Health, Wealth and Happiness-Spring Pick Me Up

The days are getting longer, the weather is warming up a bit, the birds are back to singing and we’ve been bitten.  Call it spring fever or cabin fever, but we’re ready to get up and do something.  This is the time of year when we will direct this energy towards “spring cleaning” our homes; rejuvenating, re-energizing, and restoring them.   Just as our homes need this change of season pick-me-up, so does our inner landscape, our inner home.  To do this quickly and effectively, there are 6 steps you want to use as your cleaning strategy.

1. Which room are you going to clean?  Cleaning a little out in the garage, and then a bit more in the basement, finally a tad in the great room, may have you feeling like you’ve put out quite a bit of effort, but you don’t have a lot to show for it.  Pick one area of your life that needs to be restored and then focus on only that area.  So, what area could really use your attention?  Your relationships?  What about your career?  Then there are the ways you care for yourself; exercise, diet, hobbies.  Maybe it’s your finances.  Put your attention on cleaning out the room of your inner home that needs to be cleaned up the most.

2. What’s your cleaning style?  Some people have all the cans in their panty alphabetized with all the labels facing forward.  Others only clean when company is coming.  Some try to do a little every day.  Whatever your style is, let it work for you instead of you working for it.  I recently coached a client whose career is going into other businesses and finding the small overlooked tasks that are not getting done, and is costing these companies greatly in the long run due to lost productivity.  Her strength is in the details and her cleaning style reflects this.

If she decides that it is her health that she wants to spring clean, then she’ll pay attention to the small actions she takes every day that may sabotage her well being…the drive thru breakfast, skipping lunch, a soda in the afternoon for a pick me up, missing evening exercise class because she it too tired (again).  Even though she may eat healthy for dinner, and is physically active on the weekends, she is realizing that it is the small things she’s doing, or not doing, that eventually damages her well being.  What about the person who only cleans when company is coming…they like working under deadlines.  So put a time limit in place and assign a friend to check in on you at the end to assess your progress.

3. What exactly needs to be cleaned?  Up to this point you may have verbalized what you do not enjoy about the situation, but have you made a list?  Write down everything about this room of yours that is messy.  What habitual thoughts, feelings and actions do you have in this area of your life?  Record at least 10 things that stir up negative emotions for you.

4. How do you want this room to look?  You need a cleaning strategy.  Take the 10 items that you wrote down in step 3 and transform them into what looks and feels good.  The catch is that you must change them from “other’s focus” to “your focus” and this may take some brainstorming.  An example would be cleaning up your financial house.  Maybe your significant other charged too much at the holidays and your credit card is over the limit.  How can you take control of cleaning this up without being dependent on someone else’s cooperation?  Some ideas would be cutting up the cards so they can no longer be used, closing the account and just making payments, taking your significant other’s name off the account.  At this stage, you do not analyze what will work and what won’t, you just allow your creativity to flow and write down everything.   Change each of your “this needs to be cleaned up” items into “this is how it looks now”.

5. The 80/20 rule.  This rule basically says that out of everything 10 things you do, 2 will work and the other 8 are just ok.  The great thing is that the 2 that work will bring you as much success as the other 8 all added together.  The challenge is that most people don’t utilize this numbers game to their advantage, instead they stop at just 2 or 3 attempts to clean things up.  So, look at your 10 items from step 4 and decide which 2 will bring you the most success.

6. Take action.  It does not matter what type of strategies and lists and ideas you have if you never move on them.  So, decide what can you do and then do it, preferably now.  If that is not possible, then delay no longer than 24 hours.  After that, your door of motivation closes and it will be that much harder to open it again.

What you are doing with these 6 steps is setting up a habit of Success.  So, what needs to be cleaned?

Supporting Your Success,

Dawn