Getting Rid of Stuff…Insight from Martha

 

Ok, so here is the deal: All this cheesy law of attraction stuff actually works—at least when you do it in a non-cheesy way, which I’ve been trying to learn and teach my whole life.
 
The big thing I’ve been trying to create for the past little while is to purchase a property that borders a national forest where I can live closer to nature and do the kind of coaching I love best. As recently as a year ago, this looked utterly impossible to me and to everyone who knew me well. But I just kept slapping together vision boards and otherwise assuming it would happen, and now it’s happening. Part of me is completely unsurprised, and another part of me keeps gasping, “WTF just happened?”
 
As part of creating a simpler way of living, I have found myself feeling a massive urge to de-clutter, to get rid of all this stuff that seems to arrive in my house of its own free will. I’ve noticed that many of my Team mates (if you don’t know why I’m calling you Team mate, read my latest book) are feeling the same urge. So I recently began using an awesome coaching tool for de-cluttering. I encourage you to use it.
 
As I teach my coaches, our living spaces are basically three-dimensional portraits of our inner lives. You can’t de-clutter your living space without de-cluttering your inner life and vice versa. This is why it can be easy to throw away the clutter in a friend’s house, but feel overwhelminging to do the same in your home.

So we will start this exercise with something called a Pray Rain Journal. I got the idea from Master Coach Bridgette Boudreau, who learned it from Master Coach Jeannette Maw. A Pray Rain Journal is basically a written vision board in the form of a small journal. Get yourself a very small empty notebook. Each day, write a page as if you were living your ideal life and are journaling about it. Use present tense and write about all the wonderful things that are happening and the ramifications of every event.
 
When I began doing this, I found myself encountering resistance—resistance I hadn’t even known was there. I had mental knee-jerk reactions like, “That can’t happen!” or “And then something bad will happen.” As you reread your Pray Rain Journal, make a mental note of any negative blurbs that pop into your mind. This is the clutter you must clear away. I attacked my negative clutter by focusing on a single thought at a time—for example, “That can’t happen.” Then I forced myself to think of 50 reasons why the things I want actually can happen. I knew my resistance was softening when I could read my Pray Rain Journal without any inner constriction or resistance. That’s when I suddenly began de-cluttering my physical space. My house wasn’t a mess to begin with, but clutter had begun creeping into shelves and drawers.

Don’t try to de-clutter everything at once. Choose ONE drawer or ONE shelf or ONE flat surface in your home. Clear everything out or off of it. If you are a natural-born de-clutterer, you’ll find yourself throwing away or donating items you don’t use. If, on the other hand, you are more a natural-born hoarder type, you might feel clutching anxiety when you try to let go of an outmoded object. This reflects an unwillingness to let go of outmoded beliefs as well. As you do the thought work, your anxiety and resistance will ease up.

In the meantime, create what I call a Limbo Carton. Limbo, as you may know, is where some religions believe God puts souls before deciding if they will go to heaven or to hell. Give your Limbo Carton to a loved one who is not afraid to de-clutter. Together, choose a date six months in the future. If you have not asked for anything in the carton during those six months, your loved one will then take everything to the donation center without even mentioning it to you. Nobody ever said you had to do this alone!
 
All this lightening of stuff feels to me like part of the miracle that brought me my new place to live. An old survival saying is, “The more you know, the less you need.” As your own dreams materialize, I suspect you will come to know that you don’t need much. Just your tribe, your inner guidance, and the evidence that tells you that you really can create a magnificent life.