Notice the Subtle Yet Significant Shifts
Notice the Subtle Yet Significant Shifts
Can you believe we’re nearly at the end of ANOTHER year?
How did that happen?!
It seems like only a few months, maybe a year since the Pandemic began. In fact, it’s nearly 4 years.
The Queen died over a year ago, and we had the coronation of a new King over 6 months ago.
A sample of a meteorite was brought back to earth and a man successfully received an eye transplant this year.
It’s amazing – and terrifying – to think about just how fast time, and the world moves forward.
So, as we focus on moving forward into a new year, it’s important that we just take a moment to pause and reflect on 2023, notice the subtle – yet significant – shifts we’ve had this the year and decide what we want and need to change in 2024 to get closer to living our Best Life. We can then take all the learning and feedback from 2023 into 2024 to make sure it’s our Best Year yet.
There are 4 tools you have that you can use to review 2023:
1. Success / Gratitude Journal
One of the most powerful tools you have, yet one that so many people struggle to use consistently due to their comfort zone tendency to be impatient and in-time. However, the Success / Gratitude Journal is much, much more than simply another daily routine thing to-do, and it can really help us review our year.
When you patiently, persistently, and consistently use your Success / Gratitude Journal to capture your successes and gratitude’s each day, not only are you focusing your mind and your attention on the daily positives in your life and your progress towards your personal goals, you are also capturing the positive memories of your present life so you can take those memories into your future Best Life.
Acknowledging our daily successes and having gratitude for the people and experiences in our lives can help calm the anxious and overwhelmed mind, and when you share your successes and gratitude’s with other people, it creates a level of emotional intimacy that can help strengthen your relationships.
Shift your perspective to seeing your Journal not only a record of your daily successes and gratitude’s in your present life, but also as a powerful mental health, emotional health, and self-care tool.
2. Before and Now
On Step 1 of your Journey, you do an exercise to capture your before photos of how your clutter looks. For many, this is an uncomfortable exercise because it pushes us to step outside our comfort zone, take off our clutter blindfold, and really see what other people see (or would see), which forces us to start facing the reality of our clutter challenge.
However, when we are reviewing our year, these photos are a valuable resource that we can use to compare and contrast the before and now, to see the subtle yet significant signs that things are changing. The piles of paperwork clutter that haven’t grown – maybe even got a bit smaller – because you have your paperwork inbox. If you are doing your weekly Paperwork Clutter Clearing Sessions, those piles may even be shrinking. If you are on Step 4 or beyond, you will see completely clutter free surfaces, areas and rooms because you’ve cleared them and importantly – you are keeping them clear thanks to your daily visual check-ins. This time you know that you haven’t just moved or hidden your clutter, you have let go of things that are not part of your Clutter Free Best Life vision.
You may not see a significant difference. Others may not notice any difference, yet you know that things are different. The knowledge that you no longer impulse buy things because you buy based on need and use. The new dishwasher routine you have, to ensure things don’t pile up on surfaces for more than a day. The new routine you have of doing your laundry. The knowledge that your suitcase gets put away within days (if not hours) of your return from a trip. This time last year you may not even have realised what a difference these small shifts would make to your sense of achievement.
So take your photos for December 2023, compare them to when you started your Journey, and notice the subtle and significant differences.
3. Wheel of Life Reviews
Just like the Success / Gratitude Journal, the Wheel of Life Reviews that are in every Clutter Clearing Chronicle are another valuable tool that people resist using to track their progress at the end of each term.
Yet by doing them each term, you’ll have 7 Wheels of Life for 2023, and by comparing and contrasting them you’ll be able to see the subtle yet significant shifts in different areas of your life. Some will be directly related to the time, energy and effort you put into your Clutter Clearing Journey. It will also help you see which areas of your life that have been persistently and consistently causing you to have a wobbly wheel, and that will help you decide what is a priority for your limited time, energy and effort in 2024. Again, shift your perspective to seeing your Wheel of Life Reviews as a powerful tool that will help you focus on achieving your Best Life.
4. Financial Review
82% of people are saving more money than the cost of their Clutter Clearing Journey after the first year because they’ve stopped – or significantly reduced – their impulse and bulk buying. If they do impulse or bulk buy occasionally, it’s usually a short-lived lapse, which is to be expected when we’re breaking old habits. In fact, a momentary slip can give us valuable learning and feedback to help us realise that we actually prefer our new way of being – especially when it saves us money!
Notice how much more money you have now that you don’t accumulate things you don’t need or use. Notice how you have more choices about how to spend your money. Do you spend your money on things that make memories – time with family, travel, events – rather than physical things that you don’t need or use?
Once again, these are significant shifts in our thinking and doing that other people may not see, notice, or acknowledge, but that remind us that we are where we need to be, in the learning and change zone and getting closer to our Clutter Free Best Life.
Those of us who struggle with clutter know that we are predominately in-time. That means we hate planning and routine. However, as you can see, getting into a routine of doing and reviewing these four things can help you see the subtle shifts over time, and notice how the significance and impact of those shifts can help you get closer to living your Best Life.
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/
