Articles on growth, vulnerability, soulful living & more
Article 02: Declutter your space: lessons on beginning
Sarah Bond - January 30, 2019
Are you thinking about getting your home and life organized and you’re just not sure how to begin? Here are a few helpful starting places that have activated powerful change for my home and life organization clients this year:
First, identify your core values. What will make the hard work worth it? Life coaches of many kinds are some of the best people to help you unbiasedly, effectively unearth your priorities. You can return to these driving values as you do the work of decluttering your home and life. For example, several of my clients have identified their driving priority in decluttering as quality time as a family on the weekends. They know that without as many hours of chores needed to store and straighten excess belongings, they will have more unhurried, unstressed time together in a more open, relaxed, and creativity-inspiring environment. What is your driving why?
Second, trust that decluttering starts messy and gets more chaotic before it gets better. That’s just part of the process. To reduce the temptation to get overwhelmed or spin in circles of unfinished projects. It helps to target one area of your home or a type of item that is stashed throughout your home and finish that area or item before moving on to others. Jot down other sub-projects you discover as you’re organizing that first target area but don’t go down a rabbit trail of organizing those other things until you finish the first task at hand.
Third, resist the urge to shop for more storage bins until you greatly reduce the amount of stuff you own. It’s easy to become more clever in storing an excessive amount of stuff which circumvents the real, lasting, time-saving work of clearing out what doesn’t “spark joy” (Kondo, 2014). Likely you’ll clear out so many belongings you will find new open storage bins, files, and baskets that are ready to store the few things you really do want to hold onto and use seasonally or return to for nostalgia.
Fourth, couple mental and physical action. Plan and process the vision for your life and home organization with someone like a coach, so the changes you enact come from lasting lifestyle and mindset shifts and will create long-term results. The more you couple internal change with external environmental change, the more powerful, deep, and lasting the transformation becomes.
Fifth, fight resistance and just begin. The actual work is not as great a barrier as the dread and overwhelm you feel about beginning. When you feel stuck or uncertain or when the amount of tiny items and piles is daunting, team up with a friend, spouse, or other supportive individual, pull everything out of that specific space to a staging area that you won’t need back right away, and.just.begin.
If you need a backdrop of motivation and vision for all stages of this process, do yourself a favor and check out New Minimalism, a book I absolutely adore on the topic of home and life simplification and watch a few episodes of Marie Kondo’s show on Netflix: Tidying Up. It feels so much less overwhelming when you just begin so block out the time and invest in these goals. I promise you will experience freedom and ease in so many other areas of your life as you establish harmony, open space, and freedom in your primary environment.
Sixth, invite others into the process. You may be the initiator, but you don’t need to do the work alone. As you lead the way and start organizing, those you share space and life with will notice and they’ll likely get sucked into the fun, addictive momentum and freeing feeling that comes from simplifying and streamlining your home, life, and systems.
There are many more nuances to the process that are unique to you, your life, schedule and goals, but with these ideas in mind and a team to help you, you absolutely can effectively reset your lifestyle and home and keep it on a healthier, freer, more balanced track for the rest of your life.
Article 01: Cutting ties with my inner perfectionist
Sarah Bond - January 2, 2019
One string at a time, I’m cutting ties with my inner perfectionist. It’s that voice that whispers self-doubt after I’ve done something vulnerable or can crush my joy with the weight of self-analysis as my vision filters out the good and looks only for the lacking.
Steadily, I’m silencing this voice, adapting my perspective, taking chances, and letting go of the weight of shame, regret, and fear. I’m enjoying the best of my personality and the thirst I have for learning and personal growth without expecting things to go perfectly or last forever. I’m able to step into the moment with my kids, husband and friends more quickly and fully.
I don’t want to undervalue the importance of growth. It’s a beautiful thing to constantly seek improvement, but not at the expense of celebration, gratitude for what is, and fully investing in people who matter most to me. To thrive, I desire to celebrate what is already great and who is already in front of me and to set aside what could be cleaned up, straightened, grown, or checked off my list.
Today, as I listened to an amazing podcast on personality, I felt both seen and released from the clutches of my inner perfectionist. This freedom is too good to keep to myself, so I wanted to share it with you.
I know that perfectionism can keep us locked away in fear, keeping the best parts of ourselves and what we have to offer the world at bay.
Let’s commit this year to getting freed up from the voices that criticize and hold us back.
Here are links to the podcast that sparked some new thought and freedom for me today as well as a few books I’ve read over the past two years that have become constant references for me on my journey towards freedom from perfectionism and my inner critic:
The Typology Podcast
Typology Episode 049: Julianne Cusick (Enneagram 1) Finds Her Inner Encourager
I absolutely love the self-awareness, wit, and tangible steps towards growth Julianne Cusick offers in this podcast. She shares a few sayings she has coined, including “done is better than perfect,” and “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly…let’s go ahead and do it and experience it rather than not doing it at all.” Julianne realized about 15 years ago that she wanted to place relationships over perfection, a mindset shift that now helps her choose to celebrate when she comes home to a messy kitchen that’s riddled with the aftermath of quality family time. There are so many beautiful, quote-worthy nuggets in this podcast. Listen to the entire episode (and other episodes of this incredible show) when you get a chance, and have a notebook and pen ready!
Books by Brené Brown
This accessible book is absolutely delightful. Brené ends each chapter with practical strategies for DIG-deeper (“get deliberate, inspired and going”) into the area of vulnerability and shame resilience she’s explored in that chapter. Really, perfection tells us we need to hide our vulnerability and one of the biggest experiences of perfection is shame. Her strategies give us practical steps for identifying the lie in the perfectionistic mindset and being vulnerable with a selection of core safe people in our lives when we’re in shame so we can recover and turn around the situation rather than compounding it with isolation and coping behaviors that only lead to greater, you guessed it, shame.
Another great book by Brené. This is a great read to follow the thoughts you’ll find in The Gifts of Imperfection. One story she shares is the journey of a client who was working to overcome perfectionism. Brené shares that one of the sayings that helped the client move past the barrier perfection is “perfection is the enemy of done.” I recite this saying to myself nearly daily as I confront the fear or sense of ideal, perfected process or end result that has to be required of me to move forward. It helps me just do it, fully dive into the experience or clear something that’s standing in my way (like laundry that has to be special washed) and accept natural, human, real-life imperfections that come with the territory.
Daring Greatly is one of the most powerful books I’ve read with my local book club and you can find a fabulous reading guide and discussion questions by Brené here: Daring Greatly Reading Guide.
Kim Fredrickson: Books and podcast on self-compassion
Two years back, I had the opportunity to interview Kim Fredrickson on her incredible journey as a therapist and discovery of one of the things her clients needed most: self-compassion. You can listen to that whole conversation on my podcast here. In our conversation, Kim gets practical about silencing the inner critic and becoming your own compassionate friend. I love something she points out in the beginning of her first book on self-compassionand in her sequel on self-compassion for parents: we are one of the greatest influences on our own lives. We are constantly dialoging with ourselves, and it can be shocking to tune into the kind of tone we use as we speak to ourselves about our character, decisions, and the meaning we’re deriving from our life experiences.
When I’m in a negative self-talk space, I am not the kind of mom, wife, friend, or version of myself I desire to be. My inner critic is often the root of that negative filter. When I think kindly about myself and give grace to myself when I make mistakes, speaking like I would to a friend, my emotional, psychological, and even physical experience of the event is dramatically different.
This is part of thinking and rehearsing the gracious voice of God, our compassionate Father, towards us. As Kim says in her book, God, better than anyone, balances truth and grace. We can imitate him as we develop self-compassion. When we make a negative choice, respond poorly to a situation, or make any other kind of mistake, we can confront it head on with honesty and give ourselves grace and credit for the pressures we’re facing and the steps we’re taking to grow. We are all imperfect, and developing self-compassion can be one of the healthiest ways to navigate our lives, choices, and relationships with both truth and grace.
In 2019, I will continue referring to Kim and Brené’s books and Julianne’s interview when I sense my inner critic rising up. I’m committed to silencing the negative self-talk and becoming my own compassionate friend. I will find greater freedom from perfectionism this year.
What voice of criticism or self doubt gets in the way of your freedom?
What voices of truth and compassion can help you silence this negative voice this year?
To continue the conversation, message me here.
Thanks for visiting, friend. Wishing you a more free, more authentic 2019.