“Journal writing gives us insights into who we are, who we were, and who we can become.”
~ Sandra Marinella
The thing is, decluttering my life has really been that. Learning to declutter not just the physical but the mental, digital, time, even career (as it turns out), in my life. Learning more about myself and what I want. Who do I want to be? How am I going to become that? How much time am I willing to devote to things to accomplish this? Thus, I’ve been learning to say “no”, and have risked making the mistake of saying “no” to the wrong things in my process of learning.
Maybe I just took too much to heart these parts of “Mastery” by Stewart Emory:
“Surround yourself with things that represent excellence”
“How much mediocrity we live with, surrounding ourselves with daily reminders that the average is acceptable”
“Take a moment to assess all of the things around you that encourage you to remain “average”. These things keep you powerless, unable to go beyond a “limit” you have arbitrarily set for yourself.”
“Take your first step towards mastery by removing everything in your environment that represents mediocrity, removing your arbitrary limits.”
This path to mastery has made it abundantly clear that I needed to make some major changes. That is why I chose decluttering for this year’s main personal goal. I needed to make more room for mastery because a human life is not an unlimited amount of time and it was going to take some hard decisions and changes to make mastery the priority that it needs to in that limited time.
This is why decluttering was such a big deal for me, and why it was a main goal for a whole year. I have a lot of this stuff to clear out! It’s been accumulating for too long! There’s a lot to wrap my head around. I’ve coasted for too long, avoiding and often not knowing that I even needed to make these changes, and the result is that there was (still is) a lot of work to catch up on. That is my priority.
Mastery is my priority. That is why I have prioritized decluttering, to get rid of the things that don’t serve that. It takes time. I will make mistakes, and course corrections, but the journey has begun and is ongoing.
As for my numbers, I haven’t done nearly as well on some as on others, but complaining about the shoulder and back pain every blog is something even I don’t want to read, let alone write. The fact is, my shoulders start hurting at fewer and fewer pushups as time goes on. It’s not getting better… and it’s frustrating. Acknowledging that is one thing but dwelling on it blog after blog won’t serve anyone. I’d much rather build on what is working and improving that. As each thing improves it seems to positively affect other things that are part of the goals for IHC. That seems, to me, to be worth concentrating on.
When we join the IHC team we have goals and obligations we are supposed to meet or at least do our actual best to meet (after-all, life happens). We plan, and adjust, as we go. Being part of the IHC team now for several years, and not meeting all of those goals and obligations was also a huge part of what made me realize I needed to declutter. Just like planning to do 140 pushups every day so that you can achieve 50,000 pushups in a year, I realized I needed to plan to declutter, and actually declutter, to make more room for mastery. It just wasn’t happening without it. The evidence spoke for itself. My mind was too cluttered, my space was too cluttered, my schedule was too cluttered… it’s impossible to do everything, no matter how much I would like to. Just like physical decluttering I’m having to make hard choices about what stays and what goes even though it’s useful or I would like to keep it, but there are other things I want to keep or do more. Those decisions are hard!
In my mind I’m thinking about it like the container concept – if things no longer fit in the container (a house is a container too, as is your time and schedule) then you have too much stuff. Not enough time to do things, then there are too many things, and some things have to go. Deciding which things is difficult.
Mastery is important to me. My family, my dogs, Kung Fu, reading, and many other things are also important to me, and are often an integral part of my journey to mastery. I am learning, and I am flawed, there will be successes, and I will make mistakes, and I keep getting back up and working on it again.
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