It is all about slowing down, taking time for yourself and establishing new habits that will last a lifetime.
Cultivating Awareness
The question this week … how do you relate to the exercise of letting go of the things that don’t make you feel good.
The answer is … mixed.
I have started on a clear-out of my wardrobe. There is a lot of stuff that I just do not wear but have been holding on to because of, well to be honest I am not sure why. I found the exercise about selecting one item, holding it with eyes shut and feeling what it really means interesting. I have discovered that I tend to keep things because they are too good to just throw away, or that they were a gift and therefore I do not want to hurt people’s feeling by getting rid of them.
To address the first issue, I have started donating more to charity and advertising things on the free websites for people to come and collect.
This sounds like a step forward. but it has just added complications to my life. I do not drive so the simple act of taking the donations involves either arranging for someone to take time out of their plans to give me a lift or stuffing it all into a taxi. This then leads to the problem of parking close enough so that it isn’t a chore to have to cart it to the shop.
The second issue is the guilt I put on myself regarding things given to me as gifts. I do not like clutter at the best of times and am very selective of the ornaments I want in the house, so I find it really difficult if I get something I would not usually choose. That said we very rarely have visitors so technically no one would know if I recycled stuff … but I would. The mantra when I was growing-up was to be grateful for everything that was given to you, which is how I ended up with a top shelf full of dolls I would never dream of playing with. They sat there, arranged neatly so they could all be seen and when someone visited the doll they had given me would be taken down and put on my bed, then as soon as they were gone I couldn’t wait to shove it back out of the way. This rule of gifts however, apparently did not apply to my mother. When I moved to accommodation in a teaching hospital she simply got rid of everything in my room regardless of who had given it to me without a care as to what I wanted to keep. Don’t do as I do, do as I say comes to mind, but then that does tend to sum-up my mother perfectly.
So, the new me is going to not worry so much about how other will feel about what I do with the stuff in my home or life … as far as I am concerned when you give something away you also give away the rights to what happens to it.