Further to my Blog a few days ago about getting too attached to material things I wanted to take this a stage further because it got me to thinking about a process I went through prior to moving over from the UK to Orlando.
As you can imagine, emigrating is a lengthy and time-consuming process. For some reason when I ever moved home in the past I have simply boxed everything up thrown it in a truck or car and taken it with me. Moving overseas isn’t quite like that because space is limited and anyway, I wanted to use it as an excuse to give a load of stuff away to either friends and family or charities.
As I sat in my garage one-day sifting through old stuff I suddenly decided to get rid of pretty much everything.
All my old sales awards went into the garbage, as did old Christmas and birthday cards I had kept for sentimental reasons. Out of probably several hundred soccer programmes stretching back 3 decades all bar about 10 went to a relative or were given away to fans of the relevant teams online. Old cassette and videotapes were mercilessly scrapped (after all I didn’t even have a VHS or tape player anymore) and clothes that hadn’t been worn for over 18 months went to charity. About 200 books were sold and given away and also any cd’s that I hadn’t listened to for more than a couple of years were jettisoned.
When I was doing this I had a few doubts, just a few. After all, this stuff had taken years for me to collect and it was part of me, right? Well you know I am going to say wrong and that was a sucker question, but let me do it anyway. Wrong! It was just stuff that was cluttering up my life and adding no value. I never read the books, listened to the cd’s wore the clothes or read the programmes anymore. The sales certificates were just ego stroking from a job that I no longer did and even if I did, so what? They were irrelevant to me as a person.
After all this junk had gone I felt great. I didn’t have to pay to have it shipped, or worry about where I was going to store or shelve it and I don’t think there is one single thing that I have missed. Ok maybe that flowery shirt from my Stone Roses Madchester phase circa 1989 that I wanted for a fancy dress party but that is about it.
I sometimes ask life coaching clients to take a look around them and see what they are holding onto that is no longer relevant or needed in their life. It’s not an exercise in minimalism or throwing away things simply for the sake of it. It just demonstrates to ourselves that from time to time we can understand what is really important and move on.
Now if I could just get my wife to check out her closet……
Tim Brownson is a Certified Life Coach and has been unsticking people and helping them reach their true potential since 2005. If you would like to know how he can help you