities to name a few, but I have completely neglected the essential external things that need to change in order to allow me to "see" a difference in my life.  By this I mean that making changes to the visible aspects of your life will help to create more of a feeling that things are happening. 

So I’ve decided to take this advice to heart and run with it.  In addition to continuing to work toward pursuing my dreams, expanding my knowledge base, and creating the life I want, I am going to work towards making my external life more of how I would like it to be.  I’ll be doing home repairs and revamps (like remodeling but without the crazy amount of work and expense), working on the physical appearance, figuring out financial matters, and basically learning how to get my visible self together to great a new version of me.

The goal of this is to get my life in order and create a physical presence that will promote change and help me continue to feel motivated to go for what I want because I see that things are changing around me.  I’m trying to reaffirm the fact that change is possible if you work hard and make it happen.  As I experiment with several different areas of my tangible life, I hope you’ll all join me for the ride and maybe you’ll even pick up some things that you can apply to your own worlds.  It is easy to get defeated if there is no real proof that something is happening but if you can create a constant reminder for yourself that this time in your life is going to be different, I guarantee you that in time it will be. 

"There's a long drive straight through the night, startin' out the window, lookin' for the first signs of daylight.  Just hold on tight, with all your might, see it takes the time it takes to get it right" - Tony Lucca, True Story

Graduation

Well this week it has been practically impossible to find the time to write not to mention that I was still lacking the inspiration to do so and then Friday, while at my cousin’s graduation, it finally hit me.

 Graduation can mean a lot of different things but ultimately is the ceremony which marks the completion of one phase of our lives and the beginning of whatever it is that comes next.  As I looked around at the hopeful 18 year old kids on what was sure to be one of the biggest days of their lives, I realized how excited they all were and I felt a little twinge of sadness.  I listened to them talk about how boring the speeches were, how they couldn’t wait to leave for senior week, how thank god they would never have to see this teacher or take that class again, and the amazing times they would all have at college next year but I couldn’t help but think that while they were all looking ahead, they were missing the moments right in front of them.   Sure I was happy for them all but in a week, senior week will be nothing more than a handful of good stories to reminisce over and high school will be another chapter of their lives closed so they should enjoy everything as they are living it now. 

One day, hopefully, I will have a family and a job that love.  I will be successful and accomplished and if I’m really lucky, I will be living the life I have always dreamed about but there will be times that I will look back and miss the days of total freedom.  I might miss the ease of living by myself and all the alone time I get to enjoy.  I could miss the simplicity of cooking for one or having no one to answer to but myself.  I very well might even long for the days when I was just figuring out what I wanted to become and how I was going to get there. 

I talk a lot about letting go of expectations and planning but sometimes I forget about that.  Sometimes, without even knowing it, I get wrapped up in worrying about what is coming in the future and what I want so every once in a while, I need a moment to remind me to live for the now and not the maybe someday.

"Nothing is worth more than this day." - Johnann Wolfgang von Goethe