Is Your Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

People Who Wonder Whether The Glass Is Half Empty Or Half Full Are Missing The Point. The Glass Is REFILLABLE. (Anon)

When you think about letting go of things in your clutter, are you thinking about how empty your glass will be or what you’ll be able to fill the other half with?

Your answer may help explain why you struggle to make REALISTIC decisions.

If we’ve experienced loss and trauma in our lives then its understandable that we might have a fear of the future and focus more on the empty half.

When we justifying keeping things because they ‘might come in useful’, we’re not just trying to hold on to what’s in the glass, we’re also trying to make sure we’ve got more than we need in case we can’t refill in the future.

However, your brain will concentrate on creating more of whichever half you focusing on.

Focus on the half that’s empty and you’ll notice and experience more feelings of loss.

Focus on the half that’s half full of positive feelings and memories and you’ll subconsciously create more positive feelings and memories.

We control whichever half of the glass we focus on and create more of it. We need to learn and trust that WE control the tap, and when we focus on the half that’s empty we’re effectively turning the tap off ourselves.

Furthermore, as we learn to let go SAFELY because we know we can turn the tap on IF we NEED more in the future, we’re not trying to ignore the fact that the glass is also half empty. We’re just choosing to focus on the positive half of the glass to help us fill the glass some more.

I appreciate this may all sound very logical and easy, yet turning it into practice isn’t quite so simple. So many things sound logical and simple in practice, that don’t always apply in practice, does it?

When I had my clutter challenge the perfectionist in me struggled right up to the end to focus on the half of the glass that was already full. It’s why I only have photos of my last most cluttered room/area, my garage.

Even when I’d completely cleared and maintained 10 rooms/areas in my home, my habit was STILL to focus on the half of the glass that was still empty, even though by that point it was actually only about 10% empty.

To be honest – it’s probably still my default setting, although I can now switch to focus on the full half much quicker as I imagine what I’d say to myself if I was one of my clients!

It’s because of our habit of noticing the half of the glass that’s empty BEFORE we notice that the glass is also half full that we need to know how to get – and stay – motivated while we clear our clutter.

We know we won’t clear our clutter quickly and our experiences will cause us to focus on the empty half. We know we’re going to have bad days and tough weeks. We know that’s perfectly normal.

So let’s be kind to ourselves and allow ourselves to have those bad days, tough weeks and allow the impatience to cause us to focus on the half that’s empty.  That’s OK. A few days or a couple of weeks is OK and perfectly, perfectly normal.

However, let’s make sure that we have tools that can help us recognise, remember and refocus on the half of the glass that’s full for the MAJORITY of the time. By doing that you’ll soon start to notice that the glass isn’t just half full of good stuff that trigger positive experiences, feelings and memories, you’ll start to notice that the half of the glass that’s full starts to multiply. As if by magic the positive experiences, feelings and memories multiply.

Ultimately it’s YOUR glass to do with what you wish and to focus on whichever half you choose to focus on.

But please remember: Even when you focus on the half of the glass that’s empty, you can’t deny the fact that at the same time it’s also half full.