SMART BOUNDARIES

When I decided on Millennium Eve that I was going to break my Clutter Keeping Cycle and finally Clear my Clutter Forever, I realised I was going to have to give up my job to succeed.

The what, when, where, why and how of clearing my clutter Forever required me to spend most of my working week learning and researching to find the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, figure out how to put them together, and then test it by ‘Doing the Doing’ with my own clutter. I thrived on the challenge, and it felt great to prove everyone wrong when I became clutter free.

When I successfully cleared all my clutter, the assumption was that I would find a full-time job again. Finances were low so it made sense. However, on my Journey I had learnt how to make balanced, realistic decisions using my head, my heart, and my gut. Before I cleared my clutter, I had only ever used my heart when it came to decisions about my clutter, and only my head when it came to everything else, because that’s how my parents had taught me to make decisions.

On my Journey, I had learnt a different way. I learnt to take the learning and feedback about past decisions, however uncomfortable that may be and how much resistance I may feel towards accepting it.

When I had cleared my clutter, my heart and gut were telling me I wasn’t cut out to be an employee again. The challenge and success of creating the 7 Step Journey had given me a sense of purpose, drive, and independence, and I couldn’t imagine any ‘job’ that would ever give me all that.

So, I made an appointment to see my therapist, the woman who was alongside me as I created the Journey and helped me process the traumas in my life that I had finally faced. She had been my appropriate support through the bad days and tough weeks. As I explained my dilemma of the financial need to work, yet the total inability to get excited by any job, Meg suggested I take a personal development course called N.L.P. – Neuro Linguistic Programming. Having seen my brother and father professionally, she understood our family dynamics and dysfunction well. She recommended N.L.P because it’s all about understanding thoughts, behaviours, and the art of effective communication – skills she knew my family didn’t have and therefore I never learnt but needed. ‘It will enable you to continue learning which you love, it will help you figure out what your next step in life might be, and it will give you some skills you can use in the present and potentially use in your future’.

Great. Sign me up. I had transformed my mind and my life by clearing my clutter. Now it was time to build on that and take it to the next level. I flourished on the course. I finally felt like I was establishing my new comfort zone and fine tuning MY Best Life. For six months I was around like-minded people who ‘got it’. I felt understood, respected, accepted, valued, and most importantly safe to say what I honestly though – a new experience for me. I felt relaxed and able to be my imperfect self for the first time in my life. Better late than never, right?!

I still remember the day I had my most significant lightbulb moment that would go on to transform my relationships and consequently my life. It was the day we learnt that (most) people in this world do not set out to make us feel any of the emotions in the bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, or sad sections of our emotions wheel. We are all responsible for our own feelings, (you mean I’m NOT responsible for how other people feel?!) and although we can’t control other people and what they say or do, we can control and choose how we react to what they say or do to us.

That was when I realised that my life was full of drama. I was constantly reacting to other people’s drama, and yes, time to be brutally honest, sometimes even subconsciously creating my own drama because the people in my life thrived on it. I always got drawn in to other people’s dramas, telling myself (and being told by them) I was ‘such a good, understanding friend’, when in fact it was my desperate need for validation that fuelled my people pleasing behaviour. In reality, we were mutual enablers, feeling invisible without the drama.

I realised that I only felt alive when I was dealing with drama, whether it was in my life or other people’s. Without drama, I felt all the emotions in the bad and sad sections of the emotions wheel – vulnerable, lonely, empty, powerless, and inferior.

Being involved in drama was my antidote to those uncomfortable feelings and emotions. I felt my relationships were conditional, and the only coping mechanism I knew was being a ‘good girl’, prioritising and pleasing others. Creating drama was an attempt to get some validation of my self-worth.

On that Saturday in the Polish Centre in Hammersmith, London, I realised that how I choose to react to situations is within my control. I had to take responsibility. That day, I made a conscious decision to stop creating and being drawn into drama. I decided to actively avoid gossip – something my therapist had told me was taking valuable time, energy and focus away from me achieving and living my Best Life.

Of course, this change didn’t happen overnight. Old habits die hard. Other people’s expectations of you die hard too. I started getting into a routine of doing my Wheel of Life Review at least every 3 months, so I could get clear – really clear – about what my priorities were. That enabled me to create daily affirmations that gave me the confidence to protect my boundaries every day and minimise the risk of me becoming a people pleaser or sabotaging my time to work on my Best Life goals.

I started to consciously put in boundaries and prioritise my time, energy, focus and effort on MY Best Life, not other people’s. Their Best Life is THEIR responsibility. I learnt the power of ignoring the phone if I was doing something important to ME. It took longer to switch off the voice in my head that said: but they won’t think what you’re doing is important; what they need NOW is more important than what you want; you’re capable so you ‘should’ help them.

When I stopped reacting to other people’s drama’s my life became calmer and more fulfilling. It became focused on quality not quantity, in every sense of the word. Other people’s reactions to the change in me were mainly negative, (‘You’ve changed’) judgemental (N.L.P is a cult), and accusatory (You’re so selfish. Don’t you care?).

When I refused to put my parents wants and needs before my own over my wedding, my mother told people I was being ‘difficult’ because I was mentally ill. In reality, I was developing my Emotional Intelligence; my ability to manage my own emotions, understand – and importantly not be driven by – the emotions and priorities of those around me, namely my parents.

I learnt to reframe all these things as signs that my new boundaries were working, and that these people were struggling with their own discomfort of not having me as their enabler. I realised that they lacked the emotional intelligence I was developing, and they had resistance to taking responsibility for their own feelings.  And that’s OK – but I wasn’t going to revert to a previous version of myself to make THEM more comfortable. When I started to put myself, my needs, my dreams, and my Best Life first, I started achieving them. My Best Life was calmer, I could easily recognise what to spend my time, energy, focus and effort on. Over time, people who were all about the drama naturally left my life.

We choose how to react to what someone says or does. When you realise you are responsible for how you feel and how you respond in any given situation, you hold the power and give yourself choices. Allow others to trigger emotions in the bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, or sad sections of YOUR emotional wheel, or take the sting and the drama out of your life so you can calmly, confidently, passionately live your Best Life in the present. As always….. the choice is yours.

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/