Clutter. I can’t stand it! Admittedly, I’m not the neatest person. But I’d like to think that there is some sense of order to the organized piles on my desk and I can usually put my finger on something when I need it.
The kind of clutter that really frustrates me, however, is mental clutter. Recently, I seem to have fallen victim to a clouded state of mind. And as I observed my jumbled thoughts I noticed that they weren’t negative as you might expect. Instead, most of the clutter was a hodgepodge of ideas about how to reach more people and have greater impact with my work. So it was all positive stuff.
But have you ever had too many ideas floating around in your head? So many that you became immobilized and unable to move forward with any one of them? That was my predicament.
I was getting inspired by so many things and new ideas would continually pop into my head, but it all felt like clutter because I lacked one key thing… clarity. Of course, this became my intention as well as the theme for this week's guided meditation on my YouTube channel.
And the thing that has been helping me clear this mental clutter is the guidance to let go of the thinking and really follow my heart instead. Now, this is not a new “AHA" for me. This is something I am aware of and usually strive to do. But the messiness of the mind is real and it’s so easy to get caught up in that clutter. I don't think anyone is excluded from this experience.
So after that important reminder, I decided to bring out the big broom and sweep away all the ideas and revisit them one by one. Whenever I had the thought, “Oh that sounds like a great idea… I should do that!”, I’d pause, feel into my heart to get clarity on it. And if the heart said “No”, I’d let it go for now and trust that if it’s truly meant for me to do, I’ll come back to it when the time is right.
If you can relate to any of this, I invite you to do this simple but effective “on the spot” practice whenever you may be feeling unclear about something.
- Pause
- Breathe slowly and fully
- Bring your awareness to your heart.
- From the heart space, explore the thought, idea, choice, decision, etc. and see if it feels right at this time.
Because it’s not about thinking our way to clarity… but feeling our way there. Clarity doesn’t come from the mind, it comes from the heart.