Cleaning Up: Getting Over the Halfway Hump

Cleaning Up:  Getting Over the Halfway Hump

I'm standing in the middle of an incredible mess. 

I'm cleaning out my study.  Total excavation was necessary.  Energetic inspiration made me pull out the old bills, the empty boxes, the outdated Nead Inspiration stuff.  Taking a good look at what I need to make this work this time, maybe some containers, folders...organizational stuff.  Now I'm halfway through the job and I am horrified.

It's a sickening feeling, an almost empty study, a completely crowded hallway and the adult resolve that is needed to finish.  I can't walk away now and it makes no sense to put it back the way it was.  The way it was looks really good to me though.  Wish I hadn't started.  Halfway there and and halfway undone. 

You might be excavating something in your life.  It needed to happen.  There were situations and complications that had to unravel.  They had to be removed completely and perused and evaluated.  Sorting into piles; this commitment I will  keep.  This relationship really needs to be thrown away completely.  And over here is the networking involvement that I will retain and reuse or remediate.  At first, the process is completely engrossing.  Every time something is put to the side, a decision is made, there is freedom.  The freedom of ridding the self of life-clutter.  The positioning to make big changes.  Cleaning it out so the baggage does not come along on the journey with you.

You may be one of those people that does the "life clean up" effortlessly.  I envy you, I really do.  For the rest of us, there will be a moment when you feel as if the situation is a bigger disaster than ever. Even if it wasn't healthy, at least you know what you were doing before.  Now everything is out of place, it feels awkward and you are having that moment.  You want to go back, scrap it all, try another day.  The disaster of everything upended means you have to do something.  You are just not sure that the life clean-up is so attractive anymore.

I kept working on my study-mess.  I focused on one task and then another.  I moved, recharged, reconsidered and decided.  Eventually, I moved across the halfway line and I could see what I wanted, the well-ordered study.  A place to relax, to study, to create and to grow.  Once I conquered it, I kept going back in to celebrate the room.  It felt so good, not just because it was cleaned out, but because I had overcome the challenge.  I hadn't given up.

Life and study areas.  They are not so different.  Keep going.  Picture what it will look like.  Imagine the satisfaction that comes from healthy relationships, from financial order, from a sense of purpose.  Let that picture, the purpose of cleaning stuff up, drive your actions and energy.  See yourself sitting in your favorite spot with less stress and more amazement.

Persist!  Get over the hump!  It will be worth it.

If you enjoyed this blog, please utilize the other resources at http://www.neadinspiration.com/ and listen to Liz's radio show at http://www.desmoineslocallive.com/ called "Skywalk Talk," from 11:00-12:30 cst, M-F. Liz Nead is committed to helping you succeed!

Don't Freeze the Past: Embrace Today!

Don't Freeze in the Past: Embrace Today!

It's holiday time and in regular form I travelled back to Minnesota for a wedding, my cousin David's wedding. I wound around Highway 35, sliced through St. Paul on 90 and then swung through White Bear and Vadnais Heights and Maplewood on 694 before slowing down to catch Lexington Avenue. Only a few miles down Lexington and I could see myself, the "myself" of the past. There she is...in seventh grade, running her five mile loop. There she is when she got her first job. There is where she got her first speeding ticket. Then, the street of my personal definition, where it all began, Lake Oaks Drive.

My husband turned in and I felt strange, aptly middle-named-Alice in Wonderland- yes my middle name is Alice. What happened to these trees? Why are they so tall and thick-branched? Why are the houses somehow different, longer, grayer? the lake at the end of the road is obscure, hidden. The sky looks smaller, the road narrower.

This is not the Lake Oaks Drive of my past.

I say this to my husband and he continues on silently. He has other things on his mind, the things that would occur to a husband drawing even closer to his in-laws. I sense the internal eye-roll, a skill picked up after ten years of marriage. I think I say this every time we direct the car this way, but I am surprised every time. It is not the Lake Oaks Drive of my youth, of thirty years ago. It is 2009, and everything has changed.

I have been that street, a snapshot that is stuck in the mind's eye of another. No matter how hard I try, I am always who I was twenty years ago, ten years ago, whenever that moment became so definitive that it cannot be forgotten. Sometimes it is a moment of beauty, a race won, a record broken. The mind might capture a special moment of childhood friendship or a the first blush of romance before it is tainted by expectations.

Or, the snapshot can be a picture of a darker moment, an instance when I hurt another, when I betrayed someone, when I disappointed, when I fell short of expected greatness. Often no one knows when the button is pushed on the memory camera, but when it happens, it becomes a photograph. A picture of the truth. The truth of one moment in a lifetime.

Lake Oaks Drive and I, we are sisters. No matter how hard I try, I cannot escape their surprise. Oh Liz, you have changed! You are no longer that unsure girl, that reckless woman, that foolhardy professional. But that is what I remember, it is so hard for me to see you this way, to think that it is REAL.

You know what I mean. You have snapshots, frozen memories of people. I say this to you. Let them grow. Let them change. Maybe they are not as perfect as you thought they were. Perhaps they are not as manipulative as you remember. Operative word: remember. Those days are gone. Familiarize yourself with the present. See who is here now, today. Let each person be who they are, NOW. Don't freeze them as your own personal Lake Oaks Drive. The poetic curve of the oaks, the history of the homes added-on, the worn streets are more beautiful than they were 30 years ago. Allow change.

Embrace today.

If you enjoyed this blog, please utilize the other resources at http://www.neadinspiration.com/ and listen to Liz's radio show at http://www.desmoineslocallive.com/ called "Skywalk Talk," from 11:00-12:30 cst, M-F. Liz Nead is committed to helping you succeed!