A few months ago I was working with a client in her office. She worked a 60 plus hour week and rarely saw her family. She was stressed and unhappy and exhausted. She had a hard time sitting still. There were piles and stacks of paper and mail and various items on her desk and the floor. It felt like a tornado had come out of her mind and spun the room out of control.
When she spoke she whispered. She was afraid people in other offices and the hallway would hear her. She complained a lot about her job, especially her bosses. She felt unappreciated. I said that the first thing to start appreciating was herself. I said that other people would never take care of her. It was up to her. The honesty of this caused her to settle down and be quiet.
There was a huge framed poster of a TV show production dominating her office. I asked her what it was about. She said it was a project she worked on a few years ago. It was her last big success at this job. I asked her if we could take it down and let it go. She was resistant because it reminded her that once things were "good". I helped her see that by adoring the past, she was diminishing the present moment. I said we need to give right now a good chance to be something good. She agreed.
After the poster was gone and removed from the office there was a great feeling of peacefulness present in the room. She looked more alive. She no longer looked shriveled and scared.. She felt free. She was also thinking clearly. She said, "I don't want to work here anymore. I miss my family." She told me that she had been buying her family's love with expensive presents to make up for not being home. She realized that she had been working on projects that didn't mean anything to her. Her life's activities were clutter. They weren't nourishing her.
We quickly went through the piles on the floor. Most of it was tossed in the trash. Now that she was seeing things honestly she was able to make decisions. Clutter diminishes us and isolates us in our minds. We hang onto things because we can't see that we don't need them. She was able to reverse that condition in a few short hours. We threw out ten bags of trash. She was strong and renewed.
She ended up leaving the job and starting her own company out of her home. Her family is happy to have her back. She is happy to have her life and clarity and heart back. It's possible to reverse any clutter situation. The main thing is to start. Letting things go that no longer serve you gives you back your strength and clarity and your life starts to work again.