Before Wellbeing Consultant, David moved to Gozo, he began the process of decluttering. He shares why this is a much-needed cleansing process.
I began to declutter my things by going through them slowly and giving some away, selling or dumping others. It was a much-needed cleansing process in my life. In fact, by the time I had moved, all of my belongings that weren’t bricks and mortar, fitted into a suitcase and hand luggage. It felt amazing. And a bit weird.
In the midst of this process, I was reminded of a comedy sketch by George Carlin, about how modern life seems to be all about accumulating stuff. We fill our houses with stuff, and when we get too much stuff, we have to buy a bigger house so we have room for all our stuff. Our houses are really just containers to keep all our stuff. Sometimes we even have to rent a storage space to keep our extra stuff. There’s a whole industry around keeping our stuff….. right?
Declutter The Internal Stuff
You learn, when you are carrying out your declutter that sometimes stuff becomes junk. I’m also talking about my internal stuff, not just the extra knick-knacks, the unnecessary stuff that was cluttering my house; the stuff I threw away. I’m talking about the ridiculous stuff that takes up space in my head. I realised that the same way I need to declutter my external life and get rid of my useless stuff, I also need to declutter my head. I needed to clean out my brain from time to time. If I don’t, my internal stuff turns into junk too.
It turns into head junk….. And we all have head junk, right? You, me, all of us, we all have stuff cluttering our minds. And if we don’t deal with this stuff, it becomes unwanted junk.
Letting Go
A large part of my job is dealing with and helping to declutter the stuff in people’s heads. The stuff that doesn’t serve us anymore, or that produces undesirable results for us. Only a few things in life really matter, and when we break it down, only a few things, ideas, or people have the biggest impact. But we hold on to all the other stuff for some reason – in our homes and in our heads. And we hold on to the wrong stuff, notice the wrong things, or get the wrong idea, don’t we? Can you think of an example? Where does it all come from?
Can you remember the last time you went on a picnic? Nice, peaceful, and relaxing. You spread out your blanket, enjoy your lunch, sip a little wine, and then the ants appear! It doesn’t matter if you checked the ground beforehand. Somehow they find you and invade your space. You fight back, but it doesn’t matter how many you squish. More show up, like magic, just like the negative thoughts that pop up in our heads and start us spiralling. Even though we don’t invite them in, we do our best to get rid of them.
Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs).
Just like a column of tiny little ants can gatecrash your picnic, ANTs can gatecrash your day. For most of us, just a few thought patterns dominate and the negative patterns have a particular potency, especially when they’re left unnoticed and unchecked. If you watch your thoughts very closely I bet you’ll agree. Plus, negative thoughts have more weight than positive ones, they’re more dominant. In fact, you need almost 3 times as many positive ones for the positive ones to win.
To declutter your mind you require awareness. Start to notice the ANTs crawling around inside your head
David Haworth, NLp Coach
Time To Declutter
Negative emotions are destructive and infectious. Neurologically, when you default to a particular thought pattern, it becomes more and more firmly wired in, so choose positive thoughts over negative ones, until the positive ones are easier to access and win.
Over the next few days, why not start your own personal declutter? Pay extra close attention to your thoughts and notice how much of your total thought energy is taken up by ‘should’s’, ‘could’s’, or ‘have to’s. Then notice how often thought patterns like those are negative and judgmental.
Start to notice the ANTs crawling around inside your head and if you want help, book an NLP session and let’s talk.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming studies the structure of how humans think and experience the world. Learn techniques for quickly and effectively changing thoughts, behaviours, and beliefs that limit you have been developed, and they work! Learn more about David's offerings here.
