Put Your External Chaos in Order to Be Happier

Have you ever wondered why you one day, for no apparent or conscious reason, you wake up and have the crucial need to organize your closet? Or do you have an uncontrollable desire to rearrange the furniture, clearing the desk of papers that didn’t bother you before or throw out objects that suddenly do not mean anything to you?

When that happens your mind is screaming for a makeover and to recover the motivation and energy it has lost. It is important to be attentive to these signals in order to get to work and resolve the situation as soon as possible.

Often an external change is the first step to achieving a deep inner change. Sure, if you stop and think a moment, you remember once you have organized your room or your home and that has become an inner tranquility that you did not have before.

What ordering your physical spce brings to you?

The external order can promote a greater inner peace for you. In fact, Marie Kondo, author of the worldwide bestseller The Magic of Order, stated that a tidy house is the first step towards happiness.

An orderly and well-lit environment can provide a greater sense of well-being and comfort than a neglected environment. The physical environment where we spend most of our time often affects how we think and feel.

Putting order to our daily chaos contributes to producing major changes in our lives.

Organizing is the first task that will allow us to address other changes in our lives. First, because our energy needs ordered and renovated spaces to flow freely. Secondly, the external chaos is usually the result of internal disorder and it occurs because of accumulating unpleasant feelings such as fear or discouragement.

Our mind places them with a certain learned logic and they remain there until the alarms go off. The first alarm is the need for tidying everything around us with the intention that our minds will do it too. It is easier to make an external change first and then do it internally.

The link between the order and the new cycles

Often feeling ready to start ordering our physical space appears when a new cycle begins:

• When we start the year
• When starting a new semester in September
• When we return from vacation
• After our birthday
• When we start a new job
• When move to a new house or city

These are common moments when we decide to change. So we can turn the page and start a new chapter with our stopwatch on zero. When we put things in place by getting rid of what we consider useless and relocate what we want to keep. We have not only brought order to our physical space, we have also ordered our ‘mental closet’.

How do you get rid of the unnecessary?

When you are able to differentiate the necessary from all the accessories, from what you will keep but are convinced that you will never use again, you will see reality more clearly. If you have trouble discerning between what is useful and what is not, then a tip would be to throw away everything you have not used in the last year (clothes, books, documents…).

And if you have a ‘phobia of throwing things away’ because you feel like you’re leaving a part of yourself, remember that these thoughts are parasitic and completely false. What you have to do is just act and it will help you create more space for the new (physically, mentally and emotionally).

In many cultures, there are ceremonies in which old objects and symbolic representations of people who are considered negative are burned to regain inner peace. For example, in San Juan objects that bring bad memories or letters that have fears or the names of people who a person no longer wants in their life written on them are thrown into the fire.

Order and positive thinking

It is absolutely true that there is a correlation between the order and creation of pleasant thoughts. As you organize, either as an impulse or if it is premeditated, reflect on what makes you happy, what worries you and what bothers you.

When you’re filling bags with useless things, you will become aware of everything that is not important and what it is. Therefore each object that you throw out corresponds with some experience you do not want to keep in your life. You are gradually lightening your baggage.

Putting your mind in order helps you heal your pain and detach yourself from what’s unnecessary.

Prioritize and think about the future

Sorting helps you prioritize and think of immediate and future needs, so we recommend making a list and with it, making realistic goals. Saturating yourself with goals is not good, because it only leads to not being able to meet them and, therefore, this situation will trigger a state of frustration and discouragement. Then, everything on the list will end up staying inside of the drawer of oblivion.

Sorting your mind and your conscience will serve to give more meaning to your life by helping you live in the present moment, to let go of the unnecessary and stick with the basics; looking towards the future with new eyes.

Thus, a greater physical order will help you have a greater mental and emotional order to meet new challenges with more energy. If you find yourself at the beginning of the road and you’re prepared, remember that there is only one mission. Doing it!

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