Category: Intentional Living at 60plus

Most of my clients are 60plus, like myself, and being at the same stage in life means that we have a lot in common.

The most important thing we share is the determination to enjoy our life at 60plus – and to live it intentionally.

Living intentionally means

- that we don’t let life just happen to us and purely react to its circumstances and challenges.
- Instead, we actively define how we want to experience and live our life.
- We proactively make any necessary changes,
- and we get ourselves prepared for the challenges and opportunities the future might bring.

Letting go of what belongs to the past and doesn’t serve us any longer and efficiently organising what we want to keep are important parts of an living an intentional life.

Your top priorities make it easier to plan and organise your life intentionally.

Living intentionally means that you deliberately decide how you want to live – and what you want to do to create the life you want.

It means that you don’t let life just happen to you and purely react to its circumstances and challenges.

Instead, you actively define what’s important to you and how you want to experience and live your life.

You are well aware of your priorities and proactively make changes that move you toward the life you want to live.

Your priorities give your life direction and guidance.

Planning your life with intention doesn’t have to be an intimidating or overwhelming exercise.

If you regularly check and update your priorities, you are well prepared to act and react confidently when faced with bigger or smaller decisions in everyday life.

Your priorities also direct and guide you when you must manage a significant life challenge:

- A planned transition like entering retirement, becoming an empty nester, downsizing,
- or an unexpected event like divorce, the loss of a job, a critical illness, or the death of a loved one.

How do you choose your priorities – and direct your life in the way you want it to go?

The following exercise will help you decide what you want to focus on whenever you feel it’s the right time to plan your life intentionally.

For example, at the beginning of a new year. Or when you’re going through a major life change. Or whenever you feel a bit stuck or lost.

EXERCISE:

Step 1: List the important areas/topics of your life. (You can use my template worksheet to get started.)

Step 2: Rate on a scale from 0 to 10 how satisfied you feel about each life topic.

Step 3: For each topic that is not fully satisfying, decide how important it is to make changes now (or soon, like in the coming year, next month, etc.).

Step 4: Choose your top three priority topics.

Step 5: Define the desired changes for each and make an action plan.

Steps 7, ff: Take the first action step. And then the next. …

Example:

The person who filled in the example worksheet assigned the highest priority to topic No. 1, ‘Significant other’. She is currently single and wants to change that.

Besides this area, she has four other topics with a higher priority rating. I recommended going through these four again and picking 2 finally.

Because focusing her attention on the top 3 priorities will help her also to focus her energy and time, and her actions and activities.

This super-focus on the desired changes will help her realise them more easily and quickly.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!

Worksheet

You can give yourself an easy start and use the list (see above) of life areas/topics to evaluate your priorities.

DOWNLOAD THE WORKSHEET TEMPLATE HERE.

The worksheet will be useful and help you do the exercise as fast as possible – even if some of the topics aren’t relevant to you. Or if you feel highly satisfied in many areas of your life.

-> Leave the satisfaction-level space empty for those topics that are currently not important to you. (Like in the example worksheet: topics 13 and 14.)

-> And when you go through the list again to assign priority ratings, leave the spaces for those topics that have a high satisfaction rating and currently don’t require any changes empty. (Like in the example worksheet: topics 2, 5, 11, and 17.)

Don’t walk away after filling in the worksheet!

Instead, take the next step(s):

Use what you now have – the awareness of your top 3 priorities – to define a few significant goals for the next phase of your life and create a broad action plan. And then start moving, little-step-by-little-step. Start living the life you want.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Living intentionally means that we carefully pay attention to where we put our attention.

Our life and our experience of life reflect where we spend most of our attention.

The thoughts that we paid most attention to in the past, the ones we thought most frequently, are the thoughts that have created our current results.

The thoughts we pay most attention to today, those we are thinking most frequently right now, will create our future results.

Our attention is our most powerful resource. And we can intentionally make good use of this resource. We have the power to control where we place our attention.

However, the amount of attention available to us is limited.

At any given moment, we can pay attention to only one thing. Just one.

That’s why it is so important to intentionally decide where we want to put our attention.

Example:

If you are planning to start a big project, you need to be thinking something that allows you to get started. Something like, ‘This is a huge project. It’s doable if I divide it in smaller projects.’

However, if you focus your attention on a thought like, “This is a huge project. I can’t do that.‘, the probabily that you get it started and done is very low.

And as long as you have your attention on the second thought, the first thought has no chance. Because you can’t give it your attention while you are thinking the other thought.

You need to become aware that the second thought is getting in your way and then deliberately direct your attention to the first thought.

If you manage that well, the other thought (‘I can’t do that.’) no longer has a chance.

Where does your brain regularly turn to?

What are the stories and thoughts that are getting your attention, again and again?

Is what you pay attention to in alignment with where you want to go, with the person you want to be(come), with the goals and outcomes you want to achieve?

Do you place a lot of your attention on your past by often thinking of it? And what do you focus your attention on when you think of the past? Do you mainly think about the good stuff that happened to you? Are you feeling proud and grateful? Or do you pay more attention to past events and experiences that you think were difficult, unfair, uncomfortable, heavy, etc.?

Or do you mostly direct your attention and thoughts to your future? What do you expect to happen in the future? Are you feeling excited and curious when thinking about the next stage of your life? Or are you feeling worried and anxious about what might come up?

Do you pay more attention to other people’s thoughts about you? Or do you focus on your thoughts about yourself?

Do you direct your attention to the things that are not working right now – or to those that work well?

Take a few quiet minutes from time to time to intentionally pay attention to your attention.

Remind yourself: If you don’t like where your attention currently is, you are free to decide to redirect it to where you want it to be.

My (German) mother often reminded us, “Worauf ich meine Aufmerksamkeit lenke – dahin fließt meine Lebenskraft.” In English, that’s something like “Where I direct my attention, there flows my life energy.” And it’s very true, I believe.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Two powerful decluttering questions

Do you plan to do some decluttering work – and feel stuck?

If you don’t feel motivated to get your stuff sorted out and to let go of any clutter, or if you feel motivated but feel unable to decide what’s actually clutter and what’s not,

I suggest you answer two questions – although it might feel a bit uncomfortable.

Ask yourself:

- Who will most probably (have to) clear up my belongings after my death?
- And what do I want them to think about my stuff – and about me?

Yes, I know, most of us don’t like to think about our mortality.

That’s why we actively avoid thinking about what is going to happen with our personal stuff and who will have to take care of it when we pass away.

Answering the questions can bring clarity and make decluttering decisions easier.

Because it forces us to think about the things we own and the reasons why we own them – and how we feel about those reasons.

Give it a try.

Take some minutes to think about the questions. Write your answers down. Have a closer look at them.

Is there anything new and/or helpful you learned about yourself, and about your stuff?

Do you feel more motivated now to start your decluttering project? More determined to make some let-go decisions?

My personal Example:

When I die, most probably my husband will have to take care of my stuff. I assume, however, that he will not be able or will not be willing to do the work. He will ask my sisters or his own sister to help him clear up my stuff.

I imagine my sisters and my sister-in-law at our place, having to go through my possessions – my clothes, my jewellery, my books, my paperwork, my digital information, etc.

In my mind, I see, like in a movie, how they open my wardrobe. I see them as they are taking out all my clothes and shoes. And having to make decisions about them. I see them while they are working through the boxes that contain my sentimental papers. And so on.

And, again and again, I ask myself: What will they think and feel about me while they are going through my stuff? Do I want them to think and feel that way?

I remember that I felt very uncomfortable the first time I thought about the questions. But I tried to answer them. And found the answers helpful.

They really helped me make progress, particularly with decluttering my paperwork. I was able to decrease the amount of paperwork, sentimental and other, by half.

I don’t do this exercise often.

But from time to time, for example, while I’m digging my way through the overcrowded drawer with my underwear, I stop and think:

Do I want anyone to see this mess? And to clear it up?

The answer is usually ‘no’.

And 10 minutes later the underwear drawer is clutterfree and nicely organised. 😊

What do you think? Is this exercise something for you?

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Living Intentionally – Short Introduction – Part 3

In Part 1 of this short introduction series, we defined what living intentionally means, in a broader and in a more narrow way.

In Part 2, we listed some typical life situations to get a clearer idea of what intentional living might look like in real life.

Today, I want to briefly discuss a simple framework that helps us create a more intentional life.

Living intentionally – How do we get there?

No matter what the specific intention behind a client’s decluttering or organising project is, we always use my simple 3-step process – the ‘ADA Framework’ – to realise the desired outcomes successfully.

The ADA Framework

These are the steps that my clients practice and implement to actively take control and create the life they want to live:

A – Gaining Awareness

Gaining awareness of all the ‘stuff’ they currently have in their life – pulling it all out so that they can look at it. Getting crystal-clear on what they really need and want to have in their future life. And how they want to bridge the gap between the present and the future.

D – Making Decisions

Making decisions about the changes they want to make and the outcomes they want to achieve. Prioritising, and deciding what they want to focus on first. Choosing the strategies, projects, and actions they need to implement to realise their plans.

A – Taking Action

Taking action to get rid of what they no longer need in their life, and to simplify and organise what they want to keep. Focusing on one project at a time, taking one action step after another. Moving forward, unstoppably.

Intentional life management – The benefits of the 3-step framework.

Practicing the 3 steps of the ADA Framework not only ensures the successful completion of my clients’ mind management, decluttering, and organising projects, but it also builds a skillset that they can use again and again for the rest of their lives.

The knowledge that we can always take the 3 steps – getting a clear head, making decisions, and getting things done – is unvaluable.

It gives peace of mind. And the confidence to intentionally and proactively design – and enjoy! – life we want.

The easiest way to see and appreciate the simplicity, efficiency, and the power of the ADA Framework is to apply it in real-life situations.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Living Intentionally – Short Introduction – Part 2

Now, that we have defined what intentional living means, it’s time to consider how the concept plays out in real life.

Living intentionally – What does that look like?

Living an intentional and organised life looks different for each of us, of course.

Each of my clients has very personal and unique goals and ideas about what they want to achieve and why they want that.

Decluttering and organising physical stuff and personal information.

For some of my clients, the focus of the work is creating more space and order in their personal environment. They want to clear their home and belongings or optimise their physical paperwork and digital information management. Their intention is to enjoy more spaciousness, clarity, and lightness.

Planning, organising, and successfully realising bigger changes in life.

Others want to get well prepared for bigger changes in their life – like entering retirement or downsizing – by sorting out what belongs to the past and efficiently organising what they want to take into the future. The objective here is to feel in control of the change process and to manage it confidently and successfully.

Simplifying daily life and efficiently organising time, energy, and other resources.

Many of my clients are determined to make the organisation of their daily life easier and more enjoyable. They want to get really good at managing their work, their projects and tasks, their time more efficiently. They intend to get rid of any overwhelm or stress, to get things done and to achieve desired outcomes.

Clarifying and reorganising life after experiencing loss or other unwanted challenges.

For some of my clients it’s unexpected disruptions – like the loss of their life partner or a critical illness – that force them to adapt themselves and the various areas of their life to the new conditions. They want to gain clarity and direction and use the decluttering and reorganising work to help them cope with the unwanted changes in their life.

How can we create and enjoy an intentional and simply organised life?

It takes just three steps! >READ MORE>

What about you?

Are you living your life intentionally?

And if yes, what does that mean to you?

What does it look like in your daily life?

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Living Intentionally – Short Introduction – Part 1

Living intentionally – What does that mean?

Basically, living intentionally means that we deliberately decide how we want to live our life. And then we act on that.

We don’t let life just happen to us and purely react to its circumstances and challenges.

Instead, we actively define what’s important to us and how we want to experience and live our life.

We proactively make any necessary changes, even if that doesn’t feel very comfortable.

And we get ourselves well prepared for the challenges and opportunities the future might bring along.

Specifically, living intentionally means that we get good at thinking and acting intentionally.

It means that we actively

#1 – Manage our mind

We get clear on what’s going on in our mind, what truly matters to us, what we are thinking and feeling about our current life and about the future.

We deliberately decide what we want to have in our life, and what we need to think, feel, and do to create what we want.

And then we take action and practice the new ways of thinking, feeling, and doing.

#2 – Organise our life

We let go of what belongs to the past and no longer serves us.

This refers to our daily life and to all areas of life:

Step-by-step, we declutter our home and our physical ‘stuff’, our paperwork and digital information. We also clear up our schedules, our relationships and responsibilities, our habits, and our daily routines.

We simplify and organise what we want to keep.

We apply strategies, tactics, and tools that help us do the work in a focused and efficient way. We also take care that everything we do is 100% aligned with our unique personalities and lifestyles.

We optimise how we organise our physical belongings, our paperwork and personal information, but also our ideas and interests, tasks, and projects, our dreams and goals.

Organising means that we take a close look at what we decided to keep, we sort it into categories, and then we assign a place to everything – so that we always know what we have and where we can find it when we need it.

Living an intentional and organised life looks different for each of us, of course.

Each of my clients has very personal and unique goals and ideas about what they want to achieve and why they want that. >READ MORE>

What about you?

Are you living your life intentionally?

And if yes, what does that mean to you? What does it look like in your daily life?

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Clutter Awareness – 4 ways to get to know your stuff better

Before you can decide what to declutter you need to know what you have

If you don’t feel completely comfortable in your home but struggle to decide what you should change or what you should let go of, you can use little experimental exercises that are not only fun but also help you see your home from a different and more neutral point of view.

Your increased awareness will help you make more confident and determined decluttering decisions.

EXERCISE 1 – Take the view of a stranger who is visiting for the first time

Go outside and enter your home through the front door again.

Walk through all rooms and pretend to see all your furniture and belongings for the first time.

Which assumptions are you making about the people living in this place?

Take notes of the thoughts, feelings, and judgments that come up.

EXERCISE 2 – Imagine you would move out soon

Walk through your place. Imagine you plan to move on and to have a fresh start in a new place. You want to take along only what’s really valuable to you.

Consider what you would leave behind because you actually don’t need, use, or love it any longer.

Make a list.

EXERCISE 3 – Use photographs to evaluate your possessions

Walk around your home and take photographs.

Somehow, photographs help us see a space with fresh eyes.

Taking pictures changes our perspective and gives us a measure of detachment. This can help us decide what items should stay and what needs to go.

EXERCISE 4 – Move clutter candidates out of context

Choose some of your potential clutter items and put them into a new context by carrying them into another room.

When we see objects settled into a particular place over time, it becomes hard to imagine where else they might go and how the place would look and feel like without them.

Once you detach things from their settled places, it’s much easier to decide what to do with them.

Do you have a better idea now of what you have?

And of what you no longer want to have?

Any changes you want to make in your home?

The next step could be to plan – and do! – some decluttering projects that will help you create the home you love.

How to separate the treasures from the clutter

What are your treasures?

We all own things we truly love, things that we cannot imagine parting with, even if sometimes other people can’t understand our attachment to those special things.

These are our treasures.

Their worth is not measured in money, but rather in the meaning and significance they hold for us. Often, they represent very special experiences of our life, and they reflect what is unique about us.

Treasures are the things that you for sure want to preserve from the past and take along with you into your future.

The following exercise will help you discover your personal treasures – and it will help you to constrain yourself to a limited number of treasures:

You want to be careful not to declare too many things as treasures because that would belittle the value of each of them.

EXERCISE

Step 1

Decide how many items you wish to declare treasures before you start to select them.

The smaller the number, the better.

You might want to constrain yourself to 10 treasures. Or 5? Or 15?

Decide now, and commit yourself to stick to that number.

Step 2

Think about which of your clutter-champion categories might hide some of your treasures.

For example, if books belong to your clutter champions, decide whether you wish to assign 3 or 5 (or whatever number you choose) of your favourite books the status of treasures.

If your kitchen appliances are clutter champions – you have too many of them or several duplicates -, decide to declare the 3 – for example – most used/loved ones as treasures.

Step 3

Imagine the house burnt down and you lost everything (Only the most important personal documents could be saved.)

Which belongings would you badly miss?

Which of them could not be replaced?

Step 4

Take all the items with ‘treasure’-potential out, hold them in your hands for a while, try to ‘feel’ how truly important they are to you, and then arrange them in a ‘treasure collection area’ or – if you don’t have the space for such an area – take photographs.

Spend some time with your treasure candidates and evaluate how much you treasure each of them.

You might want to ask yourself questions like these:

- Is it something that reminds me of a happy memory?
- Is it related to a special accomplishment?
- Is it closely related to me, to the very special person I am?
- Would I be very sad if it suddenly disappeared?
- Does it refer to my values and to the vision that I defined for the next chapter of my life?

Step 5

Now make your final choice and compile a list of your personal treasures.

This list and the insights gained about your treasures will be very helpful whenever you have to or want to make decluttering decisions.

Do you know your ‘clutter champions’? – Is it time to knock them off their pedestal?

Our ‘clutter champions’ are those areas of our home and those categories of belongings that contain a very high accumulation of things that don’t serve us.

It’s usually obvious that we don’t need our clutter champions and that we don’t want them:

- We often hide them (push them under the bed, into a hidden corner in the garage),
- we don’t take good care of them (let them collect dush or get rusty),
- we try to ignore them (don’t look at them, move around them),
- and we never use them.

Typical examples of clutter champions:

- areas of our home that are no longer usable because they are overcrowded with stuff, such as a garage that leaves no room for the car,
- furniture not (or no longer) used, such as an inherited armchair nobody sits on,
- books we are no longer interested in, or recipe books we never opened,
- piles of papers we never touch but grow by continuously adding new pieces,
- papers from former phases of our life, e.g., materials from school years or a previous job,
- kitchen appliances that don’t fit our current cooking habits,
- a dresser drawer we never open because it contains out-of-fashion tops,
- a wardrobe full of clothing that no longer fits, that we hope ‘may come back in style’, that we don’t wear but keep because it was expensive,
- a 24-piece cutlery set never unpacked but kept because it was a wedding present from our aunt.

Clutter champions are champions because we let them win.

We allow them to occupy space without truly contributing to our life and well-being. They have become a burden to us, but we don’t admit it.

Clutter champions hold us back, they make us feel bad about ourselves because we feel that we should have done something about them a long time ago, that it’s our fault that they are ‘staring’ at us.

We can change the game and become the champions!

If we take the time to intentionally acknowledge and really get to know our clutter champions, we become the winners.

While we take a closer look at them, we also learn more about ourselves, and we better understand why we tend to collect and keep certain categories of things, and why certain areas in our home get so easily overcrowded.

Our increased self-awareness then helps us make long overdue decisions with intention, confidence, and determination.

Making decisions allows us to take actions, actions that create the clutterfree results we want in our life:

Letting go of all or some of our clutter champions not only creates more space in our home, but it also creates more space in our mind. And it makes us feel good about ourselves and capable.

We now know that we can do this and decluttering other areas in our home and life becomes so much easier.

Use the following exercise to clear up your relationship with your clutter champions.

EXERCISE

Step 1 – Walk around your home. Open the door to each room and look around.

Ask yourself:

- Any clutter champions around here?
- Any stuff that doesn’t serve me at all?
- Anything I feel shame or frustration about?

Don’t allow yourself to look away! Bend down and look under the bed. Open cupboards and boxes. Drawers and bags. Shine a light in the dark corners. Take photos if that helps you to get a clearer picture.

Step 2 – Create a list of all the clutter champions.

These are my clutter champions:

- …….
- …….
- ……..
- …….

Step 3 – Now sit down and spend some more time with your clutter champions.

You want to deeply understand what’s going on here.

Ask yourself questions like:

1. What do I think about my clutter champions?
2. What’s the story of each clutter champion? How did they get into my home? Has there been a time when they did serve me because I needed and used them? When and why did that change?
3. Why did I allow them to stay with me after they had lost their usefulness?
4. How do I feel about still having them?
5. How would I feel if they were gone?
6. Am I ready to let them go? Now?

Step 4 – Make a decision:

This is the clutter champion that I am going to clear up first:

- …….

Step 5 – Take action

Make an assumption about the amount of time you will need to sort out clutter champion #1, and schedule one or several decluttering sessions in your calendar.

Then stick to your appointment(s) with yourself – and do the work: create some space by letting go of what no longer serves you.

Getting unstuck – Let go of the past and focus on the future

Our thoughts determine how our life looks like.

We are all confronted with circumstances outside of ourselves that we can’t control:

The weather, our past, others and their behaviour, tax regulations, a pandemic, the price of a litre of milk, the time it gets dark in the evening, losing our job, the size of our feet, etc.

It’s easy to think that we don’t have power about how our life looks like because of all those circumstances that we can’t influence.

We tend to forget, again and again, that we own the most powerful tool in the world – our mind.

What we think about the circumstances in our life and about ourselves is totally within our control, we are free to choose how we want to think about us and our life.

This is so important because what we are thinking determines how we are feeling, our feelings then fuel our actions which finally create the results in our life.

Our thoughts determine how we experience our life!

But how do we choose our thoughts? And where do they come from?

We have about 60,000 thoughts each day, most of them we are not aware of, they run in the back of our mind, unconsciously and automatically.

The vast majority of our thoughts are past-focused.

Many of our thoughts are ‘recycled’ thoughts from the past – they entered our mind a long time ago and we are re-using them again and again, on default, unintentionally.

This is especially true for the thoughts we have about ourselves.

“Who are you? What are you capable of?”

To answer these questions, most of us turn backwards, we go to our past.

We define ourselves and our capabilities by looking at who we have been, what we have done and what we have accomplished (or not) in the past.

We define and build our self-identity based on the past.

Many of the past-based definitions of ourselves are serving us.

- I always was an A+ student, I am really good at learning new stuff.
- I always find the right time to change my job to make the next step forward in my career.
- I am great at ocean swimming. Always have been.
- I never give up and that’s why I can overcome any challenge.
- I had a tough childhood, yes, and that made me a strong person.
- …

But most of us also have lots of past-focused thoughts that limit our potential and keep us stuck.

- I’ve always been overweight, it’s just who I am.
- I’ve never been very fit and active.
- I was shy as a child already, that’s why I don’t like social events.
- My father forced me to play the piano, that’s why I hate it now.
- I tried this three times without any success, it’s just not the right thing for me.
- I’ve always been a messy person.
- …

Why and how to switch our focus from the past to the future

The past is outside of our control. And it’s over.

Past failures, missed opportunities, challenging or hurtful experiences, negative circumstances – all gone.

So as the past is gone anyway, it doesn’t make sense if we continue to give it the power to influence our present and future in a negative way.

It’s our choice, we can decide to no longer let the past determine our thoughts, feelings and actions today. And in the future.

As soon as we have made this decision, we can start to take action:

1. Becoming aware of our past-focused thoughts is the first step. We do thought downloads to get the stuff that we carried along from the past out of our mind by putting it on paper
2. The next step is to do some mind-decluttering work. We separate the positive supportive thoughts from the self-limiting thinking and decide to let go of the latter.
3. The final step is to reorganise our mind with intention. We search for powerful future-focused thoughts and practice thinking them so that they can help us move on with our life.

Why we need determination and commitment to focus on the future

Focusing our thoughts, feelings and actions on the future is what allows us to evolve.

As soon as we switch our attention from who we have been in the past to who we want to become in the future, we automatically start to do the things that help us create the life we want to live on purpose.

However, our mind doesn’t like to focus on the future.

Our mind doesn’t want us to evolve. It’s main goal is to make sure that we are safe. It doesn’t want us to change and move into unknown – and potentially ‘dangerous’ – territory. Thus, it is very attached to the well-known past and it wants us to stay where we are, in safe territory.

It’s good to know that our mind will always resist if we decide to focus on the future.

Knowing this helps us to understand why it requires more energy and effort – and therefore more determination and commitment – to think about and plan for the future than to remember and rely on the past.

EXERCISE

This little exercise helps us uncover some of our past-focused thoughts. And then exchange them with new future-focused thinking.

Step 1 – Become aware of the ‘always’ and ‘never’ in your life

Words like ‘never’ and ‘always’ are good indicators of past-related thinking, feeling, and behaviour.

Give yourself 5 or 10 minutes to write down a few sentences about yourself that include the words ‘never’ or ‘always’.

Then pick two or three of those that don’t serve you.

Examples:

- ‘I always feel responsible for other people’s feelings.’
- ‘I never manage to finish a task on time.’
- ‘I’ve always been a messy person.’

Step 2 – Rephrase your sentences using the past tense.

Examples:

- ‘In the past, I used to feel responsible for other people’s feelings.’
- ‘I usually didn’t finish my tasks on time in the past.’
- ‘In the past, I had a tendency to mess up my place.’

Step 3 – Rephrase again, now taking a future-focused approach.

Examples:

- ‘Nowadays, I know that everyone is responsible for their own feelings. That’s why I can now focus on myself and my feelings.’
- ‘I’ve decided just now that I am getting better and better at finishing tasks on time.’
- ‘I am going to become really good at decluttering and keeping my place clean in the future.’

Play around and rephrase as often as necessary, until you find a sentence/thought that expresses your future-focus and makes you feel good.

You can use it to redirect your focus whenever your mind comes up with its stories of the past. And it will, because that’s its job.

Remind yourself, again and again, that it doesn’t matter what you thought, felt, did in the past – that’s out of your control like all the other circumstances in your life.

It only matters what you decide to think, feel, and do now – and in the future. And that’s 100% in your control.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

How to replace a limiting thought that keeps us stuck

Why we have to find the limiting thought that keeps us stuck before we can get rid of it

If we use mind-decluttering as the process to realise changes in our life – changes in the way we show up and behave so that we can achieve the results we actually want to have – we always start our work by searching for the current thought.

We need to know what we are currently thinking because our current thought causes what we are currently feeling. And, as we know from the Mind-Decluttering Model, our feelings create our our actions (what we do or not do) which finally create the results in our life.

However, we are thinking around 60,000 thoughts each day and most of them run around in our unconscious mind and come up on default – we don’t choose them intentionally, we are not even aware of them.

How can we uncover unconscious self-limiting thoughts?

In the Mind-Decluttering Model the result at the bottom of the model always refers back to the thought line in the model.

So if we struggle to discover our current thought, we can work our way back from the bottom to the top of the model.

EXAMPLE:

Let’s say I want to intensify my exercise-program and have decided to get up at 5 am twice a week so that I can go for a longer run bevor I have to leave the house.

But two weeks have gone by already and I didn’t get up earlier twice a week, I didn’t go for an early run.

I now fill in the Mind-Decluttering Model.

The circumstance line: Part of the new exercise plan is that I get up for an early run two times each week.

The thought line: ?

The feeling line: ?

The action line: I didn’t get up earlier twice a week during the past two weeks.

The result line: I don’t realise my exercise-plan.

So what’s the thought in this scenario?

Looking at the result line, I know that the thought is probably something like ‘it’s impossible to realise the exercise plan’.

And yes, that’s what it is, that’s what I am currently thinking: ‘This is too hard. Getting up so early is too hard. I’ve never managed to get up so early. It’s impossible.’

How do I feel when I am thinking these thoughts? I feel exhausted and incapable.

The on-default version of my Mind-Decluttering Model is complete:

Now it’s clear why I am currently not able to realise my exercise-plan:

I’ve found the cause of the problem, my thought, which means that I am now in the position to find the solution:

I have to find a better thought.

A thought that creates feelings and actions that serve me better in this situation.

What do I need to think about getting up early twice a week so that I feel capable and strong instead of exhausted and incapable?

I experiment with a few ideas of useful thoughts and finally come up with this: ‘Of course getting up early is hard and feels uncomfortable at first. But that’s not a problem. I can do uncomfortable things if I want to. I’ll do this!’

Thinking this makes me feel strong and capable. And feeling strong and capable helps me do what I wanted to do: get up early – although it feels uncomfortable – and go running twice a week before I leave to go to work.

The result? I prove to myself that I can do hard things and realise my exercise-plan!

This is an overview of the final on-purpose model:

This example demonstrates one of the many ways we can try to find our current thoughts and then a better – more useful and effective – thought.

Yes, applying the Mind-Decluttering Model as a tool to realise desired changes in our life takes effort and time.

But it’s worth it – If we do it properly, the process of letting go of limiting thoughts and moving on with new powerful thoughts always delivers the results we want to achieve.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

- What are the changes your want to make in your life?
- Which thoughts might have kept you from realising the desired changes?
- Which thoughts could you practice thinking instead?

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.

Our obstacle-thoughts are the signposts that guide us to our goals

If we set ourselves a goal – a certain outcome we want to achieve, a change we want to make, a habit we want to create – we need an action plan.

We need to know the steps it takes to get us from here to where we want to be.

Very often our mind tries to make action planning difficult.

We come up with the idea for a goal and we are all in, and then our mind gets nervous and says, ‘Wait a sec. You think you can do this? Are you kidding? There is no way you can achieve this. Just drop the idea and save yourself the disappointment.’

This is a normal and natural reaction of our mind.

It’s its job to keep us safe and out of danger. Our mind wants to avoid any risks, that’s why it doesn’t like change and wants to keep things as they are.

It is important to listen to our mind.

We need to become aware of the thoughts that come up with regard to our goal: All thoughts – the supportive ones and also the ones that try to talk us out of pursuing our desired goals.

So, yes, we need to listen to our mind but we always should remind ourselves that we don’t need to follow its recommendations.

We don’t have to do what our mind wants us to do (or not to do).

Our thoughts are just sentences in our mind and they are optional. We can always decide what we want to think.

We don’t have to believe our mind’s objections, instead we can use them to help us define the steps we need to take to achieve our goal.

As soon as we notice all the fearful, pessimistic, critical, judgemental, and other negative thoughts, we can decide to see them not as obstacles on the way to our goal but as helpful signposts that can guide us.

We take a closer look at all the objections our mind offers, and we develop a strategy how to overcome each of them. These strategies then become the main elements of our goal-achievement action plan.

EXAMPLE:

Goal: I want to lose 4 pounds during this month.

The task is to find the obstacles thoughts and to use them to develop an obstacle-overcoming thought. This is the new thought that needs to be practiced.

Some examples:

Obstacle-Thought Number 1 – ‘Losing weight is hard and frustrating and I tend to quit when things become frustrating.’

- Obstacle-overcoming Thought Number 1 – ‘I expect and accept feelings of frustration to come up. They are part of the process and not a big issue. I am going to be frustrated, yes, and that’s o.k. (It’s better than being frustrated because I weigh too much!)’

Obstacle-Thought Number 2 – ‘I tried to lose weight in the past and it never worked out.’

- Obstacle-overcoming Thought Number 2 – ‘The past is irrelevant, it has nothing to do with what I am capable of achieving in the future. I plan to focus on the visualisation of my future self, the person who knows how to lose weight and always sticks to her plans.’

Obstacle-Thought Number 3 – ‘I am afraid that I will not stick to the eating plan and that I will feel like a hopeless looser if I fail.’

- Obstacle-overcoming Thought Number 3 – ‘Of course I will fail, failure is part of the path to success. That’s no problem. I’ll learn from each failure and move on with new energy.’

As we can see in this example, the action plan consists of a list of supportive and powerful thoughts that help us take action whenever our mind comes up with its obstacle-thoughts.

The toolbox of helpful obstacle-overcoming thoughts will look different for each of us, even if we pursue the same goal.

We are all unique personalities and our minds are very unique as well. And so are our obstacle thoughts and our strategies to overcome them.

We have to invest some time to listen carefully to our mind, so that we can see our very own obstacle-thoughts.

Then we get well prepared with the help of a well-designed obstacle-overcoming action plan:

We assign at least one strong supportive thought to each obstacle-thought, so that we are well equipped when our mind comes up with objections (and it will!) while we are moving towards our goal.

Now it’s your turn!

- Choose a goal you want to achieve.
- Then list all the obstacle-thoughts that your mind will probably immediately offer to you. Don’t push them away, don’t judge them, just take a closer look.
- Now get creative and start to compile your toolbox of obstacle-overcoming thoughts.
- And then make sure that you have these supportive thoughts always close by. Study and memorise them every day – so that your mind can get used to them and begins to accept them as your new truth.

You will soon notice that the old obstacle-thoughts lose their power and how your new thoughts help you move forward towards your goal.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier.

Check out how I can help you.