As a life coach, I often support people who’d like to lose weight and become healthier. Without exception, my clients know what works for them but they would like help with accountability for their strategy. Often these same clients desire “clutter coaching.” Once I provide some strategies and methodologies for streamlining their environments, in regard to de-cluttering, they also ask for encouragement, inspiration, and accountability. What I have observed for years and have even noticed for myself is that when my clients get serious about health and fitness, they find themselves de-cluttering and when they de-clutter, they often lose weight.
Metaphysically, I am not at all surprised by this phenomenon. Those extra possessions that we are holding onto are energetically much like the extra weight that we may be holding onto. These redundant belongings and extra weight reflect choices to hold onto something that is not needed and not relevant to our lives. In fact, the weight and the clutter could both be characterized as “useless baggage.” The adage “Clutter is anything that doesn’t add value to your life” might be applied both to material possessions and body weight that doesn’t serve us.
When we own too many possessions or are carrying weight that feels cumbersome, our participation in our own life often becomes compromised. The author of Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, offered, “Be steady and well ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.” When we are burdened by excess it is hard to be proactive, let alone fierce!
As desirable as we feel it may be to have a streamlined and well-ordered environment and a healthy and fit body, perhaps it is even more important to evaluate the clutter in our own minds. Old judgments, unsupportive or outdated beliefs may also need purging. We can begin this de-cluttering process by thought monitoring. We may challenge all beliefs that are unloving to ourselves and others. My experience has been that those who carry judgments towards others are doubly critical of themselves. Having unpleasant, burdensome, and uncharitable thoughts will undoubtedly make us feel tired, fearful, discouraged, and depressed.
Many of us find ourselves with a cluttered mind when we feel the need to police the universe. We may believe that if someone doesn’t stand in judgment of those who are outside of our belief system the world will run amuck.
I don’t know about you, but I have never been inspired to do my best when I know I am being judged. Judgment often makes those who are being judged spiral into guilt. When we over identify with our less than stellar behavior (and by over identify, I mean when we think we actually are the untoward behavior) we will inevitably repeat our behavioral pattern.
Some of us might relate to having one cookie and then eating the whole bag because we felt guilty for eating the first cookie. We may say to ourselves, “I’m fat, what does it matter?” or “I am weak-willed. I might as well polish off the whole bag.” When we hold the highest vision for others and ourselves rather than judgment, we don’t over identify with our mistakes and we feel the self-confidence and self-love we need to begin again.
If we choose to empty our rice bowls as a Buddhist might characterize the process, we unburden our environments, bodies, hearts, and minds and clear our obstructions to love. With an open heart and mind we can commence connecting with ourselves and with others in an authentic, liberated, and impassioned way.
When we are in a loving state of mind we are in flow. We feel light and joyful. From that state of Divine peace we remember the absurdity of unloving, unkind, and judgmental thoughts. We connect with the satisfaction of having learned to get out of our own way. We realize the rigid and fear based thoughts and beliefs we believed were keeping us safe were actually doing anything but. We come to acknowledge that these anachronistic thoughts actually created a barrier to happiness. When we unburden ourselves from the weight of mental, physical, and environmental clutter we have the clarity to begin anew.
Happy Spring cleaning to all of you!