Transcriber: kaykhine lwin Reviewer: Annet Johnson
I am always fascinated by children’s ability to problem-solve
from such a young age.
A while back when my children were very young,
I asked them, as parents do,
to, “go inside your room and make sure you pick up all the toys off the floor.”
A little while later, I heard from upstairs, “We’ve done it!”
I went upstairs, opened the door,
could see carpet for the first time in months.
I kept opening the door and as my gaze looked up,
I saw in the back of my children’s room
my son’s cot piled high with every single toy from that room.
Funny as this memory is, it pops up in my photos every year,
it serves to remind me just how much stuff used to come into my home
and how little control I had over it.
I've often thought about doing something very similar to what they did that day
into a big yellow skip waiting outside.
I am here
because we are overconsumed, overburdened, and overwhelmed.
Many of us admit to
our houses having become more like a storage unit these days.
Doesn’t stuff just come from everywhere?
We inherit stuff, we’re gifted stuff, kindly donated stuff, kids’ stuff!
Even the stuff that we actively choose to bring into our homes and our lives
has been so cleverly marketed to us that we truly do believe we need it.
Invariably, we then go on to find out that we didn’t
and there we are with another thing to clean, tidy, and store.
This goes on;
our rooms and the spaces in our homes fill up and we get overwhelmed.
If you’re anything like me,
you have a mental breakdown and a massive clear-out.
(Sighs)
And you feel better ...
for a while.
And then it all comes back again.
And there we are
stuck in this perpetual cycle of accumulating and clearing
and accumulating and clearing.
It’s frustrating.
It’s costly to us and to our planet.
Quite frankly, what a waste of our precious time.
Back in 2013, I had my second child
and this should have been one of the happiest times of my life.
And to the outside world, social media and everything, it was.
But nobody knew of the silent battles I was fighting every single day.
I vividly remember the thoughts that dominated my mind for months.
The world had become a very dark place.
I felt like a prisoner trapped in my own mind.
And I reached the point that I really believed
that my baby and toddler would be better off without me.
And then one day, still can’t tell you why,
I began clearing, throwing things out.
Removing old energy as my counselor so accurately observed at the time.
And what I found was the more I cleared, the more I donated, gifted, sold,
let go of and removed from my house, the lighter and brighter I felt.
Over time, I started to get moments of clarity
and my whole outlook on life improved,
as did everything else.
It was the simplest, most empowering act
that I had taken for myself and for my house, ever.
While I was in the process of this, what I can only describe as an awakening,
I witnessed the industry of decluttering and organizing explode
across the Internet.
You might have seen some of it too.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Marie Kondo or The Minimalists?
We even had that series with Stacey Solomon, “Sort Your Life Out.”
They put everyone’s possessions in a warehouse.
Ouch, it’s real.
But this got me thinking.
Did the rapid growth and interest in this now global movement
mean that there were millions of other women just like me,
silently fighting battles behind smiles and closed doors?
I kept trying to find out why had it been so powerful,
this seemingly simple act of removing one’s possessions.
And as I looked, I came across some research,
in fact tons of research, about the effects of clutter on us.
There was a study done by UCLA called “Life at Home in the 21st Century”
and they found a direct correlation
between an immense amount of household objects
and elevated cortisol levels: stress.
That same study reported finding that clutter
severely impacted our mood and our self-esteem.
Let’s just recap:
we are talking about our material objects having this effect on us.
This growing body of research does prove that our home environment
plays a significant part in our health and our overall quality of life.
Over the years, I have learnt that the roots of our clutter, they go deep.
And it’s likely because of that and our subconscious knowledge of that
that many of us procrastinate.
We can’t face it and we don’t.
But for that same reason,
it also goes some way to explain why those of us that do
actually experience some incredible benefits by going through the process.
So I’ve got a bit of a better idea: roots go deep, research, cortisol.
But I still felt there was something about this clearing phenomenon
that had yet to be explained.
And one day, the missing piece of the puzzle came.
“It is in the nature of all living things to thrive
when their innate needs are being met in balance.”
I just say that again.
It is in the nature: it’s natural.
Of all living things: plants, trees, animals, humans.
To thrive: be their best.
When their innate needs:
their environmental, born needs they need,
are met in balance.
That’s a quote given to me by psychotherapist Alec Stansfield.
He also went on to say that
we humans when we’re not getting our needs met,
we have signals
and those signals can look like overwhelmed, depression, and anxiety.
I was out doing some networking -
I did a lot of that.
And I met Alec’s wife, Bindi,
and Bindi was there sharing with everybody
a resource that her and Alec had created years ago called Anxiety Freedom Cards,
designed to help people beat anxiety without pills.
I was like, that’s what I’ve done in my home for the last few years.
I was all ears.
The cards have two main sides to them.
There’s some cards there that go through our innate needs;
things we’re born with, nourishment,
all of those sorts of things, that we need to live and be healthy.
And the other cards are our innate resources;
they’re skills that we’ve got that we use to get our needs met in life.
So Bindi started sharing on the table these cards, the needs:
things like food and drink,
security,
purpose and meaning,
sleep,
achievement,
privacy.
There’s a few more.
But what I realized when Bindi was sharing these is that in my mind
I was matching every single one of those needs to a room in my home.
A few things clicked for me when she shared those.
First, it was now very clear
that when I was going through that very dark time in 2013,
I had not for a very long time got any of my needs met.
I also realized that I, we, whenever we purchased something
or make a decision to bring something into our home or our life,
we are trying in some way to meet a need.
But the biggest “aha” and my piece of the missing puzzle:
I realized over the last few years
that I had intuitively created a home environment
in which me and my two boys
could get all of our innate needs met in some small way.
Having an environment like that
makes those people that live there feel safe, loved, and secure.
When we feel those sorts of things, we feel good.
And when we feel good, we can see clearly.
And when we see clearly, we make great decisions.
As Alec would say, “We can thrive.”
I’ve had the privilege of seeing some other women
go through a similar process to me.
I want to share with you what thriving looked like to them
in their day-to-day life:
they reported being able to sleep better;
having more time, energy, headspace.
When you feel like that, you can see more clearly.
You gain clarity on your purpose.
With clarity comes confidence.
And many of them reported being able to set and maintain healthier boundaries,
which then improved their relationships.
If we have good relationships in our lives,
we have good mental and physical health.
Many of them being business owners
were quite excited to tell me their finances had improved as well.
And one very important aspect that everyone seemed to find
is that they had become a lot more conscious of the impact
their consumption choices were having on our planet.
Couldn’t the whole world do with some of that right now?
Dr. Wayne Dyer is known for recalling a quote, source unknown,
that says,
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
I changed the way I look at my home and my belongings
and my whole life changed.
I created an environment in which I was able to clear a path
from struggling to get through every single day
to standing on a stage sharing with you.
I believe if I can do that, I can do anything.
And so can you.
Could your best health and best life
be “just a change of perspective” away?
I invite you to get curious.
Test this theory out.
It’s free.
You already have everything you need inside of you and inside your home.
You have nothing to lose,
but for maybe the stuff you’ve been storing for quite a few years.
It might have been holding you back, maybe it hasn’t.
You have lots to gain.
Our society globally has lots to gain
and so does our planet.
We are all capable of thriving when our needs are met.
And we are all capable of creating
a home environment in which we can get those needs met.
And, yes, it’s that simple.
Thank you.
(Applause)