Declutter Your Heart

We speak of decluttering our spaces--our homes, garages, offices--but how often do we think of decluttering ourselves? As in letting go of outdated emotions, the guilts, fears, regrets that no longer serve us in any way?

After all, isn’t that how you declutter your closet? You look over your outfits and discard clothes you haven’t worn in years, or that are so not-trendy you can barely stand to look at them, or which remind you of that awful fight you had with – well, never mind. Outdated, for one reason or another.

Heart Declutter. I recently had to do a rather in-depth declutter on my own heart. Facebook may be a wonderful way to connect, but not when you suddenly bump up against a post you’d rather never have seen. But there it was, in living color, for all the world to see. My ex, from over a decade ago, gushing at how his delightful current girlfriend had celebrated his birthday, pics included.
I thought I was so over that relationship, like really over, but in a heartbeat, it all came back. How he had cheated on me, then dumped me because, “Every time I look at you I feel like a failure.” As if the fact that my business was going well and his wasn’t was somehow my fault. He managed to make me feel horribly guilty for making him feel like a failure, although I never felt that way about him, and certainly never spoke to him like that. If anything, I supported him as much as I possibly could. To add to rehashing my past pain, obviously still alive and well in my heart, I now resented him for having such a terrific present girlfriend: how dare he?! I was bitter, angry, and downright miserable.

And who, pray tell, was I hurting in all of this gnashing of teeth? No one, just myself. Talk about a heart badly in need of decluttering. I finally was able to release those harmful, long-outdated emotions--the anger and the resentment--by vigorously reminding myself of one of my favorite mantras and applying it to him, past and present. People are just doing the best they can with what they’ve got from where they are. I must have repeated it 100 times a day for weeks until it finally became my truth. Until I could breathe again, feeling my heart decluttered.

Clutter Freedom. Ah, the freedom. Decluttering one’s heart is ten times more powerful than decluttering the garage, and the ensuing freedom, indescribably delicious. Give yourself that amazing freedom. Take one outdated emotion at a time, use whatever mantra works for you, the one I used or a more general release mantra along the lines of: “I release and let you go, old useless fear! I set myself free!” The words don’t matter as much as your intent does.

Figure out whatever affirmation works for you and use repetition to definitively let the useless emotion recede into a dim and distant past. Just like letting Goodwill pick up that old, battered, Lazy Boy and simply waving “bye-bye.”

Freedom!