There’s no avoiding it. If you want to clear your clutter Forever, you’re going to have to accept some uncomfortable truths about you and your clutter.

Until you do, you’ll never prioritise the time, energy and effort you need to succeed on your Journey. Accepting these uncomfortable truths are an essential part of your Journey because they get you out of your comfort zone and into the learning and change zone, which is where you need to be to clear your clutter Forever.    

However, for most people, before they accept these uncomfortable truths, they experience a lot of resistance, which is evident in multiple ways such as justifying why they don’t have time, blaming others, impatience, self- sabotage, procrastination and so on.  Here are 7 uncomfortable truths that you will need to accept before you can successfully clear your clutter.

1. Time

There are five things you need to accept about time. First, that you have the same amount of time as people who are successfully clearing their clutter. Everyone has 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. Second, you are in control of how you use those hours, no one else. How many of those hours you choose to spend working, watching TV, online, or giving to other people is entirely up to you and within your control (yes, even work). Third, you will have to do less of something to have more time to work on your Clutter Clearing Journey, up to a maximum of 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. Fourth, you can’t do everything you want to do. You will have to prioritise a maximum of 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for your Journey. Fifth, you won’t live forever…

If you tell yourself (and others), or genuinely believe you can’t protect just 30 minutes a day, five days a week to get closer to your Clutter Free Best Life, ask yourself why that is. Is it your need to people please? Is it the fear of what you might discover about yourself or your past? The fear of feeling uncomfortable? The fear of saying ‘not right now’ to people? The fear of not doing it perfectly? 1^st spoiler alert: the perfect way to do your Journey is to work on it for a maximum of 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. Is it the fear of how long it might take to clear? 2^nd spoiler alert: If you don’t get into a routine of ‘doing the doing’, you’ll never clear it. 

When I have a private client who doesn’t consistently make time to ‘Do the Doing’ of their Journey videos I let them go. Until they know why they’re self-sabotaging their time for their Journey and start prioritising it, they’ll never succeed.

2. Accumulation

You only have your clutter because you have in the past (or continue to) accumulate more than you need and use. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a 1-bed flat or a 7-bedroom house. If you accumulate more than you let go of, you will have clutter. 

3. You Need Support

Many try to do the Journey on their own, telling themselves they can’t afford the extra help or time, or they need to save money. 3^rd Spoiler alert: you’ll save money if you do the weekly shopping challenge!

Few succeed entirely on their own. Most people need different levels of support at different stages of their Journey. We may start off well on our own, highly motivated and focused and excited by the learning. Then we may need help to explore and understand our experiences and feelings. Most people need accountability to make sure they do their repetitive Clutter Clearing Sessions on step 2 and beyond. Unfortunately, asking for help doesn’t come naturally to someone who struggles with clutter.

4. You Must Face Your Past

It’s common that people on their Journey start to realise that fear and trauma are contributary factors for why they have their clutter challenge, and they start to respond at a physical level. For example, more frequent episodes of existing or new physical or mental conditions.  They may become more irritable angrier and judgemental, feel overwhelming guilt or shame, simply resist ‘doing the doing’ of their Journey, or procrastinate and self-sabotage. 

Until you are ready to face your fears, process the traumas both known and unknown, discover what your triggers are, and learn how to deal with the emotions that are all hiding in your clutter with appropriate support, you’ll never be able to clear your clutter Forever.

5. You Must Learn how to Make Decisions

Until you accept that you will never clear your clutter if you keep trying to make decisions based on the ‘keep’, ‘chuck’, ‘charity’ method, you’ll never become clutter free Forever. Learning how to make balanced, realistic decisions takes time, and you will never learn how to make them if you don’t protect the time to do just that (see point 1). 

Treat making decisions like a scientific experiment. Theory, method, results, conclusion. Don’t make assumptions. Have an open mind to learning, be willing to make mistakes and keep repeating and tweaking the experiment until you reach a point where the results are reliable. A scientist never accepts the results of just one experiment.

6. You Are Not Living Your Best Life

There are many signs other than your clutter that you are not living your Best Life. You try to convince yourself (and others) that you ARE living your best life, despite your clutter. You are envious of other people’s lives that appear so much better, more successful and fulfilling than yours. You find ways to numb your feelings. You have no or little sense of purpose or direction. You live your life day-to-day, crisis to crisis. Your life is focused on other people. You spend more time helping others achieve their life goals than working on your own. Your life would feel empty without others. You feel frustrated. You simply have a sense that the life you are living isn’t the life you are supposed to be living. You sense that you’d be happier and more fulfilled if you could deal with your clutter once and for all.

The trouble with accepting that you’re not living your Best Life, in part because of your clutter, is that it then begs the question – what IS your Best Life? Sometimes it can be easier to learn to live with the clutter than try to answer that bigger question.

7. Nothing Will Change Unless YOU Change

As Tony Robbins said: If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. Everything requires you to accept one, big, uncomfortable truth – that nothing will change unless YOU change. Until you accept that only you can make the changes that are needed to succeed, nothing will change with your clutter.

You can clear your clutter FAST, or you can clear your clutter FOREVER, but you can’t clear your clutter FOREVER FAST.

To find out how Clare can help you clear your clutter Forever, without the need for an expensive home visit, click here now: https://www.clutterclearing.net/clares-help-centre/