Recently a client contacted me with sincere apologies because a travel delay would prevent him making our session and he wondered if I could please still meet with him that afternoon? He was shocked to learn through my response that our session had come and gone 24 hours prior and he’d been a no show.
Clutter can look like the obvious physical piles stacked across the tops of our desks, inboxes that haven’t been at zero ever, calendars that are double and triple-booked, or calendars that live only in our heads because we mistakenly trust ourselves to keep up with all the details, to the not so obvious clutter hideouts like the unresolved interpersonal issues my male clients in particular like to classify as “compartmentalization,” busyness (because p.s. busy does NOT equal productive), incomplete tasks, resistance to action (which can manifest itself in lots of different ways), or relationships — both personal and professional — that do not support us.
“Clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions fueled by procrastination.”
― Christina Scalise
Clutter catches up with all of us at various stages and spaces in our lives. And just like my client experienced firsthand, his cluttered world caught up with him. I wasn’t the only appointment he’d ever missed, but I might have been the first to call him out on it 🙂 And that’s where he and I went to work by slowing everything in his frenetic world down and identifying what really mattered.
“The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t.”
― Marie Kondō
It’s amazing how little we actually need or even want in our space when we’ve intentionally and thoughtfully decluttered. I love Kathi Lipp‘s definition of clutter, as it resonates with my own experience:
At its heart, clutter is a lack of peace.”
External experience is a reflection of internal reality. If your external space is cluttered and disorganized, I guarantee you’ve got the same thing happening inside of you, and whether you’ve slowed down enough to acknowledge that is irrelevant.
Your internal peace is the barometer by which your external world functions.
Let’s do a clutter check. Take a glance around your office. How does it look? Where is there an opportunity for some tidying? Is it time for a check in(ward)? How would you describe your internal peace meter today?
Get unstuck and decluttered so you can keep creating and building and growing. You and your team need you in top form.
