CLEAR THE CLUTTER TO GET CLARITY AND CALMNESS

Anytime you are looking to make an important decision, develop a new habit or address a goal, one of the vital things to do is to clear the clutter in your life to get the clarity and calmness of mind to do your best. Did you ever notice, for most people, clutter makes them anxious? They may not realize it, but it does. And when you are anxious, you tend to use the lower areas of your brain rather than the higher part of your brain where you do your thinking. When we get stressed or under pressure, we resort to the survival part of our brain or what some refer to as the reptilian brain. However, as we find clarity, we also find calmness of mind and we move into the upper part of our brain or the frontal lobe where self-awareness and reasoning occurs.

For example, when your house is cluttered, it makes you more tense and anxious. I know when I sit down at my office desk to do important work, I often have to stop, literally clear the clutter from my desk and around my desk, so I can begin to work in a calm and organized manner. When things are piled up in your environment, things also pile up and create overload or stress in your brain. As James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits, states, “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.” [1]

Cleaning up the clutter in our physical spaces is symbolic of what happens in our minds, and because of that, very important! Whether it is cleaning up the clutter in our house, our car or our desk, it sends the signal to our brains that we are organized, focused and ready to do what we need to do. We live in a world where we function by our senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Environment makes a difference. When people walk into a store or business, they detect, often without realizing it, smells, sounds and sights that determine for them whether they will be comfortable in that store or working with that business.

 This is also true of churches. Most people think they determine when visiting a church for the first time whether they will return is based on the music or message. Sometimes this is true. But most times it has to do more with the environment and also the culture of the church. If the church has a musky odor, clutter around or old carpeting, the chances of them returning goes down. Why? Because it won’t be an environment in which they will be able to excel – they will be distracted in their minds and never find the calmness to really worship and grow. When things are messy, we also perceive that people are careless or just don’t care, even if it isn’t always true. This is not an inviting environment for people.

James Clear further states “Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.” In other words, our environment influences how we think and our actions in response to those thoughts. We saw this play out when the pandemic hit. Many people who were used to going to the gym to work out were now required to stay home and work out. Even people who had equipment found working out at home not conducive because the environment was not what they were used to.

As people tried to worked out, they looked around the room at home they were using, and began to think of things they could be doing in that room or other parts of the house. I know I had this struggle for about two months when my gym closed. While the room I was using wasn’t overly cluttered, it wasn’t the gym. At the gym, my mind was focused only on one thing – working out and nothing else. But at home, I saw things in the room to be cleaned up or put away. Even more so, and to Clear’s point, I associated the room I was using during the lockdown for workouts, with what that room had always been prior to using it as a “gym.” This created a cluttered and chaotic mind for me that didn’t allow me to have the quality workout I usually had at the gym.

It had nothing to do with motivation nor having equipment to work out. I was highly motivated and had enough equipment. Rather it had mostly to do with my surroundings.

Personally I was relieved to get back to the gym to have the type of workouts I was used to having. Others, on the other hand, created new spaces in their homes without the things that they had previously associated that space with to allow them to reduce the clutter that would allow them to have the clarity they needed to have the workouts they were used to at the gym. Some did such a good job of creating new spaces or environments, they have never gone back to the gym.

Here is the point. Much of the time when you need to make an important decision or create a new habit, rather than beating yourself up or questioning your motivation, begin by examining your current environment. It may be your environment that is the barrier to where you are trying to get to. If it is cluttered, it will keep you on edge, distracted and anxious, not allowing you to achieve your goals.

To live a heathy life, to achieve your goals or develop new habits, make sure you look at your current environment and how it is influencing you. It may not be the only factor that is keeping you from where you want to go, but certainly, as we have seen, is an often over-looked factor that you’ll want to check out.

Until next time, God bless and be well!

Jack

[1] James Clear, Atomic Habits, p. 71

[2] Atomic Habits, p. 87