Basements, garages, and closets can all become havens for clutter. But so can your mind! Influenced by the steady stream of input which can at times be unhelpful at best and toxic at worst, our brains can feel full of cobwebs. In our last episode, Easy Ways to Stay Organized, we talked with Clutter-free living expert, Deanna Yates. Our focus was on habits, routines, and processes to help organize and maintain our living space. In this bonus mini-episode, we use some of those principles and a few lessons of our own to try to clear the mental clutter.
Feelings of negativity, confusion and overwhelm can sometimes be caused or exacerbated by things like what we watch, who we follow on social media, the people around us and even our own self-talk. We discovered that just as we may need to change schedules and routines in different seasons of life, what we expose ourselves to may need to change too. We invite you into the conversation: click play to see if clearing the clutter in your mind may be what you need.
Check out the episode we were talking about Easy Ways to Stay Organized w/Clutter-Free Living Expert, Deana Yates
Related:
Saying No to Negative Self Talk (w/Psychotherapist Blaine Lawson)
For more info on IMAGINE YOURSELF with Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach or to contact us, visit imagineyourselfpodcast.com
Join the conversation on our FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM pages. Email at imagineyourselfpodcast@gmail.com
Thanks for being part of the Imagine Yourself Family! Follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode!
Basements, garages, and closets can all become havens for clutter. But so can your mind! Influenced by the steady stream of input which can at times be unhelpful at best and toxic at worst, our brains can feel full of cobwebs. In our last episode, Easy Ways to Stay Organized, we talked with Clutter-free living expert, Deanna Yates. Our focus was on habits, routines, and processes to help organize and maintain our living space. In this bonus mini-episode, we use some of those principles and a few lessons of our own to try to clear the mental clutter.
Feelings of negativity, confusion and overwhelm can sometimes be caused or exacerbated by things like what we watch, who we follow on social media, the people around us and even our own self-talk. We discovered that just as we may need to change schedules and routines in different seasons of life, what we expose ourselves to may need to change too. We invite you into the conversation: click play to see if clearing the clutter in your mind may be what you need.
Check out the episode we were talking about Easy Ways to Stay Organized w/Clutter-Free Living Expert, Deana Yates
Related:
Saying No to Negative Self Talk (w/Psychotherapist Blaine Lawson)
For more info on IMAGINE YOURSELF with Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach or to contact us, visit imagineyourselfpodcast.com
Join the conversation on our FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM pages. Email at imagineyourselfpodcast@gmail.com
Thanks for being part of the Imagine Yourself Family! Follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode!
Sandy Kovach [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Imagine Yourself podcast where we help you imagine your next chapter of life with grace, gratitude, courage and faith.
Lanée Blaise [00:00:10]:
I am Lanee, here with Sandy and today we are talking about everybody I think knows they can look at their life and see where there are some areas where they need to make changes, adjustments. Some times you need a little addition and subtraction in your life. Get rid of some things, get rid of some thoughts, add in some good things, add in some good thoughts. So this episode is going to be all about that kind of along the premise of that whole decluttering your house, decluttering your mind, decluttering your life. Sometimes because of the episode that we recently had with clutter free expert Deanna Yates, but also because it's the beginning of fall and lots of times I just read something the other day by Gretchen Rubin and she said that September is often like its own little set of new year. I'm kind of paraphrasing her, but many times people think of January as the new year, but sometimes in the fall you kind of get a new kickstart. So Sandy, I was wondering after you listened to that episode, about easy ways to stay organized, not that we're going to rehash that totally, but I just wonder what were some of the things that you are working on in your life and your home to start fresh and start new things?
Sandy Kovach [00:01:31]:
Yeah, Deanna Yates was amazing and if you haven't listened to the episode, definitely go back and check that one out, especially if you've got a little decluttering on your mind. But I loved what she said specifically for me about how decluttering can be something that's different or let me put it like this, habits can be something that are different depending on the season you're in. Now you just mentioned fall. Seasons can also be how old are your kids, if you have kids or grandkids or are you going to school, are you working from home, are you commuting? There's just a million things that make for different habits in your life and she was all about customizing your habits. And the one thing I mentioned to her when we were talking about specific clutter issues or home challenges was that we had just recently gotten a kitten. And we have never and we've always adopted but we've always adopted adult cats, and they've just kind of been settled. And, you know, kittens are everywhere. They're bouncing off walls. And this one was literally weeks old, or she is. And Belle, she's a beautiful cat, we love her, but you never know when she's going to knock something over. And she loves dried flowers. So we have a bunch of these vases with dried flowers all over the place. Nothing's broken yet, but we've had some pretty serious messes and she'll come in and hop on my back know, hop on the table with the computer or hop on the bookcase. I mean, she can go high, she can go low. You just don't know what Belle's doing. That had been frustrating for me. And so Deanna said, hey, just kind of like when you have a new baby or a little toddler around the house, you do different things. You take things away, you move the vases, whatever changes you have to make. So I did that. We moved things around and even today, my husband actually lit a candle and I'm like, you can't light candles right now because she'll jump all the way up to the dresser and who knows? So it's about just adapting. I guess if you want to take that a little further than just the practical kitten applications, it's about adapting to the changes in life.
Lanée Blaise [00:03:37]:
And I like too, the fact that it's about adapting to seasons, because a season by definition means that it's for a specific amount of time. It's not going to be like this forever. Bell is not going to be jumping all over the place even a couple of years from now. You'll be in a different season even then. And for some people, I think we all need to remember that temporary aspect so that we don't get overly frustrated. Do you agree?
Sandy Kovach [00:04:05]:
Oh, absolutely. Whatever it is going on in your life, whether it's little kids or stress on your job, what about you? What did you take away from Deanna or what's one of the cool things because you always have these little yours are always much deeper than mine, so I can't wait for you to get to yours.
Lanée Blaise [00:04:23]:
Yes, mine is going to be very deep. I actually kind of took a full tangent off of what she said. So she was more talking about kind of decluttering your home and she even talked about as far as sometimes you need to go through and you have a donate bin for something that you're going to send off to donate. You have a bin of trash things you're going to throw away completely and you have a bin of things that need to be placed somewhere else within the home. So Sandy, on a deeper level, I took this as far as decluttering my own mind and my life. I really started thinking about if I were kind of going to go inside my brain and take a little box and I'm going to have three distinctions in order to kind of go through my thoughts sometimes, especially because of social media, and I am guilty of it. I really appreciate some of the aspects of Instagram, and I'm more of an Instagram person personally, but there are lots of great nuggets that you find there. But what I'm starting to realize is in my brain, I need to really be mindful that some of the advice, although it's wonderful, it's not for me and I'm going to borrow from you, it's not for Linnae. In this season of life, so some of that great wise advice, I need to make sure that I put it in a bin to donate to other.
Sandy Kovach [00:05:55]:
People or save for later or save.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:58]:
For later because it's not what I need to put in the forefront of my life right then. For example, I know that a lot of people have issues with either saying yes too much or saying no too much. And that's something that you'll get these messages of. Say yes to everything, say yes to life or say no, make sure that you have your boundaries strongly in place and you really need to take a good look at yourself and decide which of those messages you want to keep in this season of life to make sure that you're doing the right things to push forward. In my writing career, that's the big one. I need to say yes more often because I'm really good with my no boundaries. I'm really good at saying no or this is not for me, but for the writing things, I do need to open up and be willing to say yes. So as far as just going through my mind, I just want to make sure and I encourage others to really think about the thoughts and the messages and the life and the ways that you want to go ahead and keep that you want to donate. Maybe that's for your best friend or for your mom to do in her life, maybe for know spouse or for your kids. And then some things are trash, Sandy.
Sandy Kovach [00:07:22]:
Some things are absolutely trash and you hit the mute or unfollow in that case as far as social media goes. But no, I hear you. And the things that you're saying is some messages are they're not bad in and of themselves, but they may not be for you in that moment or for that bucket in your life. Right? So you have this writing bucket, kind of your career bucket where you feel like you need to say yes, but there's still some areas in your life that you need to still say no more. So it's not always like a clear cut. Boundaries are customizable and not only for individuals but for different facets of our life, it seems like.
Lanée Blaise [00:07:59]:
Absolutely. And that's the part where there's this other element too, because Deanna Yates did mention know if you're happy with the things that you have in your home or she's mentioned if you entertain a lot, then of course you're going to need to bring in some things in your home for entertaining. And that thought process is something that I've really been embracing. If I want to be a writer, I might need to really consider bringing in some other tools into my toolkit. I did reach out to a podcast guest that we had before, Heather Wolfson. She's a career coach and I have been working with her on some different ways to jumpstart and advance my career. We also coming up later in the year, we're going to have a fitness coach. And I was kind of talking with her because I am trying to also make sure that my fitness life is just as good as my writing life. So all of these things are things that I want to introduce and then again, of course, too, I cannot say this enough, some thoughts, some messages, some stuff is just trash.
Sandy Kovach [00:09:07]:
You don't need it.
Lanée Blaise [00:09:08]:
You don't need to either say it to yourself, I can't, I'll never be able to or I look terrible. That's trash. Get it out of there. No more of that. And try to ease yourself more into I'm not there yet, but I'm working towards it. And even as far as looks, god gave me this space, this body, this everything. I appreciate it, it works. Things that do work and everything else I'll keep trying to work on instead of the trash. Thoughts?
Sandy Kovach [00:09:37]:
Yeah. And again, propagated by social media. Yes, the comparison right. But it's all the way we process social media. Social media in and of itself is not necessarily bad. I mean, some people would argue that it is and there's some nefarious stuff going on and maybe part of that's true, but just like anything else, it's how we are processing the information. So if you see some trash out there, or even if you see something that you're processing it in a way that let's say you're following someone. A lot of people you follow are friends and family. But let's face it, we enjoy and follow a lot of people that we just discover on social media. And maybe for a time in our life we like what they're saying or whatever, but they might veer off in a direction that for whatever reason, it's not working for us anymore or even just it makes us feel negative. There's nothing wrong with them. And if you don't want to unfollow or unfriend, if it's the case of Facebook, there's a nice little thing called mute and they will never know. You can mute them for 30 days like on Facebook, or you can unfollow them completely. There's different options or Twitter or whatever the case may be. Yeah, do a little social media cleanse, see who you're following and if the message is making you feel uncomfortable and it's not serving you, then get rid of it. I think.
Lanée Blaise [00:10:59]:
Yeah. And it goes back to what you said. Also, Sandy, as far as sometimes it really isn't personal against them. Sometimes you are the person who is in a different season of your life now that you're just trying to go in a different direction. And like you said, you will have to purge women of those people that you follow and get on board with some new things or keep it down low. You don't have to have too many people that you're following. That's true. Even your social media can become cluttered.
Sandy Kovach [00:11:30]:
Yeah, that's true too. And then that's another thing to look at. Go through your list and see, just for the sake of decluttering, who you would like to follow or unfollow. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it's a big part of our life and it influences us a lot. Now, if you're not on social media a lot, just take this part of the conversation and put it in another bin.
Lanée Blaise [00:11:54]:
Or put it in the other bin as far as what you're watching on television, what you're listening to on the radio true. Which movies you're watching, there are still things that you're consuming and bringing into your mind and thoughts that you might want to change. And we've had definitely past episodes on fitness and what you're eating and drinking and things like that too. So, I mean, you really can just take a good, wide look at everything in your life and see what it is that you want to continue with and what you want to get rid of, what you want to declutter.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:27]:
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that in a while. I went to a church service with my friend Crystal, her pastor was preaching on specifically, I don't remember what it was, but it had to do with the things that you're viewing and I hadn't really thought of it in a long time. But I do watch a lot of trash on Netflix because it's guilty pleasure, right? And I guess some of it's okay, but I started to feel guilty. I started to feel convicted about it, like we're supposed to the Bible says we're supposed to think on what's good and what's beneficial and what's loving. Yeah. Not on the trash.
Lanée Blaise [00:13:05]:
Right? Yeah, that's the part too. We're not trying to bash anybody and tell them that they can't have any of their guilty pleasures, but just keep an eye on the amount, make sure moderation is key. And yeah, do balance it out with some things that are lovely and excellent and admirable and all that good stuff, too, because it makes a difference in how you feel. It makes a difference in how you behave. It makes a difference in how you live.
Sandy Kovach [00:13:35]:
Yeah. So I feel better. I feel less cluttered already.
Lanée Blaise [00:13:38]:
See, don't you feel lighter and freer? All this to say, Deanna Yates, clutter free living expert, taught us how to declutter our homes, but then it also kind of spills out into everything. So we just want to remind you out there to imagine yourself living a clutter free, happy, light, beautiful, loving life.
Sandy Kovach [00:14:05]:
Thanks for joining us and as always, we love your feedback. You can find links in our show notes to our social media and our website. Imagineourselfpodcast.com if you got a minute and could give us a rating that would also help us to know how you're feeling about things and help others to discover the podcast as well. And until the next time we have something new to imagine. Here's hoping we can all clear that clutter from our mind.