Episode 115
===
You are listening to episode 115 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you wanna bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel
in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Well, hello there. Your beautiful mamas. Welcome back to the podcast. I wanna start out today by making the formal announcement that the. Way to work with me in a small group capacity with my busy to balanced small moms group life coaching program is beginning in just a couple weeks. Yes, November 1st, if you're listening to this, when the episode comes out, which is two weeks from today, is when busy to balanced will begin, and it has already actually been open and enrolling, and I have current clients who are wanting to continue, and so there may be the demand that I.
Multiple groups. So that is why I really urge you that if this is something you wanna consider to go ahead and join me now. There's a few ways, right? If you wanna just directly message me with, um, your interest, go ahead and do that. It can be through my email, [email protected]. If you want a conversation about it, we can get on a call.
Today's podcast is gonna show you a little bit more about. Um, an example of what you can get inside busy to balance, but I just wanted you to know that I wanted you to get into it and a little bit about what is available. So today we're gonna be talking about decluttering your life from the inside out.
And what this podcast is gonna be is gonna be an example of one of the training slash workshops that I offer within. To balanced. So not only in this group do you get six months of weekly life coaching calls with me, you also have a community aspect where in this small group, you moms get to know each other and get to.
Access me in between calls and have a place to celebrate your wins or if you have a struggle or concern that comes up in between calls. But on once you join, you get access to the busy to balanced platform, and here is where all of the replays will be housed from us meeting every week in case you miss it.
Don't have to miss getting the life coaching that you need. Uh, you also get, I, I don't know how many there are in now. I should open it up and take a look, but you get so many trainings and today's podcast is going to be an example of one of those trainings that you will just get as soon as you join Busy To Balance, and I have looked it up and some of the other trainings include believing new things, getting things done.
Clean parenting relationship with money, unconditional love. We take the time once a month to dive into a certain topic that will help you in your busy mom life to get more balanced, to feel more peace and more joy and one. That we recently had was on decluttering your mind and space, and I am gonna play that for you right now so that you can get an idea about busy to balance.
But I also urge you to get in there yourself and know that this is just one of the life changing categories. You're gonna hear about today, but there are so many more that are at your disposal when you join us inside. So without further ado, here is the training on decluttering your life. Okay, So today we're gonna talk about decluttering your space and mind.
They go hand in hand, and I love how this quote tells you how that is. Okay. Clutter is the physical manifestation. Of chaos in your mind. Just let that soak in for a moment. Okay. Clutter is the physical manifestation of chaos in your mind. So what this basically is saying, I'm gonna give a little story that kind of demonstrates what we mean here, but if our mind is full, And racing around has so much stuffed in it, we can't then organize our exterior life.
So if we have a lot going on mentally and emotional, and that's not organized, it's gonna show up in your physical world. So the little story I wanted to share with you is that when I had an uh, a past employee, He told me later, kind of like why he did what he did when we first met. Um, for, for me to see if I wanted to take the job.
And what that was about is that he had me come to the office, even though he said, I wanna take you to lunch, which right, we're gonna go to a restaurant and talk. I went to the office, but when I arrived he asked me if I could drive and I said, Sure. I remember at the time I drove this used Volvo, which was so I did love that car, right?
And, but anyways, it wasn't until later that I find out why he actually, that he actually did that on purpose. And the reason is, is because he has found that if you can be in a person's like personal space or environment, you can learn a lot about. And I don't give you this story to start to use against you to start judging yourself, but to just kind of question and let that, like see if somebody saw your current spaces, whether it be your car or whether it be your.
Office, your desk in your office, if you don't work at home, or if somebody comes into your home and sees your space, what would it say about you? So he would give me an example of like if he went into somebody's car and it totally had, um, you know, compact discs, all that will, back in the day when we had combat discs right?
All over the floor and it, we could say, Oh, this person is a lover of music. Right. Or you could get to know what person liked by hearing what was on the radio station when it turned on. Um, he also was like, Oh, you find out if they are a soda drinker or just even visually seeing if their car was, um, like again, for lack of a cluttered.
It would tell him that maybe some things in, in their life in general weren't organized. It's just the way it, it's just interesting Right. To kind of question to see if that, if this is in fact the case, that clutter is the physical manifestation of the chaos in your mind, then what do we need to clean up in our mind first that will help us clean up our environment?
Okay. This is how I visualize it when I help my clients organize. Just a little caveat, one of the occupations that I did was spend several years right now is I was a home organizer. I grew up with a mom who was very organized and I. Grew a love for decluttering and organizing and keeping things neat. So this comes very easy and natural to me, which is not the case for all people, but this is why I feel like I'm just the person to help you with decluttering your mind in space because it's something that comes natural for me and I haven an understanding about it, but also, The physical.
I have had expertise helping people organize spaces with their physical stuff, but as a coach, right, I have the tools and concepts to help you organize your mind, which will ultimately help in organizing the stuff. But I also realized that even when I didn't know I was coaching back, when I was helping people organized, I was actually.
Doing the best work to help them if I changed and helped them see things differently and questioned, you know, what was going on in their mind. So this is what I want you to now kind of like picture. I'm gonna start with the one here on the right, which is a picture of a house, which is mostly when we think we wanna declutter.
It's our space, right? Our homes again, or our car or our offices away from home. And I just made. It just made this kind of, you know, block blocked off. Like they're just nine squares. But I want that to represent the different rooms that you would want to declutter and want to, um, organize. Okay, So this would be kitchen, bathroom, living room, bonus room, closet, you know, laundry room, attic, basement, garage.
We all, we all know what those. Okay. Then we want, I want to go over here and I want you to look at this, this picture, which is showing you the brain, and I have given the same kind of grid as we do for homes to our brain. I love to think that we have rooms in our brain. Okay, so the rooms in our brain would be the subjects that make up our life.
So that would be a room in our brain about our thoughts, about our relationships. There's a room in our brain about the thoughts of time and how much we have of it or don't have of it. There's a room in our brain about money. And about our spiritual health and about our physical health. There's, you take what makes up us as a human being.
You know, whether it's your work or business life or again, like your family and relationships, if they each are a room in your brain, and this is what I want you to know, we can see it, We, we can understand this from our physical rooms, like our kitchens and our living. That rooms get dusty and messed up just like your brain does.
And both of those, your brain and the rooms of your home need to be organized regularly. And I love that it says rooms get dusty because like for instance, my girls, both of each of their, my daughter's rooms, I, they are organized and clean and they are no longer here. So they're not there on a daily basis.
They're pretty much not used, but they still are getting dusty. Right? Not, doesn't necessarily have to be all messed up. And it's the same thing with our brain. We might not use our part of our spiritual. Like our spiritual practice, but if we leave it alone, it still will get dusty. And then of course we know how we can clean and organize a room.
And then it doesn't stay that way forever. It doesn't stay. And so if we think that life is gonna be so amazing when we finally get our homes, organiz, We're mistaken, like yes, it will be lovely and we will feel good. And we do want that to be our goal. I just don't want you to have that false sense that it will remain like that.
Okay? And in our brain it's the same thing. And you, you have already committed. To organizing your brain because you're here, because you're coaching. Coaching is a regular way to visit the different rooms in your brain and clean 'em up and get 'em organized. This is why I tell you it doesn't matter if you come to me with one subject about your life, one room of your brain, because when you clean that up, it, it will.
It inevitably helps you organize the other rooms in your brain and it works the same way in your home or in your space. It doesn't matter where, like if we just wanna make some progress, get some activity of decluttering, and eventually a little bit here, a little bit there, adds up to the whole house being organized.
Okay. So now I wanna tell you, I just wanna bring to the forefront of your brain the most common thoughts that I have seen over my experience being a home organizer and being a coach. That when it comes to decluttering and it comes to organizing, whether it be your mind or your space, these are the thoughts that are, The obstacles that are keeping you stuck, and just look over them and see which are the ones that, that you, like you're, that you relate to the most.
Okay. So here's one. There's just too much. Okay, so if you're wanting to organize, let's say your basement or your attic or something like that, I can totally see that this thought would come up. You look at it and you're just like, Uh, it's wall to wall boxes and stuff, and you're like, Oh my goodness. There is just too much.
And when you choose to think that way of thinking, it feels overwhelming in your. Like overwhelm and overwhelm then drives you to take no action. And so the result you get is that you're no closer to decluttering the space that you want. Decluttered. Okay. I don't even know how this thought comes up for for people so much.
Not even just with decluttering. It's whenever we take on a new challenge and things that we just are, no, don't come easy to us. Our brain wants to just shut down and be like, Well, I don't know how. If I knew how, then I would do it. But the truth is the how comes later. The how comes with you, just guessing what you think you should do and just taking some action.
And I wanna, I am gonna tell you after this, I'm gonna be giving you the five steps to take. And if you want to know that that is the how, then. Then totally do so and so we can't use the excuse anymore of, I don't even know how, cuz I'm about to tell you how here in a few minutes. Okay. All right. This next one, this next thought that holds people back and is really like an obstacle that they're not strategizing again with, um, is I don't know where to begin really.
Like a lot I hear people like, I don't know where. Supposed to start. I don't know where the best place is to start. I don't know where the perfect place is to start. They think that there is a, an order to putting their homes and their minds in order. And I'm gonna offer you and tell you that in all, there's a, this, a thought for you to borrow for your own that would use be useful in serving to your life when you're trying to be more organized and declutter and that.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where you begin. Just begin anywhere. Pick a spot and you'll see that that'll be part of our, our step soon. Okay? I don't know what to do with all of it. Okay. This is a thought that keeps you, um, stuck and again, in the following steps, I will give you the three options.
On what to do with all of it, but I want you to know, like right now, you could take a guess what you could do with this stuff. There is only a few options. Okay? I don't know if I can let it go. Letting things go, especially things that you feel you will might need in the future or have such a sentimental value to you.
Your brain will tell you, you don't know if you can let it. But remember the purpose. Remember why you even are going down the road to create that. You have a more spacious and organized mind, or a more spacious and organized and decluttered space because you want to declutter, you want to have more space, more room.
And if that is the case, We have to logically learn to let go of items. Okay, so now let's just jump into the five steps to declutter. And I'm gonna go through these quickly because on the next page I've broken them all down. These are the five steps to declutter your mind and your spaces. They're the same, it's the same process.
It applies. Equally to both. Okay, so number one, we need to pick a starting point. I referenced that earlier to the thought, like, I don't know where to begin. We must pick a starting point. This requires you to choose to decide and to go, choose, decide, and go. Step one then moves you to step two. Step two is we need to face our.
We need to face our things and we need to face our thoughts, but in order to face it, we have to see them, see them first. We can't just keep the closet door closed and pretend that the stuff isn't behind there. Number three, we've, we've gotta make some decisions. And I will give you the three questions, the only three questions you need to know to make a quick confident decision.
Decision making propels your life forward. It gets you into action, not making decisions and staying in confusion. It bottlenecks you in your to your goals and it slows you down. Number four, say. We must learn to say goodbye to things. Remember, the whole point is to have more room and to not have the chaos and to declutter.
It's gonna require us to say goodbye to items as well as thoughts that aren't serving us anymore. Patterns of thinking that are holding you back. And then step five, now's the time to create what you want. Okay, now we have room, we have space. We have an empty drawer, we have a cabinet. We have a. Right now we wanna ask ourselves, at this time in our life, what do I want to bring into my life?
What do I wanna create? What do I wanna have that will serve me And is, you know, not old and, and just something that will really like light you up with joy. Now that you've made this effort to declutter, now's the time to create what you want. So those are the five steps. So now we're gonna break them down a little bit.
Okay, so step one, pick a spot. And I mentioned it before. This is the thought I want you to borrow as your own truth because it will serve you, it does work, and that is it doesn't matter where you start, it doesn't matter where you begin in. The picture of the brain where I had the rooms. When you're thinking of the rooms, it doesn't matter if you want to clean up and dust off your thoughts about your current relationships, your marriage, your kids, right?
Something like that. It doesn't matter If you decide you wanna pick that, you wanna clean up your beliefs around money or clean up beliefs around your time or declutter all the things you have. Maybe you have a room called the past. , right? Perhaps you have a room called the past and you will want to clean that.
Yeah, and clean that up. So we just wanna pick a spot. It doesn't matter. The second step is now that you've picked a spot, either a room of your brain or a room in your home, or one of your spaces, you now have to face it. So what this looks like if you're cleaning up a room in your mind is what we have. I have the TDL here stands for thought download.
This is where you wanna get all of the thoughts. And again, we're not doing every thought we have. We've picked a specific room or subject in our brain, and we wanna write down all of the thoughts about that particular. And so we wanna get them all on paper. Okay? And when we do that, we can. That's us facing it.
Then we're seeing those thoughts and when we can see it. We can then move to take the next steps. And so if we're cleaning out our space, this is where we wanna actually open the drawer, open the closet. Perhaps we're taking things out of things so that we can see everything that's in there. We can even leave it in there, but as long as you can see it, we've gotta hit it face on.
We've gotta face it. Okay. Gotta open the trunk. If that's something, open the door to the basement. We gotta go into the attic. Once we pick the spot, we actually have to face it. Step three is when we actually take, If it's your mind that we're decluttering, you have to take each thought. Or if you are cleaning out a space, we take each thing, each item, and we ask ourselves these three.
Questions. Now, I believe these are magical questions and that if you learn nothing else from this training today, this, these three questions are what I want you to have in your back pocket and to use from here on to the end of your time. That will help you when you need to declutter or organize an item or a thought of.
And they are, Does this serve me? Do I really want it? And is it current or outdated? And I want you to know that we can put in the word thought or thing to these sentences. So, does this thought serve me? Does this item serve? and serve me, like serve my life, serve where I am at this stage of motherhood.
Even we might have bought some items before that really served us and we used it and it was great, but now we're in a whole different place in our, in our lives, and this item doesn't serve you anymore. So this question you wanna answer. If it's yes, then we wanna keep it. If it's no. Then we will wanna move on to step four, which is to say goodbye, that I'll get to in a second.
So the second magic question for decluttering is, do I really want it? You know, mamas, I try and drive this home to all of you, is that whatever you say after the words I want, I want blank. Whatever you fill in is super important. We wanna get to where we're living of life, of doing the things that we wanna do, not doing the things we believe we have to do or that we need to do.
Now, I, I get it. I get there are some things right that, that our brain, like the, that we might feel that we need to or have to, but really, if we really. Like, let's say if we need, we're seeing like, Oh, well I have to, you know, feed my kids nutritious food. Okay. The, the real truth of it is, is you don't have to do that.
You really don't have to, but you want to. So it really does come back to, So that's why this question, if we pick up. A, a thought that we've, that we have or we pick up a thing it we wanna ask ourselves, Do I really want to keep this thought around anymore? And if it's no, then we wanna start taking the steps to get rid of it.
And if the thing is we don't really want it, watch where your brain might say, Well, I have to keep it because my mother-in-law gave it to me. Or I need to keep it because I might need it later. Okay. You gotta be onto your brain and how it will try and trick you. Okay? And number three, the question that helps you with decluttering is, is it current or outdated?
And what this means is like we have some thoughts we carry around with us that really did serve us, and we did want to think that way in the past. Okay? And it helped. So the example that I give is that in my previous career as a professional ballet dancer, I tended to have a lot of perfectionist thoughts in, in like upleveling my technique that I needed to be disciplined and practice and I wanted to get better and I was always trying to perfect my technique.
Well, that really served me back then. It was really helpful to become the, to the, you know, technical dancer that I wanted. And I did like that those were, um, that's what I chose to think. However, we jumped to current, so that was before. But currently in my life as a mom, having thoughts that I need to make things better and perfect, were not serving me anymore.
They were now outdated for my life. Perfectionist thoughts did not coincide with my current life as a mom. And so this is what I wanted to declutter and retrain and I, it was time to let go of that pattern of thought so I could adopt a new pattern of thought that will help me. And then it's the same thing with items.
We can pick up an item and if it's outdated, it could be something like, um, you know, it's got. It's got a tear in it, it's got a stain on it. Or I love to ask like, would you buy that item again? Right. If you get to this third question and it's like, would you buy it again? And if the answer is no, you might wanna consider letting it go.
Like you, you just might. Right. Um, Hopefully that those questions are self explanatory. I'm happy, you know, to dive deeper. But then that brings us, once we've answered these, if you have said, Yes, it serves me, I want it, it's current, then I want you to just keep it. I'm always telling moms who come with me, they always wanna tell me all of their like, Things that are going well for them because they feel bad when they say so many things that aren't going well.
And I say, No, no, no, no. I say all the things that you are saying yes to that serve you the thoughts and that you really wanna keep them. Keep them. That's not a problem. Keep them all. It's the. It's the, it's the, it's the thoughts that aren't serving. You are the ones I want you to bring to me as your coach, so I can help you work through them.
Learn to say goodbye, right? So that we can go create a, a beautiful future for you and hit your goals. But that's what, when it comes to, if we have answered no, that this thought doesn't serve me, that it is, you really don't want it and it's outdated, it is time for you to let it. I'm so sorry. There's a lot of construction going on at the house next door, and there's some big trucks.
I don't know if you hear it, but I, I hear it really loudly in my ear, so hopefully it's not too, We wanna say goodbye. We wanna learn to let go. And guess what? I want you to just be an adult about it. Think about how there's this, what we call in coaching, there's emotional childhood, and that's kind of when your brain is like in a tantrum.
Like, No, I don't wanna let this go. I wanna keep it, You know, like, No, and I really just want you to think more of an adult. I want you to be an adult. Say like, I can do this. I can say goodbye. It's just a. Right. Or I can figure out and work with my coach about how to get rid of this thought. And it will require strength, okay?
It'll require you to be strong. There will be some sentimental items that you will have to gather strength to say goodbye to. And I say, You have it. You have the strength. You are strong. You can do. One of my favorite little tidbits I would do with, uh, clients who, when we're talking about organizing stuff, is I wanna let them know, Do you know that you can ju you can take a picture of it.
Do you know that you can take a picture of all the things that you then like, say goodbye to, and you could make me put it in one of those, um, you know, photo album books that you can have easily made. And you can go back and it'll all be in like an eight, not eight by 11 space of this book, of all these items that you can go back to and look and have that spark a memory.
So in this saying goodbye, I also say, I wanna say if you're keeping it, we're keeping it. But if you're saying goodbye, it's you can do one of two things. Well, there's more, but these are the two things I most recommend. It either goes in the trash. Or you donate it. And I'm a really big fan of donating, okay?
Now there are some brains that are gonna be like, Oh my gosh, I spent a lot of money on that item. I really should sell it. And yes, that is an option, but remember, what I'm trying to help you do is I'm trying to help you declutter and get to step five and step four can get really, it can really slow you.
To sell an item to decide if it's gonna be on Etsy or I mean on eBay, or a yard sale, or posh mark, or all of those things where you can like, you know, put it up for sale. Craig's list. It takes time and nowadays, cuz I used to do all those things. I used to have the thought, I paid a lot of money for this.
I need to get a lot of money. Right? Which, first of all, in the yard sales people don't wanna pay a lot of money for things. Yeah. But it's like, it's your time and energy is also worth it. And if you wanna get to having that organized, cleaned out space, my suggestion is if it is in not great shape, then we throw it away.
You just have to get coaching on the thought that you're wasting it, which is only a thought. It's not true. Okay. And then you could donate it. You guys, I recently donated a a, a dress. It was a Calvin Klein dress, and it cost a lot of money, but I never wore it. It wasn't even as a button up. It wasn't even really my style.
So I'm not even positive what I was thinking the day, like I bought it. I, I do, I declutter. I clean out. I regularly Dustin and clean up the mess, and I'm like, I don't want to take the time to sell it. I wanted to donate it and when I donated it, I'm just picturing the person who comes into the Goodwill or the thrift store and finds this dress with this tag on it, original tag, but yet they get to buy it for five bucks.
And I'm just imagining their joy and how they feel like they got like a steal. And I imagine them showing and telling everyone, and that brings me so much more joy than taking the time to get a couple bucks on putting up through sale. But that is just mine. But this is what I suggest when you say goodbye is to be an adult.
You're strong enough. Say goodbye to those items and either throw it away or Don. And when you do that with all of your. You might wanna not maybe donate some of those past thoughts. You might wanna let other people get their own. That's one little caveat I wanna add. But then we move to step number five, and that is now you get to create the space you want.
So what do you wanna think now that you have released those thoughts that don't serve you anymore and you decluttered your mind and you've got some space in there to bring in some new beliefs in each of your rooms, in your. What do you wanna start believing about money? Do we wanna start believing it's abundant and it comes to you often and that you can make whatever it is that you want?
Or do you wanna, like, once you've gotten rid of the ones that hold you back, that there's like, it's scarcity and you're not good with it? Like, we wanna say goodbye to those and you can welcome in any new belief that you want. It's the same thing with our. I do like to suggest for you for a while to just when you've cleaned things out, instead of filling it up really fast, don't forget to take in that you have created room, that you've created empty shelves and an empty drawer, and that you just wanna allow that.
Maybe just have more air to breathe and to circulate in your spaces. Right. How might that be? Wonderful. But you also now can you have room to welcome in anything new that you wanna bring into your environment and space? Things that will serve you and that you do want and that are current and not outdated.
And that is the five steps to declutter your space and mind. And the last thing that I wanna leave you with is this quote. Okay. It truly is a choice what you keep in your mind or in your space. I want you to see that whatever you have in your space just didn't naturally appear there. Right. You ca you have a choice about what stays and what goes, and that is totally for sure in your brain as well, because nobody can make you keep a thought or think a thought or bring a new thought in except for yourself.
And I do highly recommend that we regularly. Declutter our mind, and I can think of no better avenue to do that through coaching. And then I've given you today the same steps, work the same way when it's decluttering your space. Thank you for tuning into today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Are you ready to take everything I teach you here and put it to work for your own?
To really learn how to have peace of mind no matter what is happening around you. If so, I'd love to have you as a client, as your coach. This is where you'll get personal and focus time on your own mind, using life coaching tools, concepts, and proven life, transforming wisdom, all through a faith-filled lens.
To learn more about how we can work together, come on over to daniellethienel.com there you'll see how to sign up for a free coaching consult and learn how to get started. Until next time, please be with you always.
