Chapter 14
Between the 10,000 or so thoughts, decisions, dreams, and plans you’ve got rolling around in your head at any moment are the real or imagined worries that keep you up at night. “I’ve got too much on my mind,” you say, not realizing just how true that really is. Even if you establish outer harmony in every space of your home, it will do you little good without harmony within yourself. Indeed, the space in your head is the final frontier in feng shui decluttering.
On the average day, we carry a lot with us in our minds—everything from our grocery lists to vacation dreams and grandiose plans for the future. We go from idea to idea, sometimes without any logic whatsoever, as rapidly as wildfire, and then wonder why we can’t remember where we left our car keys. It’s no wonder that stress builds a nest in our minds, a worry-filled place where all the neurons are under constant attack from every direction.
You know the gut-wrenching syndrome: “Did I remember to lock the doors to my home? Are my pets going to be okay while I’m on vacation? Do you think I hurt her feelings by saying that? Should I have invited so-and-so to lunch?” You can really send yourself on a daily guilt trip with questions and worries like these self-esteem-based concerns.
If you’re a real worrywart, try making a weekly (or, if you’re really bad, daily) appointment with yourself to vent, worry, or obsess over whatever comes to mind at the time. Write it all down in a journal or on a piece of paper you burn at the end of your “worry session.” Adding the fire element will help you to break up the negative energy of too much worry, freeing you from the clutter it so easily creates in your mind.
When we don’t deal with things quickly enough, we allow them not only to stay as unwelcome visitors, but also to burrow deeply within our minds on a more permanent basis. How can we free ourselves from never-ending worry and stress? We can start by removing thebaggage of excessive thought—by clearing our minds of the mental clutter that has piled up over weeks, months, and often years. Such purging requires a commitment to trying several different methods until finding one that works best; for some, meditation is the answer; for others, physical exercise is the best way to alleviate mental clutter. The point is to keep at it until you figure out the key to breaking the cycle of pain—and fear.
It is often said by psychologists that anger is fear turned outward. When you can figure out what you’re afraid of, you can break the cycle of poor self-image and excessive mental clutter. Try journaling to get to the bottom of your fears.
Just knowing that there are clutter “dust bunnies” running around in your head at any given moment is not really enough to start dealing with them on a long-term basis. You need to look at the fear behind the clutter—and that fear can take many different forms.
Most obvious is the fear of letting go. If you have lots of mementos from your past, but never look at them or use them, you likely have a fear of letting go of these things. No doubt, behind that fear is a difficulty in moving forward toward the future. Are you stuck inthe past, or afraid of an uncertain future? It’s okay to admit that your piles of clutter represent a fear of moving forward, as long as your next step is to remove these “pillars of the past.” Your memories are safe in your mind and heart—you don’t need an attic full of “artifacts” to prove you had a past.
You may be afraid of living up to new expectations as a result of your newfound ability to effectively deal with clutter. What will they expect from you after you finally get rid of 75 percent or more of your possessions? In this sense, it’s kind of like losing weight: As soon as others begin to notice the change, the pressure to continue the program mounts. Can you live up to their expectations? This could be a major worry for you, especially if you’re not fully committed to long-term change yet. You don’t want to be seen as weak, but you may not be ready to make any big decisions for a clutter-free future, either. Such ambivalence can easily lead to more procrastination than ever in the future if you’re not careful.
Finally, you may have a fear of making decisions in the first place. What will you do if the next decision you make isn’t a good one? What will people think? What if your first answer wasn’t really the correct one on that test? What if you’re flat-out wrong about a situation at work? When you consider the sheer volume of decisions we have to make on a daily basis, it’s easy to see how the law of averages comes into play: The chancesof our being right more than 50 percent of the time are very slim. So what if you choose incorrectly? Unless lives are at stake, you will emerge from the bad decision a wiser, healthier person.
Don’t get stuck in the inertia (and constricted chi) of negativity about the decisions you face on a daily basis. You’ll be right sometimes and wrong others, but the most important lesson of all is in the journey of self-exploration, as you learn from the good and bad experiences that make up your life.
Left to their own devices, your decisions will start to make themselves in time. That vacation you were putting off will become impossible because you didn’t request the appropriate time off. That fabulous dinner at the gourmet restaurant doesn’t happen because you couldn’t decide when to plug it into your busy schedule. Those clothes that didn’t fit anymore exploded from your overstuffed closet. On their own, each episode of indecision may seem innocuous, but add them all together in a short period of time and you wind up looking extremely insecure about yourself.
Who is really in control here—you or the things and ideas that you own? Do you really enjoy waiting until something absolutely must be done about a situation before taking any positive action to move things along? Whether they are large or small in scope, unmade decisions can create a sense of inertia for you, leaving youwith lots of stagnant chi and keeping you off the path to your greatest potential. For good feng shui, you have to have the upper hand in all of your personal decisionmaking. Imagine how good it will feel to be making good choices in real-time—and allowing yourself the opportunity to make (and learn from) mistakes along the way. What a gift!
Be careful about leaving too many things to chance. While the Chinese believe that some things are best left to nature, they also believe in responsibility, cause, and effect. You alone control your destiny—and there’s no better way to achieve your goals than to set and follow the path for yourself.
Getting clear in your head is not only a goal in feng shui, it’s also the main objective in yoga and Zen meditation. But how can you accomplish “inner nirvana” by creating a peaceful oasis in your mind?
You needn’t become a Buddhist monk to learn the art of clearing your mind for your greater good. Inner clearings can be achieved in the following simple, inexpensive, and practical ways that won’t cramp your need for socializing.
Using deep breathing, visualization, and chanting can be an extremely effective way of clearing mind clutter. Find a quiet, comfortable place in your home, and make sure you won’t be interrupted for at least an hour. Some people choose to go to a gym for meditation classes—a great idea if you’re a novice, but eventually it’s even better to create a “mind spa” in your own home.
Even though it’s along the lines of meditation, yoga focuses more on the mind-body connection in meditation; this can involve your entire body in the clutter-removal process. A great way to get the clutter out—and the blood flowing!
Putting it all down on paper can really help you to remove the more menial tasks from your mind—and can help you stay on top of all your life’s details. Be realistic in your list making by not including too many tasks for each day. Pencil in some breathing time between projects.
Across diverse cultures and throughout many time periods in history, music has been used to improve the lives of the suffering. So imagine what it can do for a little clutter in your mind. Put on whatever works for you, whether it’s classical, rock, jazz, or rhythm and blues.
Deep breathing and visualization, for example, can be quite helpful in mentally “dissolving” that which is consuming your thoughts. You can use these in tandem with yoga or meditation, or on their own throughout the day. You can even schedule a “Zen moment” in the middle of the afternoon at work to catch a few cleansing breaths.
When you free your mind of clutter, you will also open the channels to your intuition. One of the benefits of a clear mind is that it is highly receptive to psychic and spiritual input from a higher source.
Your best friend calls with a problem, which you don’t mind trying to solve at 11:30 p.m., the night before your big presentation to the boss. “It’s okay,” you say to yourself, “I can handle it.” The next day rolls around, and you’re very tired but ready to perform on the job, when a coworker approaches you with another personal problem. You endure the stress of doing a presentation without much preparation time—and then go to lunch with your coworker to help her solve her problem. On your way home from work, your friend calls again onyour cell phone to go into part two of her continuing saga. “When did I become the psychologist for the world?” you ask yourself, half jokingly. The thing is, you have allowed yourself to absorb the problems of others around you—leaving yourself few precious moments to handle the harried details of your own life.
This kind of empathic mind clutter can fill up your life to the point where you wind up needing help from someone else to deal with all the negative energy you’ve sponged off of others—not a happy scenario for one as well intentioned as you.
Treat yourself to a “spa night,” complete with a bubble bath, candles, and some soft music. Allow your mind to wander freely, and celebrate all the good you do for others on a regular basis. Acknowledge that you’re worthy of good as well!
If you are an emotional sponge, internalizing all of everyone else’s problems, you are letting down the most important person of all: yourself. While you’re busy solving the world’s problems, your own needs have been piling up everywhere around you. In your living room, den, or bedroom, your clutter is a visible sign of your neglect of the inner you. How could you have allowed this to happen?
Go easy on yourself. Recognize that while it may be good to help others, you can’t take on the burden of their problems. Their problems are theirs to carry, and ultimately theirs to deal with as well. You can offer advice and support where needed, but when push comes to shove (and it often does in these situations), you will need to let go of your need to fix things for others and focus your attention on your own energy. In the end, you can only be as good to others as you are to yourself.
You’re sitting in your sacred new clutter-free space, your mind free from all of the empathic and fear-based clutter that once held it hostage. Taking a slow, deep breath, you put on a little music in your living room for some relaxing time to stretch and read a good book on your sofa, when all of a sudden you hear your son’s CD player blasting from his bedroom. Your daughter’s instant messaging on the computer with her best friend at the same time she’s arguing on the phone with her boyfriend. You move outside to the patio, and just as you begin to relax once more, your husband decides it’s the perfect time to mow the lawn.
Like the worry that previously consumed your thoughts and took up valuable space in your brain, noise clutter can consume you in a New York minute. In a society inundated with more home entertainment options than ever, we can quickly move from total silence to boisterous activity that rivals that of the Osbournes.
Simple solutions, such as creating a family rule of only one source of noise at a time, can help to keep peace in your head—and also in your home. But being mindful and creative at the same time can also do the trick. For instance, if you’re writing a report and your computer happens to be in the same room as an all-important baseball game on television, ask the sports fan to consider using the “closed caption” feature on the TV while you are busy typing away. Or purchase headphones for your children to listen to their music more quietly in their rooms. Often, we’re so afraid of upsetting or offending anyone else that we allow him or her to offend us with unsettling amounts of noise. But if you don’t defend your peace and quiet, no one else will. Stand your ground—and quiet your mind for the rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation it needs to keep your soul healthy.
Remember the universal law of prosperity: What you put out into the Universe is what you will get back. Do you want greater abundance in all things? Your own positive, prosperous attitude is the real starting point.
Once you have finally mastered the ability to clear the clutter in your mind—and protect it from further clutter—you will have developed a stronger sense of self in addition to a feng shui-based “decluttering mindset.” Nothing will be able to interfere with your new way of thinking, except previous bad habits that may cause a temporary relapse. Still, over time and with regular practice, you can learn to stay focused on your healthier new frame of mind, lessening the noise all around you. Now that you are as aware of your inner environment as your outer, you can move toward the final step of staying clutter-free forever.