Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

cleaning

Get Yourself Organized

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Just can’t seem to get organized? Feeling a bit out of control? A little swamped?

Join the club.

And, it’s a mighty big club.

Organization may the single most problematic task for most of us, according to my completely unscientific poll of clients, friends and family. Oh, and the mailman. So, how about some tips on how to get organized?

Let me be frank here: if other people think you are disorganized but you are fine with how you live, then it’s not a problem. For you. Of course, if you have 25 years of old newspapers stacked ceiling high, 85 cats and 43 cases of yams stacked in untidy pyramids throughout your house, you might want to consider that there’s a problem… But it’s up to you.

If your disorganization makes you late — paying bills, keeping appointments, forgetting to take medication — or prevents you from being truly happy, then you need to make some changes. Here’s how:

Identify the problem. Take a notebook and walk around your home, or your office, and make a list of the areas that need attention. Be specific. “Hall closet” or “supply closet”, rather than “whole house” or “everything”. “Calendar” or “paying bills”, rather than “time” or “money”. Got it? Once you can identify the problem areas, you can make a plan to begin to attend to them. Cherry-pick the easiest task first, and if none of them seem easy, then pick the area where getting organized is going to have the biggest impact.

Break each problem area down into teeny-tiny little steps. For instance, take “paying bills”. What’s the optimal bill-paying process? Let’s write it down. OK. The mail comes. What do you have to do? Get the mail out of the box. Next? Sort the mail. Pull out the bills. Then what? Put them in a file folder? Pay them on the spot? What feels best for you? No, not throwing them into the trash, as much as you’re tempted. (Hey, I know your type.) Remember, what you resist persists, so if you hate paying bills and put it off, and off, and off, the problem will only get worse. So, make it as easy and painless as possible. And if you really, really can’t get the task done, outsource it — to your spouse, your eldest child, or hire a part-time personal assistant.

Tackle one problem at a time. We get overwhelmed when we try to pay the bills, organize the files, recast the calendar and write a strategic plan — all within the same 20 minute time period. Setting yourself up for failure, that is. Take one project at a time (that pesky “Hall closet”) and give yourself a realistic time frame for finishing it — even if that realistic time frame is three weeks. Remember, if you hit the wall on your project, that’s OK. Just keep on making teeny-tiny steps toward progress every day and soon enough the daggone closet will be tidy. That’s when you get to execute the very best tip:

Give yourself a reward. Honest. Give yourself something nice for having to do such a boring/nasty/unpleasant task. Make it something you look forward to — a solid hour of Guitar Hero, for instance; or, a long chat with your best friend. Link the reward with the action, Pavlov-style, and you will begin to look forward to knocking other tasks off your list.

The reward I love is free time. I figure that if I knock a project off thoroughly and don’t have to come back to it, I can then loaf absolutely guilt-free. Honey, talk about an incentive! Find the reward that means as much to you and you’ll find tackling overwhelming organizational tasks a snap.

In-box Management

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Like most folks, I have a couple of different email in-boxes. One’s more for work, one’s more for fun, and one seems to be the catchall for hundreds of spam messages. That’s right, hundreds — every day.

I get messages for products — how do I put this delicately — to enhance the size and prowess of a particular body part that’s not a standard equipment on the female form. From these messages, I have learned that this particular body part requires quite a lot tending, in terms of medication, cremes, patches and powders. I had no idea. Always seemed rather straightforward to me: Stimulus. Response. Done.

Oh, and I get many touching messages from lonely young women who’d like to show me their pictures, dear things.

I had no idea that I had so many kinsmen who die in Africa, Latin America and China, leaving immense fortunes which can be mine if I cooperate with certain widowed wives of former dignitaries of said nations.

People write daily to sell me OEM software, whatever that is, and “genuine replica watches”. Let’s see, it’s “genuine” and “replica” — sounds surprisingly like “fake”.

The other day I received a message from the unfortunately named “Cosimo Kiang”, who wanted to give me $500, just for clicking a button. Where do they manufacture these names, anyway? Throwing darts at a phone book?

Every couple of days, I scan through these messages looking for an authentic message from a real person asking me a real question. This trolling and culling takes too much of my time, and I always worry that I’ve overlooked or deleted something of real importance.

I hate spam. It sucks my time and attention and gets me all distracted and fidgety.

But you know what? The deluge of stupid, time-wasting, ridiculous messages is not restricted to my email in-box. Nope, I get plenty of spam addressed to one other mailbox I sort through regularly — the in-box between my ears.

You know these kinds of spam messages: Be thinner. Be younger. Be older. Be smoother. Be tougher. Be gentler. Be taller. Be sexier. Be buff. Be wealthy. Be #1. Be as self-sacrificing as Mother Teresa.

In short: Be something other than what you are.

The spam between my ears doesn’t help me live my best possible life. It clogs me up, paralyzes me, helps me feel inadequate and unsuccessful. So, I’ve taken to sorting through and culling those messages, too. The good news is that I’ve finally arrived at the place where I receive the message, decide whether it’s something to pay attention to or not, then click that old delete button.

So satisfying.

If you have a ton of spam in the in-box between your ears, maybe it’s time to do a major purge. Better yet, set some filters so the most annoying, time consuming, distracting messages go to the trash before you ever see them!

The best messages are those that lift you up, reinforce the best part of you, remind you what makes you uniquely wonderful, prompt you to live authentically, and allow you to change that which holds you back.

The rest? A spam-like waste of time.

Lose Weight, Find Love, De-Clutter And Save Money

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Spend an afternoon with the cable remote in your hand and you could come away with the idea that most people in the world are heavier than is healthy, have messy houses, lackluster love lives, and can’t save a nickel.

I invested in some couch time the other day (in my on-going effort to perfect The Art of Being Lazy, of course), and was astounded by the number of TV shows about dealing with either too much (like possessions and food) or too little (love, fashion sense). And the one sad common thread among the folks on these shows was their overwhelming feeling of lack and their resulting self-punishing behaviors.

It comes down to this: when we feel powerless, we look to behaviors which allow us to grab onto a little bit of power. If I feel denied love, I am sure-as-shootin’ not going to deny myself the cheesecake.

And after I eat the whole cheesecake in one sitting, I feel horrible about myself, decide I’m never going to have a boyfriend and get out of this hellhole of a life, so I turn to the chocolate ice cream in the freezer.

This cycle repeats, spinning down into a not very nice place to be. It’s a place of powerlessness.

But there’s good news. Turning powerlessness into power is a simple matter of shifting our thoughts. It’s going from feeding yourself in an attempt to fill a gap, to feeding yourself out of self-respect and self-love.

It’s “I can choose to eat anything, so I am choosing food which tastes good, is good for me and nurtures me.”

Baby, that’s power.

Power is also saying “I can have any old partner in a New York minute, but to have a partner who respects me and loves me, I have to love and respect myself first.” Many of us get involved with unsuitable people because of the thought “Anybody’s better than nobody.” Anybody, because we maybe chose him out of panic, may be someone who affirms our inner sense of lack, rather than our inner strength. Where’s the power in that?

When you chose a partner out of self-respect, you will have a partner worth having. When you spend your money out of self-respect, you will not overspend. When you live with things that reflect your self-respect, your clutter diminishes. When you feed yourself with an eye to nurturing that which is best in you, you will eat healthily.

You have the power to take care of yourself, and eliminate that which holds you back from your best life. You have the power — use it.

Cleaning a Closet

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I cleaned out a closet the other day. “Yes,” you’re saying to yourself, “she lives such a glamorous life.” So true.

I cleaned out a walk-in closet in preparation for a much needed paint job. It’s been nine years since the closet was empty, let alone painted. It’s past time for a thorough overhaul.

As I toted yet another armful of hanging clothes out, it occurred to me that I have way too much stuff. I was carrying junk I don’t wear and don’t even like too much, and I was carrying too much of it. And it wasn’t just clothes. What were my high school yearbooks doing in there? Baby toys? (My kids are teens.) Two dozen books, a broken video camera, three shoeboxes full of photos, and assorted suitcases? In my clothes closet?

As I plopped the detritus of the closet into its Temporary Storage Area, I decided that the only things going back in the closet are things I really want in there.

Things I use.

Things I like.

Things that make me feel happy.

Thank goodness for paint jobs. Without this upcoming one, I wouldn’t have taken the time to take a hard look at my stuff, dust the shelves and give the corners a good vacuuming.

Then it hit me: there’s plenty of stuff to clean out of other closets. Like the closet between my ears. There’s plenty of junk in there that’s outdated, that I don’t like, and that doesn’t make me particularly happy.

How about you? Is now the time to get rid of the excess stuff you’ve accumulated — to streamline your life and your thoughts so you can be your best self?

Maybe you have an outdated idea about yourself — and it’s holding you back. I worked with a woman recently who views herself as a struggling young homemaker, although her home is paid off, there is money in the bank and her kids are ready to go to college. Seeing herself as struggling feels comfortable, controllable and somehow appropriate. It’s the way she’s defined herself. It’s her comfort zone. Not a happy comfort zone, but a comfort zone nonetheless.

She needs to clean out that closet.

Whether you’re literally or figuratively ready to clean out a closet, now’s the time. Examine everything that comes out of your closet — does it fit? Is it in good shape? Does it bring out the best in you? Do you like it? If your answer is “yes”, keep it. If the answer is “no”, give it away.

Letting go of that which holds us back or weighs us down, allows space to open for us to grow and start something new. It’s time to clean closets.