Look at this mess!
I’m feeling drained!
Do either of the above thoughts ever go through your mind?
It doesn’t matter whether you are a student, run a business, work a job or are retired, there comes a point where certain aspects in your life get cluttered or you get close to burning out, or indeed burn out. I’m yet to experience the ‘retired’ lifestyle but I talk to many people who end up being so busy in retirement, they can’t work out how they used to fit their job or business into their lives!
At different times in my life, these questions have raised their head.
My wife & I are in the process of decluttering, which was mostly brought on by the fact that we moved house. It is amazing how much less we have now (in terms of clutter) than we had previously, and we are still in declutter mode. For example, over the past 3 years we would have easily given away a couple of hundred (or more) books.
This process is continuing and is spreading to other areas. For instance, I reviewed my Facebook Friend list the other night. It had grown to over 500 people, and as I looked through the list, I saw people I had not connected with for years, I saw others who are always being negative on Social Media and others whom I wondered why/how we connected in the first place?
The Friend list now stands at 472 and it may drop lower.
We also need to look at our priorities in life. We can only do/be involved in so much.
I’ve reviewed the groups/associations I was a member of in the past 12 months. I’m now a member of only one Toastmasters Club. I just dropped out of an Art Group as (due to other commitments) it would be difficult for me to get there on Tuesday nights.
For the first time in 30 years, I am not a member of any Photographic Society/Camera Club. The Photographic Society I was a member of, I found it increasingly difficult to get to as we had moved further away from it. There is one 8 mins drive away now but I dropped out of that 2 years ago as my photography interests have moved in a different direction anyway.
Another area that needs decluttering is my mind…
I’ve always been a ‘verbal/visual’ person. As you would see from this blog, communication is what I love, with my interests being photography, public speaking, writing, poetry and painting. On top of that we have our marketing business.
As with most people’s mind’s, there is a lot going on up there and it comes out via one of the outlets above.
A few years back I purchased a book called “The Complete Artist’s Way” and actually it contains 3 books in the one volume.
The books are:
– The Artist’s Way
– Walking In This World
– Finding Water
One of the techniques discussed is called ‘Morning Pages.’ ‘Morning Pages’ is ‘stream of consciousness’ writing and it is done when you first get up in the morning. Writing down whatever comes into your head, e.g. negative thoughts, how you are feeling, to-do items etc ‘gets it out of your head’ and frees up your mind and assists creativity. I started doing them some time ago but unfortunately allowed ‘life’ to get in the way and stopped doing them.
I just started doing ‘Morning Pages’ this weekend again, and I can feel the benefits already!
In Part 2 I will look at things I am doing or am looking to do to re-fuel for this continuing fantastic journey of life.
Written by David Johnson
13 August 2016
For more information on ‘Morning Pages’, please click on the link below.
http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/
Communicating Creatively 