Declutter Our Minds

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love. (this will be the daily mantra of the blog, for the rest of this year.)

“You spend most of your time inside of your head. Make it a nice place to be.”- Growth Hub

This is the time of the year, that a lot of us do some decluttering in our homes. My husband went to town on his closet the other day, and he filled up a nice, big bag for Goodwill. My closet cleaning is still at the intention stage, but it is a priority – a major one, that I plan to get to, in the coming days. My friend was asking a group of us for ideas about how to decorate her shelves, after taking all of her clutter, off of them. One member of our friend group, who has exquisite tastes, was singled out for ideas. She is a self proclaimed minimalist, but what I loved the best was her answer. My lovely friend said that you should fill your shelves with what you love, and what makes you happy, because truthfully, you are the only one who sees your shelves on a regular, daily basis.

The same sentiment certainly applies to our heads, right? We are the only ones with access to our minds. The inside of our heads is sacred space, so holy that we are the only ones privy to what goes on, inside of it. Sure, we can spill out what is churning in our brains, to other people, but oftentimes, what we spill out in our conversations, and our interactions with others, is usually just a regurgitation of everything which we have allowed into our minds.

When we get on a health kick, we become super conscious about what we are eating and drinking and consuming. We get real honest with ourselves about what is good to put into our bodies, and what about our diets, needs to be laid to waste. When we declutter our drawers and our cabinets and our shelves, we often use the Marie Kondo question, “Does this item spark joy in me?” Perhaps, we should use these same methods, when decorating the insides of our heads.

I imagine if we wanted to create a real ugly devil’s den inside of our heads, we could fill our minds with every negative news piece we could find. We could fill our minds with ruminations about everything that we don’t like about our jobs, our country, and the people who annoy us. We could fuel the raging fires with our fears, and our worries, and focus our imaginations on possible upcoming catastrophes. What would a decluttered mind look like, though? What if we took it down to the studs? What if we kept open doors on both sides of our heads, so that thoughts could come in, and just as easily pass on through, keeping our minds open and breezy and clear to views which might really resonate with us, down to the true command center of our hearts, where our precious souls reside.

The older I get, the more I see simple truths. What is good for the body and is good for the soul, is good for the mind. What is happening outside of us, is often just a projection of what is happening inside of us. We frequently forget just how much power and control we really wield, in our lives. Just as we clutter up our houses, we also have the power to clean out what no longer sparks joy. Just as we fill up our bodies with junk food, we can fill them up with wholesome nutrients, instead. Just as we can obsessively click on one negative news story, or triggering social media post after another, we can stop and we can breathe, and we can clean out what does not belong in our sacred mindspace. The irony of it all, is that we are always trying to control and fix “the outsides”, but if we control what is happening inside of us, the outsides usually look a whole lot better. When we take care of our bodies, we have more energy, and we fit into our clothes better. When we take time to really feed our souls with what feels good to us, by communing with nature and people and animals and our Source, we no longer have gaping holes that we try to fill with things that clutter up our lives, or substances that hurt our bodies. When we take the time to cleanse our minds of negative thoughts and beliefs and worries, we have more wide, open space to fill our brains with wonder and awe and amazement about all of the miracles of life surrounding us. When we stay in our own lanes, and when we focus on the only triumvirate that we do have any real control over, that being our own minds, our own bodies and our own souls, the outsides just have a way of taking care of themselves. When we have an inside sense of calm and control and order, we no longer need to concern ourselves with controlling anything outside of us. Trying to control “the outsides” was just our fruitless way of trying to get that internal sense of calm and control and order for ourselves, which has been available to us, all of the time. Ironic, right?

“Everyone wants peace, inside and outside, and we would all have it if we knew how. Now we know how. It begins with you.” – Byron Katie

“Create a friendly atmosphere on the inside and outside. Live Friendly. Be a friendly person on the inside. Have the attitude it takes to be smiling internally first.” – Jeffrey Gitomer