After working as an organizer for several decades and reading hundreds of books, I realized early this year that I was over-thinking “the” formula for organizing.
All my thinking was creating clutter.
I surrendered to the organizing process and let go of all of the reasons I’d manufactured about what it meant to be organized.
And then Life gave me a chance to test out my new non-theory.
The bottom line is that bad things happen to all of us. The outcomes terrify us; we’re overwhelmed. We don’t know where to start. We fly without nets.
In the midst of crisis, we still have to go to work, pay the bills, meet obligations, eat, sleep and do the laundry.
In crisis, we lose track ourselves. We have unhinged moments. Everything is a chore. We feel as if we are moving through mud. We can’t figure out how to accomplish even the smallest of tasks.
In one of those moments, I realized Change = Pain + Desperation.
When we are in the midst of a crisis or we are exhausted from what appeared (at the time) to be a simple commitment that morphed into a huge ordeal, we reach a point where we say “I am done.” We may get up and walk out of a meeting, pull the car over to the side of the road and scream or tear up a document we were supposed to finalize.
In that moment, we know things have GOT to change.
We can’t avoid all of our commitments or the people who depend on us. What we can do is create a different reality than the one that is pummeling us.
In that moment, we take charge. Facts don’t change, but we can. We really look at our lives. We draw (or list) our commitments. All of them. We then figure out who and what is important to us. Really important.
That list is short.
That moment, when we look at our lists and realize we want more of what’s on the list and less of everything else, is the Moment of Change.
It’s the the start of a new reality.