The First Step: Organize Your Mind

You need to start organizing your mind before you start organizing your life, otherwise, the changes you make will only be temporary. 

Why? Because your external life (the amount of stuff you own, clutter, piles, things in your home) is always the result of your internal life (mind, thinking, beliefs, thought patterns).

Have you ever spent a bunch of time cleaning something up only to have it get messy again a few weeks later? That's because you didn't get to the root cause of the mess in the first place.  

The thoughts in your brain will create the reality in your life. How? 

Because what we think, causes how we feel, which drives what we do or don't do.  Ultimately, what we do or don't do, then creates every result we have in our lives. 

So, if we want to organize our life (the result), we must first organize our mind (the thoughts). 

it is vital that you investigate what's going on in your mind. The first step to doing this is to write down your thoughts on paper. I call this a Thought Download. Getting them out of your mind gives you a chance to "see" it all. From there, you get to become the observer and decide for yourself how to best move forward to organizing your space.  

It's very hard to organize from within a mess. Organizing your mind by doing a Thought Download allows you to step out of the mess so you can have a look and then start making decisions. You must first get your thoughts in order because It will increase your awareness of what is going on and what you want to change. 

For example, let's say you are ready to organize your kitchen. Start by getting out on paper all the things you are thinking about your kitchen. Anything and everything having to do with the state of your kitchen, according to your mind. Take time to put the heading of "Kitchen" on your paper. Then start to write down all your thoughts about how it currently is, what you'd like it to look like, how many cabinets there are, what your biggest problem is and why you need to do something about it. How it makes you feel. Anything and all things you want to say about your kitchen. A sample of one may look like this:

• I'm tired of having paper piles on the counter
• The junk drawer drives me crazy
• I have too many mugs
• I can't ever find the right tops to the Tupperware
• I can't reach the crockpot
• I'd like to have new counter stools.
• i never look at half those recipe books
• The fridge needs wiped down
• The breadbox takes up so much room.
• The glasses are all mismatched.

Really take some time to get it all out. This will now help you to see all that is packed in your brain and the "mess" of thoughts you have about your kitchen. From here, you will be able to learn and understand the what the problem areas are, the feelings you are experiencing and what results you currently have. This vital information can then be put to use to form a plan of action that will ultimately get you to an organized kitchen. All because you organized your mind, first.  

We think if I could just get the kitchen, organized I will then feel so much better about my life.  The opposite is actually true. When we organize the thoughts in our mind about our kitchen, we then create the feelings necessary to take action toward organizing our kitchen.  

Choose any area of your life you want to organize that you are currently struggling with and write down all your thoughts about it. 

This simple step is the first step and the most important step to having long term organizational success. 

This is where you must begin, in the mind.  

Having a coach help you take a look at your mind and guide you to a actionable tasks and lasting results is exactly what I am here to help you with. Visit www.daniellethienel.com to schedule a call.