Hi,
This is Brooks,
And thanks for joining me.
Today we're going to take a deeper look at clutter.
I've been a clutter buster for a little over 20 years,
And during that time I've helped a lot of people discover what's clutter for them.
My definition of clutter is anything in your life that's no longer serving you,
And it could be a tangible thing,
Or it could be an activity,
Or it could be a relationship with somebody,
It could be a belief about the world,
But it's something that doesn't serve you,
It's something that hurts you.
And so something is either,
This supports me or this depletes me,
Basically.
And clutter busting is a way to ask questions.
It's asking questions to determine what supports me and what doesn't,
Really,
Basically.
It's a very matter of fact,
And it's a very kind approach.
There's no judgment about,
Oh,
I shouldn't have gotten this thing in the past,
Or why did I get this thing,
Or why have I been hanging on to this,
Or why haven't I been able to let this go.
It's really about today and the moment.
It's considering something and asking yourself,
How do I feel about this?
How does it make me feel?
How am I affected by this?
Is it positive or negative?
And then you have this curiosity,
Basically,
About your reaction.
You want to know.
And it makes sense because we care about ourselves.
We really,
Really do.
The fact is,
We do love ourselves,
And sometimes we forget that.
But by clutter busting,
We remember.
Really,
When we consider something,
When we look at something,
And we're asking questions about it,
We're going to ourselves as the source.
We're not asking somebody else,
Should I keep this or should I let this go?
We're checking in with ourselves.
It'd be like if somebody gave you a plate of food and you took a bite,
And you had that first bite,
You're chewing it,
And then that person asks you,
Do you want to keep eating this or not?
You know,
They're asking you.
And you know,
Yeah,
This tastes good to me.
I like eating this.
Or no,
I don't want to eat this.
It's not for me.
And so this whole process is really going within,
Checking in with yourself.
Does this serve me today or not?
And today's a really good point at bringing that into the analysis.
Because what happens is sometimes we can look at something and all the memories come flooding back.
Oh,
Yeah,
That was so great.
Because maybe it was great at some point.
Maybe it really did serve you.
And you remember that and your body's filled with those emotions and those chemicals,
You know,
And you're like,
Oh,
My God,
I can't let this go because of the memories,
The joyful memories.
So that's why we asked,
Do I do I love and use this today?
Do I like and use this today?
If we discover,
Oh,
Yeah,
You know what?
I used to love this.
Whatever.
Like,
Let's say I used to love this shirt,
But I don't like to wear it anymore.
So I'm honoring it by letting it go.
I'm thanking it for its service to me.
And I'm saying,
I don't need your service anymore.
You can go.
You know,
It can be donated or if something's torn or unusable,
It can be thrown out.
But the main thing is it's removed from your life because it's no longer serving you.
And it's really interesting because sometimes it comes up for people will they'll say,
Yeah,
But you know,
Like,
I'll say,
Like,
Do you like and use this?
No.
Do you want to let it go?
No.
And I'll say why?
They say,
Well,
What if one day I might need it?
You know,
What if that comes up so often and there's a fear behind it?
You know,
I don't need it,
But what if I need it?
The person's scared.
And I point that out like they're they're considering keeping it.
There's a lot of fear surrounding that that,
You know,
Questioning or considering that particular keeping that thing for that reason.
And I said,
If you keep it,
You're living without fear.
You know.
And life is hard.
Life can be difficult at times and we want to remove things that cloud our clarity.
And living with a fear way,
A fearful way clouds us.
It clouds our ability to have peace of mind.
Clouds our clarity.
It diminishes our energy.
It exhausts us.
So I find it's a lot kinder just to remove that thing.
Trust yourself.
Trust that it's not for you.
And to let it go.
And the really interesting thing is,
Once someone lets go of a piece of clutter,
They get a feeling of relief because clutter is heavy.
And it creates like a jamming signal in our life.
And it takes up valuable space.
There's so many negative qualities associated with clutter.
It makes us tired.
It creates a stagnant feeling.
Just having it in our lives.
And it may not be visible.
The object may be under our bed or in the back of a closet or in a storage locker three miles away.
But it does have its effect.
And if it's not serving us,
Then it's hurting us.
And again,
I can see that when people let go of the clutter and there's this piece that descends on them.
Like the light comes back in their eyes when they let it go.
And that's reason enough,
You know.
I mean,
We may have 14 reasons why,
Oh,
I got to keep this because,
You know.
But unless it's just a plain and simple,
Yes,
I love this.
Then there's a lot of red flags associated with all those things that we raise about something.
And it's really all coming back to putting ourselves first.
All of us have been trained since we're very young that things are more important than us.
That things are primary and we're secondary in life.
And the more things that we get,
The more valuable we become.
The more activities that we do.
There's a value added to that,
The more people in our lives.
Places like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter capitalize on that because we feel like,
Oh,
I've gotten this value of having all these people.
But the only value is you.
You're a huge value.
The thing is we're more valuable than we realize.
That doesn't mean we don't have things in our lives.
You know,
Things are helpful.
I have this microphone that I'm talking through to you right now.
It makes it helpful for me to put together this recording.
There's a pen by my desk right here.
That's helpful.
I like it.
I like the pen.
So things can be useful to us.
They can benefit us.
But there's no way they're more important to us.
And none of this stuff adds value to us.
But marketing and advertising and the constant,
The constant amount of marketing and advertising convince us that we're less.
It's very smart.
These top psychological research and they know how to make.
They know how to make you feel.
I am less.
I'm not enough.
And I really need this thing.
Apple products are really good at that.
New iPhone comes out.
And there's this feeling of,
Oh,
My God,
I got to have that,
Even though I got one last year.
Because there is a feeling this is more valuable than me and I'm not valuable enough.
And if I get this,
Then I'm going to be OK.
I'm going to think I'm OK.
Other people are going to think I'm OK.
And then I'll be OK.
But it's a hard life to live that way.
It's a hard life to put yourself second.
It's a hard life to feel if I just get more than I'm going to be OK.
Because then we're always we become habituated to that thought.
And no matter what we get,
We're never enough.
And anything we do bring in our lives is exciting for a moment.
And then it becomes a normal part of our lives.
And if we're in the momentum of get more,
You know,
Have more and be more.
Then,
You know,
Once that feeling of excitement goes away,
Of getting something new,
Whether it's a person or activity or thing,
Then we got to get another another thing,
You know.
So we've been taught to be addicts,
Basically.
And the solution is coming back to ourselves.
Remembering.
And you remember by realizing that living the way that puts myself secondary is painful.
I'm sick and tired of living that way.
I don't want to be chasing things or amassing things my whole entire life.
I want to be enough right now.
And that's when we start clutter busting.
That's when we start taking that curious inventory of the things in our lives.
We start looking around with that feeling of openness.
And we look at things and they have to prove their worth to us or they go.
When you ask about something,
Do I like and use this or not?
And you let it and you realize it's clutter for you.
It doesn't serve you and you let it go.
You get this feeling of relief.
You basically get a piece of yourself back and that feels good.
And that feels better than any item that you can bring into your life or person or activity.
And then you go through another,
You question another thing,
Do I like and use this or not?
Maybe it's an activity.
And you realize,
I used to like doing this or maybe I never would have liked doing it.
Everybody said this is so much fun and I tried it.
I didn't like it,
But I kept doing it.
Or I really liked it,
But I don't like it anymore.
And we let it go.
And when we do,
We get this tremendous feeling of relief again because we get a piece of ourselves back.
We removed an artificial part of ourselves and we got an actual part of ourselves back.
And that feels good.
And that inspires us to look and question.
And that's one of the things in our lives.
Maybe we go through our contact list and our phone and we consider each person.
And we see,
We take an honest look,
We curious look,
How does my relationship with this person affect me?
It could be a business relationship,
A friendship,
An intimate relationship.
It could be so many different kinds of relationships out there.
And we're looking at how does this affect me?
Not that that person is clutter,
But the relationship,
Mine knowing them,
Them knowing me.
How does that feel?
How does that affect me?
And it's okay to let a person go from our life if it's not serving us.
We can talk with that person and tell them how we're feeling and see if that changes the relationship.
And if it doesn't,
We can let them go.
So we keep coming back to ourselves.
And it's an act of love to do that.
To ask yourself,
Do I like and use this or not?
Do I enjoy doing this or not?
Does it feel good to be with this person or not?
You're going to yourself as the source and that is an act of love.
And every time you do that,
It's a healing.
It heals your heart.
It heals your relationship with yourself.
It makes you feel closer to yourself.
And that's very fulfilling.
Again,
More fulfilling than anything you can bring into your life to get that temporary high or to increase your value,
You know.
You come back to you.
And you're never going to let go of something that serves you.
Sometimes there's a fear of,
I left this,
What if it's something,
You know,
I've heard so many different things come up from people.
But I tell them,
If you love and use it,
You hang on to it until you feel differently down the line.
Because things come and go in our lives.
Our lives are not meant to be a warehouse or storehouse or a history museum of our lives.
Things come and go.
Life is a flow.
We see that all the time.
Even with our bodies,
We used to be very little and we started getting bigger and we started getting bigger.
So our little cells,
Our body,
When we were little,
Over time gets replaced with a larger body.
That's change.
We're in school.
Then we leave school and we go to work.
There's change.
We have different jobs.
It's change.
Life is full of change.
The weather changes.
So,
You know,
There's so much life is basically change,
Constant change.
So it's natural that things come and go.
And it's natural to question the things in our lives.
To take that curious look to see like,
Oh,
Yeah,
I've changed.
This doesn't fit my life anymore.
I want to let it go.
So it's going with the flow.
Claudia Besten is going with the flow.
And it's exciting.
You know,
Initially there's a little bit of fear to start doing it.
Because,
Again,
We've been taught that things are more important than us.
And sometimes change is a little scary because we're,
Oh,
If I get rid of this,
What's going to take its place?
You know?
But again,
You're not going to get rid of anything that you love and use.
And when that thing goes,
It really opens the door for something new to come into your life that serves you.
And I've seen that over and over again with people.
They're like,
Oh,
Yeah,
I guess I gotta let this go.
Just I really don't like having this in my life.
I'm scared to let it go,
But I'll let it go.
And I talk to them not soon after that.
And they tell me about how something new came into their lives.
A new person,
A new activity,
A new understanding.
Like a different experience health-wise for them,
Those more positive.
There's innumerable possibilities of things that will serve us.
So it's basically this is a summary of the clatter busting process.
And I love talking about it because I've seen so many people's lives transform.
Everybody that I've worked with initially at the very beginning,
There's this rigidness of even though they've hired me and they're paying me money,
There's this rigidness of still wanting to hang on to their stuff.
This first 10 minutes of the clatter bust,
There's that resistance.
And again,
That's natural because we've been taught things are more important than us.
That we're more valuable when we have stuff.
It feels like sacrilege to even consider letting things go.
But once people start to do that and they start to feel their relief and they start to feel the increase of energy as the clatter goes,
They start to feel the energy come back to themselves,
They feel that restoration,
That regeneration.
Then they get excited and there's a momentum there.
And I say that to encourage you to start looking and to experience that for yourself.
You don't take my word for this.
I encourage you to try it out and give it a try and see what your experience is like.
See what it's like to look at your things and to question and to go to yourself as the source and ask,
Do I like and use this or not,
To see how that feels with the curious looking.
So I wish you the best.
I truly do.
And your clatter rusting.
And take care.
Bye.
