Balance

“Lifeife is as simple or complicated as we make it.” Donna Smallin”

Clearing Clutter At The Root Fortunately for me, I grew up in a big, loving family. However, a big family tends to hold all sorts of clutter. Raised with four siblings sharing one bathroom, one TV, and one telephone, let’s just say it got ugly. Probably didn’t help that Mom was a shopaholic and Dad was a packrat.

The claustrophobia of my childhood left me wanting to live clutter-free. It wasn’t until my college years away from home that I started noticing how my mind was the cause of any clutter I carried with me; nothing and no one else was to blame. After a huge quarter-life crisis, I saw how I was compromising my own clarity and life balance with my own head-trash — the junk I kept upstairs. I then made a conscious choice to declutter my life, starting at the root of it all — my mind. But how do you begin to clear away the clutter you can’t see? Decluttering the mind requires us to become intentional on where we place our attention and how we spend our time and energy. Here are some tips to help you do that

1. .Keep a gratitude log. Gratitude is appreciating what you have. It’s saying that what you have is enough. Taking time every day to consider your blessings will help bring balance to your life. It’s hard to be grateful and angry at the same time. Spend five minutes every day to note at least five things you’re grateful for. Some ideas: time with a friend, an award at school, your seatbelt, your breath, the colors in the park, and even the nourishing beauty of a rainy day.
2. Journal. Whether digitally or with paper, journaling is a wonderful release of pent-up thought. By writing down your thoughts, worries, hopes, and experiences, you are finding respite from the chatter inside your head. Even though you’re still thinking of these things as you write, it’s like you’re observing the situation from ten feet away, no longer completely absorbed in the emotionality of it. Try to journal every day for however long it takes to feel peace on a topic. The more you do it, the faster the peace comes. Like in therapy, simply letting it out is healing because we’re relieved of the burden of keeping it all inside.