Hi,
This is Brooks Palmer and thanks for joining me today.
It's good to be here with you.
I've been a clutter buster for about 20 years,
Helping people let go of clutter in their lives and I've written a couple books about it.
I've given a lot of talks and worked with hundreds of people to help them let go of clutter and my definition of clutter is anything in your life that's no longer serving you.
And that means it could be a tangible thing or it could be an activity,
It could be a relationship,
It could be a belief system,
Thoughts that you have about something.
But anything that diminishes you,
That's my definition of clutter.
And I wanted to share a personal story of something that happened to me that I feel really brings home that idea that anything in your life that no longer serves you can be clutter.
And so what happened is about eight and a half years ago,
I've been clutter busting for a while by then and I got sick,
I got pneumonia.
And so I went into the doctor's office and they did an x-ray and they said,
You know,
You got pneumonia but also your lungs are really scarred up,
You know,
And I said,
Was that from the pneumonia?
And they go,
No,
It's like something else in addition to that.
So I got scared,
You know,
And I was like,
I said,
Well,
What's going on?
And so they said,
Well,
You need to get a biopsy.
So they took a biopsy in my lungs and a CAT scan and they said that your lungs are,
There's a lot of damage in your lungs,
A lot of lung scarring and you can't repair it.
And it probably happened as a result of the clutter busting because some of the places like clutter buster were very toxic.
There was a lot of mold or animal feces or a lot of dust and dirt and sometimes food had been left out for a long time,
Just a collection of a lot of stuff and,
You know,
Breathed it in and what happened was my immune system attacked those things but because it's a strong immune system also attacked the lungs and so it was an autoimmune response.
And anyway,
They said there's,
Your lungs can't repair themselves.
So what you need to do,
What you're going to have to do,
What we recommend is that you get a lung transplant.
And I thought,
What?
Like I've never even heard of a lung transplant.
I mean,
I've heard of heart transplant,
Kidneys transplant,
Things like that.
And it was almost,
It was like science fiction,
You know,
Just considering that idea.
And I thought like,
I'm not going to do that,
You know.
I bet I can get well without having to get a lung transplant.
I mean,
It's hard for people to even survive a lung transplant.
Like,
Why would I want to do something like that?
You know,
I bet I can get well on my own.
I'll go to some healers.
I'll go to some alternative medicine places.
So I did that,
You know.
I probably saw like 14 or 15 different healers or,
You know,
Alternative medical practitioners.
And actually what happened is I just got sicker and sicker,
You know.
And I was still hopeful that something would work,
But it was just,
It was getting harder and harder for me to breathe.
And the doctors were just,
They were,
You know,
Emphatically recommending getting a lung transplant.
And I was like,
Emphatically saying no,
You know,
Because I like my lungs.
I don't want to get rid of my lungs,
You know.
If I don't have my lungs,
I can't breathe.
I mean,
That's,
It was like a real,
You know,
Deep feeling.
Like I can't get rid of my lungs,
You know.
I really thought I could do it on my own.
And so,
But at some,
But at a certain point I was so sick,
I was stuck in bed and breathing out of this thing called an oxygen concentrator,
Which pulls extra oxygen out of the air because I couldn't get enough oxygen on my own.
And you know,
I would not be able to,
I would basically die,
You know,
If I didn't have this oxygen concentrator.
And I was so out of breath just walking two feet.
I was just,
You know,
Heaving trying to breathe.
And as a result of that I lost like 40 pounds and I was still holding out,
You know.
I'm like,
I'm bed-eck and there's,
You know,
There were people that were praying for me every night at a certain time.
And I was just hoping like,
Oh,
There's going to be some kind of miracle,
You know.
And it all came to a certain point,
I remember it.
My wife was giving me a bath because I couldn't do it for myself.
I couldn't bathe myself.
And I was just sitting there just like,
You know,
Breathing really heavy and just,
She was pouring water over my head.
And at that point my heart just shot through the walls.
I just,
Like,
The feeling of love just went shooting out and I started crying.
And I said it out loud at the same time I thought it.
I thought,
I want to live.
And I'd never had that feeling in my life before,
You know,
Because I'd never had my life threatened.
And I thought being alive is the most important thing to me.
I'm going to get a lung transplant,
You know,
Because I realized that my lungs have become clutter.
You know,
If I kept my old lungs I would die because they were breaking down.
They were basically just falling apart and at some point they wouldn't work anymore.
And I would be dead.
So that's purely not serving me,
You know.
And it was so clear.
I thought,
Well the next day what I did was I called the hospital and I said,
I want to be,
You know,
I want to be on the list for the lung transplant.
And by this time I had had,
They'd gone through all these medical tests to see,
I thought I could survive it in case I decided to get the lung transplant.
And so all I had to do was basically say I wanted to do it and they would put me on the list.
So I was on the top of the list.
There's this list that,
Like,
If you're in the worst possible condition you're at the top of the list.
And then there's everybody below that from different levels of health and they weren't even sure I was going to make it.
You know,
They thought,
Like,
There's a good chance I won't survive until,
You know,
Donor lungs.
There would be somebody who died who was a donor and they would be available.
They weren't sure I'd make it.
And I had this conviction I was going to survive because I really wanted to live and I felt like it was going to happen.
And it did.
You know,
I think it was like three or four weeks later and I went through the procedure.
It was like a 25-hour surgery and then I was out cold for like three days.
They do that so your body gets a chance to recover.
And then I basically started recovering,
You know.
I got,
I became conscious again.
I realized that I'd survived lung transplant and I was starting to feel better and I had to go through physical therapy because I had to learn how to walk again and talk again.
And that took about a month and a half.
But I got my life back,
You know.
That's the main thing.
I got my life back.
I let go of something that I thought I needed more,
You know,
That I would not let go of,
But it was killing me.
It was truly hurting me,
Which is right on that definition of clutter,
Anything that's no longer serving you.
You know,
My lungs were no longer serving me.
And I got my life back.
And ever since then,
Every day I have this feeling like I'm grateful to be alive.
There's nothing more important in my life than being alive.
It's very clear.
The aliveness,
That's my greatest possession.
Everything else has to support that,
You know.
Or it goes.
It's very clear.
And in addition to that,
I also have this daily feeling of I can breathe,
You know.
I mean,
That's something I completely took for granted,
You know,
Breathing.
And every day is like,
I am breathing.
I'm so lucky to be able to breathe.
So I got that gift along with the feeling of the gift of I'm alive,
As well as the gift of every time I'm walking,
I have this feeling of I can walk.
Because for a while after the surgery,
I couldn't walk.
So I got that gift too,
You know.
And that's often how it is with clutter.
I know from working with clients,
It's like especially the really deep clutter.
The really hard to let go stuff.
And when it becomes obvious this doesn't serve me anymore,
A person lets it go.
I see it over and over again.
People's lives transform.
And a lot of new things come in to replace what was there previously.
And oftentimes it's things that people never imagined that they wanted,
Just like me.
Like I'm grateful I'm alive.
And it's hard to,
I try to put it into words and try to express it.
Maybe it conveys or not.
But I just feel like the luckiest person in the world.
And I think that gave me a greater conviction as a clutter buster.
You know,
When I talk to people or when I work with them,
Just with the undercurrent feeling of like,
You know,
Does this support you being alive?
You know,
Experiencing me alive?
Or can you let it go?
And anyway,
I talk about it too when I give talks.
And it seems to inspire people to hear that story.
Because then they start looking at their own lives and like,
What,
You know,
People start to look,
You start to look more wider at everything in your life.
You know,
Is there anything here that's not assuring me?
Because I really want to let it go.
So I want to thank you for listening.
It's a very personal story and I feel really grateful I got to tell it to you and that you're listening to this.
I appreciate you and I appreciate your aliveness.
You know,
I think that's great that you're alive too.
And thank you so much for listening.
Take care.
