I know all too well how powerful it is for people to declutter and rid themselves of those things that they no longer need, use or love. I am so fascinated by the psychology behind people and their stuff – why they have it, why they keep it, why it’s so hard to let go of it and the damaging ways it affects their lives – that I’m writing a book about it.
As I talk about in the book, clutter is not just physical stuff. Clutter is anything in your life that isn’t serving a purpose or moving you closer to your ultimate goals. It’s anything that you no longer need, use or love. And it’s anything that is clogging up your life or space and preventing you from being all you were meant to be.
Henry David Thoreau Quote
As hard as this may be to believe, my “real” full time job was the biggest piece of clutter in my life. Though it paid very well and provided me with excellent benefits, what I did for my full time job went completely against who I am innately and what I stand for. I absolutely thrive on helping people. Working in customer service at a utility company as I did for my “real” job, I learned that you really can’t help people in that role. There are too many things out of your control. If they don’t pay their bill, you can’t stop the inevitable eventual disconnection of service. If their heat goes out and all of the company’s servicemen are prescheduled on other jobs, you can’t send anyone out to help them. And so it goes, on and on.
The majority of the people that would call took no responsibility for the situations they found themselves in. Rather, they truly believed everything was my fault and they weren’t afraid to tell me so. Because I am an extremely sensitive person, I took everything people said to me very personally. Even though I knew they were really venting and taking out their frustration with the company on me, being told how horrible you are over and over everyday is a very difficult thing for someone like me to shake off. It really weighed on me A LOT. I think I even eventually started believing the negative things they were saying about me after a while.
Whenever I see a problem, I immediately think what can I do to make it better? So working at a job talking to people all day that have problems and I can’t do anything to make it better for them was excruciatingly difficult.
You do what you have to do though, right? When I started working there 27 years ago, I was a poor single mother with 2 very young children to raise by myself. This job provided my children and I with the things we needed and so I never looked at this job as optional even though it felt like I was serving out a life prison sentence. However, after I came to know God in such a close way later in life, it was hard for me to look past the damage it was doing to my spirit. I could feel it killing and eating away at my spirit. And I struggled with sitting idly by and allowing it to continue doing that.
Having been set free from this job (my clutter) for almost 10 months now, it’s amazing how much lighter I feel. How much happier I feel. How much more alive I feel. And how my spirit is healing and soaring like never before! I can see the beautiful sprouts of my new happy life coming out everywhere. And to date, I have never once regretted my decision to leave!