Clearing Clutter for Joyful Creation

I’m enrolled in Jeanie Brosius King’s webinar (password = nomoreclutter) and her amazing course, “Clutter Clearing for Health, Wealth, Joy and Love”. (If you go there, be sure to tell her I sent you!!)

This morning in our Clearing Clutter Facebook group, Jeanie asked if we have any unfinished projects, deferred decisions, or other things that irritate us about our lives or our businesses.

“What is your biggest clutter area?”

Jeanie gave an example of a coaching client who was struggling to decide whether to go to an-out-of-town conference – or not. In the coaching session with Jeanie, she realized that her deferred (procrastinated) decision was more correctly a case of overwhelm  – too many “unfinished business projects” keeping her stuck. She was overwhelmed with the burdens of submitting overdue tax information, gathering forms, getting help from a women’s business group, deciding how to submit salary information to her CPA….all of these issues represented various forms of overwhelming clutter. The moment she identified these “unfinished projects” as clutter to be cleared, she sprang into action to resolve them, which then left her feeling clear, clean and powerful.

“Clutter is Nothing More than Postponed Decisions” – unknown

My answer to the clutter question revealed similar procrastination issues regarding creating, tracking, filing and submitting the myriads of documents needed for taxes, business, mortgage, and more.  Not surprising, given the state of my office and my attitudes about getting those things done.  I obviously am benefiting from Jeanie’s class and my clutter clearing group.  All well and good, but then my thoughts expanded…

I realize that procrastination of these “necessary” things that I don’t particularly like doing prevents me from giving myself permission to do the fun things I really want to do and that truly bring me joy – creative things like writing my next book, or song, or poem, or blog post. Digging deeper, it also appears that I carry an old underlying belief that in order to be a good person, I must complete all my work before I can play. So… does this mean that I am not a good person?  Now that’s a “can of worms”!

Taking this a bit further down the twisted rabbit hole of my old and unhelpful perceptions of living life in an attitude of scarcity, this led me to an inherited generational attitude (or was it a rebellious teenage perception) about work as:
1) Something that I don’t like doing.
2) Repetitive drudgery.
3) Punishment.
4) Difficult.
5) An activity that brings in money. (Because of course, money is more important than anything else, because without money we couldn’t survive, because of course, in a world of scarcity, there is never enough money.)

Perceiving work in such unhelpful ways, it is no surprise that I carried many inner conflicts about it, and that I created the habit of procrastinating many needful, unpleasant tasks. Especially, because of course, we are only allowed to be happy AFTER the work is done.  Or so I grew up believing. Yes, I know I live in the real world where physical work and paperwork and earning money are necessary parts of surviving and managing our lives in our society.

But I simply don’t like those old punitive, depressing definitions of what work is.
Perceiving work in this way makes me feel that somehow, my inner self is “wrong”, “bad”, “lacking”, “not enough”, “disorganized”, a “procrastinator”, “ineffective” and that because of those things, I am “not allowed to be myself”.  I now realize that these old perceptions kept me in conflict, stuck in a low vibrational state of being.  To continue holding to these old perceptions about work would mean that I am never, ever allowed to play. Which would then mean I am never, ever allowed to be happy in this life. But that’s not true… because in many ways, I am already very, very happy. Perhaps this is just an extension of the personal transformation clearing work I have already begun… expressed in terms of clutter clearing!
Who Am I, Really? 

I am fun loving.  I am creative.  I am joyful.
I can focus for long periods of time on things that I enjoy doing, or that I find purposeful.
I am a writer, a teacher, an artist, an advocate, and a coach.
I love coaching my clients to recognize their potential and achieve their goals.
I love creating systems, processes and structures that solve problems, broaden perspectives and make a positive difference in the lives of others. I sing in the shower. I like arts and crafts and babies and conversations and hugs. I lose track of time when I am writing.  I like to teach by telling stories. I study holistic healing because I want to feel better, then sometimes eat too much sugary chocolate anyway. (Working on that). I love the exploration of expressing newly discovered Sacred Gifts in terms of intercessory prayer, intuitive meditation, and energy medicine.
I work best when I am feeling happy about what I am doing.
I work longer and harder when I feel joyful and generous.
I am most effective when I feel inspired.
In other words, I prefer my work to be play.
Therefore, I hereby change my definition of work.

Changing My Perception About Work

Work helps me learn through practice, provides the opportunity to grow, and gives me a structure in which to contribute personally to the world around me. I feel good about myself when I do good work.
Work helps me discover who I am and explore what I am capable of becoming.
As I discover and explore my own Sacred Gifts, I choose work that feels like… play.
Work supports the development of my values and personal progress
There are many types of work, and many ways of valuing work.

Pondering the nature of work, I realize that in reality, work is a blessing.
Work provides the opportunity to feel the joy of accomplishment, to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause”, and work supports me in experiencing joy in the sacred art of creation.

I hereby Clear the Clutter of those old, unhelpful perceptions and inner conflicts about the nature of work.  I accept as my divine truth the perception that work is a blessing that empowers me to experience joy in the sacred art of creation.

Accepting and Valuing Today’s Creative Work

Early this morning, my prayer and meditation inspired me to create a fun way I can stay connected and encouraging to my grown children and grandchildren, even though I do not physically live in the same home with them anymore. I got up early and wrote out an inspired process… then once it was on-paper, I relaxed by playing a digital game. However, because it was early morning, I felt twinges of guilt for playing the game before accomplishing the rest of my day’s tasks.  When my husband (a type 3 action taker who also grew up with those same perceptions about work) got up and saw me playing the game on my iPad… a wave of the old guilt hung in the air…  until I showed him the project I had created that morning on paper. He knows this is my “work”… so then it became okay for me to “play”.  So that clutter is cleared.

I am loving this new perspective and appreciation of work as a structure that empowers the sacred art of creation.

Thank you, it is done, it is done, it is done.

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