Health and Wellness - K.Barrett Styling

October 20, 2011 No Comments

Procrastination, oh what an appropriate topic for someone who has not contributed to her blog in quite some time! We have all heard the term procrastination and many of us are masters at practicing it.

Recently while working with a client who has been in the field of social work for around 10 years we came across an interesting bit of reading on procrastination. I thought I would share some of the terms that are associated with this mindset. I really feel like a lot of this kind of thinking is what makes some of you discouraged during the organizing process. We are always the hardest on ourselves!

Hopelessness-An activity seems pointless because you are depressed and frozen in the present moment. You forget entirely that you have ever felt better and don’t think you could feel positive again.

Helplessness-you can’t do anything to make yourself feel better because you are convinced your moods are beyond your control.

Overwhelming Yourself-You magnify a task to the degree that it seems impossible to tackle. You assume you have to take on the whole task instead of breaking it into smaller units.

Self-labeling- The more you procrastinate, the more you condemn yourself as inferior. You label yourself as lazy.

Perfectionism-You defeat yourself with unrealistic expectations and super high standards.

Don’t let these road blocks prevent you from accomplishing your goals. One step at a time!

The Path To A Clutter-Free Life

One of the often overlooked aspects of maintaining an organized life is your own sense of well-being.
There are many reasons that people find their lives and their surroundings in varying degrees of disarray; They’re busy with kids, jobs, there may be an illness in the family, and sometimes they’re just trying to make ends meet on a day to day basis, which as many of us know can occupy our minds with worry and stress to the point that everything else in our lives gets overlooked or postponed, often with undesirable results.

When our lives become so full of stress, or a series of tragic or unfortunate events occur, typical clutter can spiral out of control, often resulting in situations of hoarding, a state of living (mental as well as physical) that is very difficult to recover from.

But that extreme condition is a topic for another post. The point is, and this may seem obvious, your mental and physical states are closely tied with how you maintain your life. When your mind is filled with the clutter of stress and worry, your surroundings will most likely reflect that to some degree. Conversely, when you feel good mentally and physically, not only will you have more energy to tackle the organizational issues at hand, but you will be more likely to see the problems for what they are, before they become insurmountable.

One book that I would suggest for further reading along these lines is Feng Shui Home, by Hale, Martin and De Winter. Feng Shui, if you are unfamiliar with the concept, is the “Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings.” While there are many books available to help people understand their organizational problems, this particular book addresses these issues with the view that replacing negative energy in your home with positive energy can help you on the path to better mental and physical health. It may not be your particular cup of tea, (to use an Eastern metaphor), but it does offer a lot of good advice on how to keep the spaces in your home simple and clutter free. I highly recommend it.