Day 305: The Weight I Didn't Know I Was Carrying
After months of having everything outside under tarps, all piled up as storm prep, from the end of July to November 1st, I have emerged.
We live outside here on our patios, balconies, whatever outdoor spaces we have. And it all goes away during the hot, humid, hurricane season. We go inside, turn on the A/C, and wait.
And then, like magic, every year, by November 1st, the storms are off the weather map, the humidity is gone, and we can emerge.
It's like spring for us, only it's fall. Everything in the desert is now lush and green from all the rain, and it's cooling down enough to plant a garden.
So, as I get some guys over to do a cleanup and get everything outside set up again, it's also a good time to go through everything, inside and out, and give away things I haven't used this year.
Purging, donating, giving away, letting go, getting bad juju out of the house. Whatever you want to call it, it's good for the soul.
Anything that lightens the energetic load is good.
And everything in our life holds its own energy and weight.
You may have never thought of that before.
But that's how it came into your life in the first place.
You saw it, and something about it made you feel like it belonged with you.
Or someone gave it to you as a gift, and it came with their energy and the energy of your relationship attached to it.
But it's time to Marie Kondo it.
Her famous question is whether something sparks joy. I'm adding my own question: Have I actually used this in the past year, or am I keeping it because I might want it someday?
Right now I have a cargo trailer full of outdoor furniture and things that potentially will go into the motorhome or find a new home.
I have outdoor rugs that are still in the same place the delivery guy set them four months ago. They've been waiting for this day- well, the day the yard clean-up guys come, when the outdoor living area of the motorhome will begin to take shape.
You know how good it feels when you just clean out one drawer. Imagine how good it would feel if you take half a day and clean out an entire room, or next weekend and do the whole house?
Three years ago I flew up to California and emptied out my storage I had been holding onto for over a decade.
It had everything from my old office in it, and I was sure I would want to keep most of it, so I had kept paying all that time, thinking that eventually I would go and get it. And time just got away from me.
Any time I thought about that storage, there were mixed emotions. Thousands of dollars to do the whole trip. How would I get stuff back here that I wanted to keep? When was a good time to go?
I couldn't or didn't want to answer those questions, so I just kept kicking it forward to some other time.
Then I was telling a friend about it and how heavy it felt. I had given her the furniture that had originally been in a bigger storage unit.
She suggested I come up and stay with her and we would go through it all together.
That felt doable, and I'd get to spend time with my friend and have some fun at the same time.
I went for a week. We took everything from the storage unit and piled it outside her guest house. Every morning I went through boxes and boxes of my old life. Reliving every single thing I held in my hand.
I threw away so many $1000 or $2000 home study courses I had used to build my business and some I never opened. I threw away all my old Nightingale-Conant cassette tape series that had been my personal growth college and had gotten me through the worst times of my life.
I was grateful for everything I'd learned from them, but I didn't need to keep the cassettes to keep the wisdom they'd given me.
I threw away everything but a carry-on full of my personal photos that I had stacked in Ziploc bags, and a checked duffle bag.
I thought going through all my possessions that were my past life and business would bring up a lot of feelings I didn't want to relive.
It didn't. Instead, every box that went into the dumpster lightened my soul. It was like I had an internal cheering squad. The more I let go, thanking it for the role it had played in my life at the time, the better I felt.
By the time my plane landed back in Cabo, I felt as light as a feather. I was so filled with new energy, I felt like I could take on anything.
It felt like a miracle. And I had been dreading what I thought it would feel like for years, spending a lot of money to avoid it.
Boy, was I wrong.
I came home and started to do the same thing in the condo. There were closets in the second and third bedrooms I hadn't looked at in almost a decade.
You know that stuff that moves from where you stored it in the last place to where you'll store it in the new place, promising yourself that one day you'll go through it all.
And that day never comes. But maybe it will now.
What surprised me most about that week in California was how much energy I'd spent avoiding something that turned out to feel so freeing.
I could appreciate everything those things had meant to me and still recognize that I didn't need to carry them into the next chapter of my life.
And now, as I get ready to enjoy another beautiful season of outdoor living here in Cabo, I'm looking forward to clearing out a little more of what no longer belongs in my life.
There's something wonderful about opening up space, both in our homes and within ourselves, without needing to know exactly what will fill it.
Sometimes just having more room to breathe is the gift.
Today's Gentle Practice
Choose one small space in your home that you've been meaning to go through.
It might be a drawer, a shelf, or a box you haven't opened in years.
As you look through what's there, ask yourself:
Am I keeping this because it still belongs in my life, or because it belonged to a version of my life I've already moved beyond?
You can appreciate what something meant to you without needing to hold onto it forever.
Notice how you feel when you create a little more space.
With you,
Lynn
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