LPO Clutter Scavenger Hunt 9 – Heart and Personal Priorities

Welcome to the Laurel Plum Online Clutter Scavenger Hunt.

For today’s scavenger hunt, we are going to take just a few minutes to think about emotional clutter and setting personal priorities.

Emotional Clutter

Emotional Clutter comes in two forms. The first is intangible.  Take a minute to look into your heart.  Are you carrying negative baggage?  (I know, who isn’t?)  Most of this type of clutter is directed toward other people.  The thing is, you are not hurting those people, you are hurting yourself.  If you are hanging on to events that happened in the past, you prevent yourself from focusing on now and looking toward the future. I will not say that it is an easy thing to do, but try to let the people and events from the past that bring you down go.  My Grandmother always said that the best revenge is forgiving and forgetting.  Take away the power.  Make them nothing in your life.  Begin by listing what you learned/gained from the experience.  Then change your focus and reinforce the positive in your life. Begin a gratitude journal tonight where you list five things that happened today that you are grateful for and add to it each night.

The other form of emotional clutter is tangible and a little easier to eliminate.  Look around your home for anything that provokes negative emotions.  Get it out of your house as soon as possible!

If for some reason you really just can not get it out of your life, at least get it well out of sight. Put it in a box and tape it up. Put in in in some dark corner, in the trunk of your car, or anywhere you will very seldom see it and throw a blanket over it to hide it that much more. The less you see it, the less it will negatively impact your mood on a regular basis. Maybe someday you can toss it without any reservations and or deal with it without the heart pangs it currently brings to mind. But beware. Until you do get it completely out of your life, you will occasionally still be surprised by it and the dredge of emotions it evokes.

Personal Priorities

The next thing I want you to do is an exercise I found on Vertigo.  This was from a list of 10 ways to simplify your life.  I would like for everyone to do number 2 from the list:

2. Create a short list–This is for the big-picture simplifying. If you’re having a hard time getting your life to something truly simple, create a short list of things you love doing most. This should be 4-5 things. For me, that’s writing, reading, running and spending time with my family. Your short list will be different. Then, try to eliminate everything in your life that’s not on the short list, to make room for the things you love.

What great advice!  It may not be practical to eliminate everything else from your life, but it will start you on a path of focusing on the things that really matter to you.

Check back in with the rest of us.

When we get conversations going in the comments we all learn from each other and can encourage one another. So, share your stories in the comments.

Have you been holding on to emotional clutter?  Have you been spending your time on efforts that really do not matter?  What are you letting go of today?  What other suggestions do you have for the rest of us?