It was a dark and stormy night… Even Snoopy had to create a coping mechanism for his fears (the Red Baron). Is there something you can do when you are afraid to start a new project? Identifying your fear can be the hardest part, watch this video and take the first step to moving past your fear.
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdfear.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet Book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about the five scariest reasons that you are still disorganized, and they have to do with the five kinds of fear that I see most often in all these many years of working with clients and members of our on-line program. So let’s jump right in.
Number one is the fear of missing out. This is so common people are starting to abbreviate this. FOMO. Fear of missing out. So, let’s think about that stack of magazines that you have that are three years old, five years old. What happens when you try to discard these? You look at the headline on the front of the magazine and you see, you know, “Three Mistakes You May be Making in Your Love Life,” and you think, “If I’m going to discard this, then I’ll never know what the three reasons are. What are they?” And you feel like you’re going to miss out on that information. Well, that’s always going to happen. So let’s think about the inevitability of your actually missing out on things. Yes, absolutely, it is literally impossible for you to keep up with all of the new information that gets put on the Internet every single day. Think about all the bloggers and all the magazine content that’s created and all the news. It is beyond impossible to keep up with all of it. So why don’t you instead focus on being intentional about what information you do want to consume and creating habits and resources for that information so that you will have as little fear of missing out as possible.
Second is your fear of loss. This is similar, but a little simpler and it has to do with the “I might need it some day” kind of feeling. So this can be a feeling you have about a pair of earrings or a sweater or something you might want to pass down to your children. Or maybe it’s just a very specific tool you bought for one incident, for one reason, that you’ve never used again and you’re thinking “As soon as I throw that tool away, I will need it for something.” So you deal with the fear of loss by asking yourself a lot of good questions, like, “What is the worst-case scenario that would happen if I don’t have this item?” and running through that scenario in your mind. Also, we have our clutter prevention wallet reminder sleeves that people get when they sign up for our Clutter Diet Light program. This is a free program. You can go in and see what our program’s about and get this download. These little wallet sleeves you use to store your credit card in, and it has the five questions you should ask before purchasing anything. These are also great questions to decide if you have a fear of loss and what to do about it. So, for example, if you’re going to discard something, “Who is in my life that I could borrow this from or share this item with?” So check that out and see those five questions.
So the third fear is the fear of failure. It’s the idea that you don’t even want to get started because you’re feeling a little perfectionistic about something; you’re kind of stuck; you’re not exactly sure how to approach the project or you’re not exactly sure how to push through a certain phase of the project, so you never start at all. I’d like to encourage you to think about the inevitability of your options here. You will need to do this project some day, so how are you going to push through that obstacle? Figure that out and then the fear of failure will start to subside.
Let’s look at another similar fear, the fear of judgment (number four). This keeps people from getting started because they are afraid they will fail and then they will be judged by other people, and people are afraid to get the help they need because they don’t want someone to come in and see how bad it really is. The people that love you want to help you and don’t turn that help away just because you’re afraid and embarrassed. Believe me, everyone has their pockets of disorganization in their lives, and they just want to see you get past it. The people that love you will help you, and you can pay a professional to help you as well. So don’t be afraid to get that help. Use instead your fear of judgment to spur you on. Think about how embarrassing it would be for someone to come over and see that. If that’s what your fear is, that will motivate you. So use that to push through and get things done instead of using it to hold you back.
Let’s look at the last one (number five). Fear of the truth. There’s that famous movie with Jack Nicholson where he says “You can’t handle the truth!” Well, think about this carefully. Sometimes, I have seen people use clutter as an excuse to feel needed. They’ve used it as an excuse to distract them from what’s really going on in their lives, and they are afraid that if the truth really is shown to them, that the clutter’s cleared away, there will be no more distractions, no more excuses. They may not feel needed, they may not know what to do with their lives, they may not be busy enough to distract themselves from what’s really going on and really what the questions are that they should be asking themselves. So, you might think about this too. What would happen if you got exactly what you wanted and all the clutter was gone? How would your life change? Is that scary to you, and why?
So if you need help thinking through that, we have an expert team who does this every day. We’ve been doing it for almost 10 years now. At clutterdiet.com/learnmore you can find out how our expert team can help you personally in our Message Boards for a very affordable price, we say about the price of a pizza. Come check us out and we’ll see you next time. May you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
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