Journal Power: Unloading Stuff

Have you thought about using journaling to help lighten your life? 

Do you want to free yourself from an overload of possessions? Would you like to feel lighter, more flexible, and less bogged down in your life?

Okay, I’ll admit I have a few decades behind me, so I’ve had time to accumulate. You know how it is: if you live anywhere for a long while, stuff begins to pile up.

You might be well organized and neat, but the mountains of stuff still grow, stacked on closet shelves, hidden behind the stairs, stuffed under the bed. You can’t necessarily see it, but you know it’s there.

The left-overs. The souveniers, scraps, and scavenges. The mementos, awards, and embarrassments. All the detritus of the years flowing by.

Or maybe you’re meticulous about cleaning up the leftovers. For you, there’s a different kind of overload.

Maybe for you, excess baggage lies more in emotional warehouses, where you harbor leftover hurts and shocks. You don’t hoard tangible things, but memories have become a stockpile of formidable proportions.

Or perhaps the heaviness in your days comes from distractions, demands on your attention and time that pull you away from whatever you wish to focus on. You don’t hoard things or feelings, but you also don’t let go of diversions. Truth to tell, you actually delight in these tangents that tease you away from your purpose.

But still, in your most aware moments, you want to overcome the stuff that’s clearly in your way.

Whether it’s material things or mental formations, surrounding ourselves with stuff is a natural human tendency, an understandable response to the stresses of living.

But sooner or later, we realize that all that stuff is getting in the way. We become aware that the stuff is keeping us from liberation.

How is it for you? Is there “stuff” of a material or mental nature, or both, that’s suffocating you? Or “stuff,” perhaps, that you hide behind?

A journaling look at this issue might include:

• Write a while about what “stuff” is for you and how it impacts your life, your feelings, and your well-being.
• Identify the major baggage in your life – whether it’s tangible things or memories or distractions – and write a description of it.
• Make your baggage into a character. Give it a name. “My stuff is an old woman named Marjorie, chiding me and fussing, blowing her large nose into a lace handkerchief and eying me suspiciously.” “My stuff is a big fuzzy bear named Ike who lets me climb into his arms and rest anytime.”
• How would your world look without your stuff? If all the junk was cleared out and gone, what would that feel like? Get really specific with your descriptions of this life free of accumulations.
• Remove a small portion of stuff from the pile. Delete whatever you can without experiencing undue anxiety. Record the experience and your reactions in your journal. Proceed accordingly, removing pieces of the junk pile while remaining sensitive to your feelings and needs.

Mountains of stuff – whether material or mental – may seem to protect us but really they drag us down. Journaling helps to show us a lighter scenario and then how to make that ideal a reality in life!

###

Create Self Space – 7 Days of Journaling to a Clutter-Free Life – offers a process for banishing clutter and improving your focus and well-being. Journaling will help you sort through the mental clutter, which will, in turn, help you sort through the physical clutter. A clear mind allows you to clear your surroundings for better health and happiness.