This morning I was sitting with my client amidst the papers piled in her home office. She was stuck and having a hard time. She been wanting to do something about her clutter situation but it had been too much for her.
I said, "The funny thing is, the clutter gets to hide in these piles. Even though you can see the stacks of paper, the papers are individually hidden because it's daunting for you to think about taking a look...So, let's take a look."
I had her go through one sheet at at time. I gave her a lot of encouragement as we went along. Encouragement is one of the best kinds of fuel. She'd probably been trying to fuel herself with, "Why can't I do this?" and "What's wrong with me?" but it turns out that fuel doesn't work.
As she went through and tossed papers, I wrote down some of what she said because I was thinking it might be fuel for you:
"I guess I really don't need this."
"That piece of paper seemed like it was important but it wasn't."
"We don't need this."
"That's old."
"This is from a job that ended in the last century. I don't need it."
"My memory gets better when I'm not bogged down with this stuff."
"I've been really keeping this stuff, but it's so heavy - I don't need it."
"This is good. This is really good."