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Our thoughts determine how our life looks like.

When we think a thought about a certain circumstance in our life, that ‘sentence in our mind’ creates a feeling in our body. The feeling then drives an action. And the action creates a result.

If we don’t like the results that we are currently getting – e.g. living in a cluttered home –, then we can decide to change these results by changing our thoughts.

A thought is just a sentence in our mind, however – it has superpowers.

Usually, we don’t pay much attention to what’s happening in our mind.

We don’t consider deliberately what we are thinking and feeling and how that affects what we do (or don’t do) and achieve (or don’t achieve) in our life.

When we feel unhappy with our life, we often blame our current situation or other people and their behaviour – the circumstances in our lives – as the creators of our unhappiness.

But the circumstances in our lives don’t cause our negative feelings. Circumstances are facts. They are neither good or bad, they are neutral.

Our feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are caused by how we think about the circumstances that we are experiencing.

The thoughts we think and the stories we tell ourselves determine how we show up in life. And how we show up in life determines the results we get.

How to declutter and organise our mind

If we want to make changes in our life, we first have to make changes in our mind.

1. 1. We have to become aware of the thoughts that we are thinking about ourselves and about the circumstances in our life.
   2. We then decide to clean up our mind and let go of the thoughts that don’t serve us. We declutter any (self-)limiting thoughts and replace them deliberately with new more helpful thoughts.
   3. Supported by the new thoughts about ourselves and the circumstances in our life, we now start to feel differently and act differently, more in accordance with who and how we want to be. – This is when we begin to create the results that help us to change our lives to the better.

All thoughts are optional.

This is good news because it means that we only have to keep those thoughts that we want to have.

The not so good news is that we are thinking more than 60,000 thoughts each day, and many of them are automatic and unconscious thoughts and not so easy to uncover. Thus, examining each thought when it comes up is actually impossible.

‘Thought downloads’ – a great tool to declutter our thoughts

The solution is to introduce regular mind-decluttering sessions in our daily life.

This works in a similar way as it does with regular home-decluttering routines.

We schedule a time for our mind-decluttering work, and then sit down and do a ‘thought download’:

1. We set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and now take any upcoming thoughts out of our mind and put them on paper.

2. The next step is to pick up one thought and evaluate it. We can ask ourselves,

‘Does this thought serve me?

Does it help me to feel and act in a way that allows me to achieve the results that I desire?’

3. And then we decide if we really want to keep the thought or if it needs to be replaced.  

A simple example of a thought download

Let’s say we feel stressed and overwhelmed because there is so much stuff in our home.

We decide to do a thought download about it.

We write down any thoughts that come up, such as: ‘I feel so bad about all the stuff. I don’t feel good at home. I don’t like my home anymore, I hate it! How can I relax with all the clutter around me. This is such a big job. It’s hopeless – how can I even get started.’

Now we pick one thought:

• • We might choose this one: ‘I don’t like my home anymore, I hate it!’

We ask, ‘Does this thought serve me?’

The clear answer is ‘No, it doesn’t.’ If we tell ourselves that we don’t like our home, and if we feel hate, we will not be motivated to take action, we will not clear up, and there will be no change in the way our home looks like.

But we are free to decide to let the negative thought go and to replace it with a more positive one.

This could be, ‘My home is really important to me. I am determined to do whatever is needed to be done so that I can enjoy my home in future.’

• • We could also pick this thought: ‘This is such a big job. It’s hopeless – how can I even get started.’

Does the thought serve us? No. As long as we think this thought, we will feel hopeless and confused, and unable to begin working on the problem. We procrastinate and nothing changes. We should get rid of this thought.

A more helpful thought could be, ‘Yes, it’s a big job. Thus, it’s a good idea to take the time and work on it step-by-step, dividing the work into small enough tasks that I can handle with confidence. I’ll get there.’

How can we organise our new thoughts?

Sometimes, it’s not difficult to replace a negative thought with a more helpful new thought.

We become aware of the limiting thought, make an immediate decision to think differently, and then manage to create a new thought pattern.

Often, however, it takes some time to create a permanent place for a new thought in our mind.

That’s normal because our mind got so used to its thought patterns.

If we don’t pay attention, it will automatically pick up the old thought again because we have thought it so many times. Our mind is so good at thinking that thought that it doesn’t want to give it up.

It can happen that we again and again have to sort out the old thought and put the new thought at its place.

However, finally, our mind will accept the new order of things and will ‘forget’ about the old thought.

The new thought has taken over and now reliably creates the feelings and actions that lead to the desired results.

TIP

Help your mind to get used to a new thought by deliberately focusing your attention on it for several days in a row.

• • Write the new thought on post-its and place them all over your home, at places where you will see them frequently: the bathroom mirror, the bedroom door, the edge of your computer screen, etc.
  • Send yourself an email with the new thought in the subject line.
  • Send yourself daily reminders of the new thought via your online calendar.
  • Use the teeth-brushing-time to think about your new thought.
  • Tell a friend about your new thought.
  • … (What else could you do to remind yourself of your new thought?)

We are the owners of our mind – and responsible for our mental clutter

The clutter in our home often creates negative feelings, such as stress, frustration, helplessness and even embarrassment.

However, negative feelings and thoughts are not only a consequence of clutter, in most cases they actually are the cause of clutter:

The clutter in our mind – negative thoughts and feelings that don’t serve us – has a huge impact on the amount of physical clutter in our home.

Mental/emotional causes of physical clutter

We all have our special and very personal reasons why we bring too much stuff into our home and get rid of too little.

• • Impulsive and excessive shopping trips, for example, are often attempts to avoid or cover feelings of frustration, stress, boredom, etc.
  • Feelings of guilt, shame, or obligation let us hold on to belongings that we actually don’t need/use/like.
  • Grief, anxiety, or loneliness can create sticky emotional attachments to certain things.
  • Surrounding ourselves with too much stuff can be a subconscious strategy to make us feel safe and protected.
  • etc.(What are your most important types of mind-clutter?)

If we want to make our home-decluttering projects sustainable successes, we first have to do some mind-decluttering.

We need to become aware of the thoughts and feelings that might be hidden behind our stuff. We have to be willing to invest time and effort in uncovering and removing any mental and emotional clutter.

Our thoughts are our most valuable ‘possessions’

Our thoughts are much more important than our physical belongings.

Our thoughts determine how we live our life: they determine how we feel, what we do (or don’t do) and what results we create in our life.

• • If we, for example, think, ‘I have never been organised, I’ll never be able to create a clutterfree life’,
  • we will have a negative feeling (such as overwhelm or resignation)
  • which will probably cause us to procrastinate and postpone any decluttering activity.
  • The result is that we continue living in a cluttered home.  

Thus, if we want to declutter our home and our life, we have to declutter our mind first.

We are the owners of our mind – the home of our thoughts

We are all creating (more or less) clutter in our homes by bringing in too many (and often the wrong) things and by not letting go of the stuff that doesn’t serve us (any longer).

The same happens with our mind, the home of our thoughts.

Most of us haven’t been taught to deliberately declutter and organise our thoughts. We keep thinking thoughts that don’t assist us in living the life we want to live. We don’t throw out the thoughts that don’t serve us (any longer).

As the owner of our home, we are the ones who are responsible to keep it clutterfree and organised – to create and maintain the space and order we need to feel comfortable and relaxed at our place.

It’s the same with our mind. We are the owner of our mind and it is our responsibility to keep it clean and clear, and organise in a way that allows it to work efficiently and effectively.

And although we cannot control our outside circumstances (other people and their behaviour, our past, external events, etc.),

We can completely control what’s happening in our home and in our mind.

• • We are in control of our home, we decide what we bring in and throw out (or don’t throw out), how the place looks and feels like, how spacious and orderly it is or how crammed and disorganised. We are free to choose the things we want to surround ourselves with, and we arrange and use them as we wish.
  • We are also in control of our mind. We choose our thoughts, we decide what we believe – about ourselves, our family, our job, about our home (!), about our life – about everything. Then our thoughts and beliefs create feelings which fuel our actions which create the results in our life.

That’s why we have to be so very careful about which thoughts we offer a home in our mind!  

If we are not happy about our current life situation, we we can ask ourselves:

• • What’s going on in my mind right now?
  • What am I thinking?
  • Does it serve me?
  • How does it make me feeling?
  • And acting?

And then we can decide to change things to the better by starting to think differently.

The basics of the mind-decluttering process

How does the mind-decluttering work look like

Brooke Castillo from The Life Coach School has developed a self-coaching tool, ‘The Model’, which I use to declutter my own mind, and also apply when I help my clients get started with decluttering the stories they tell themselves about their homes and lives.

‘The Model’ is quite simple. It’s based on two main premises

1. 1. There are circumstances in the world that we cannot control – other people, our past, external events, etc. Circumstances are neutral, they are facts that everyone can agree on.
   2. Our circumstances are the only thing that’s not within our control. Everything else we can control: our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and our results.

The very important and powerful consequence is that we have much more control over our lives than we usually think.

And that’s exactly where taking-control of our life starts – with our thoughts, with the stories we tell ourselves.

The stories we tell ourselves create feelings. These feelings fuel our actions (or our inaction!). And our actions create the results we have in our life. 

Making changes in our life, such as decluttering our paperwork, for example, is often so frustrating because we try to change our action without changing the thought or feeling that’s driving the action.

As long as we let our ‘old’ thoughts and feelings guide us, ‘new’ actions are hard to realise which makes new – better – results less likely.

This is an example of a typical ‘cluttered thought model’:

1. 1. There is a circumstance. – ‘The desk in my home office is covered by 3 piles of paperwork, each of them containing about 100 pieces of paper.’ (This is neutral, it’s a fact, everyone can agree on this observation.)
   2. I have a thought about the circumstance. – ‘This looks terrible. I should have a clean desk.’
   3. The thought creates a feeling. – ‘I feel ashamed. And overwhelmed.’
   4. The feeling fuels action/inaction. – ‘I plan to clear up the desk, but then postpone it, again and again. I start to avoid the home office, and only enter it to drop more papers on the desk.’
   5. The action/inaction creates a result. – ‘The desk is full of papers, it looks messy.’

If we look at this model, we can easily understand why it’s difficult or impossible to clear up our paperwork if we tell ourselves the story that ‘This looks terrible. I should have a clean desk.’, and feel ashamed and overwhelmed about it.

The desired action, decluttering the desk, becomes much easier if we change the story.

Although we can’t change the facts directly (several piles of paper on our desk), we have the power to change what we think about it, and, as a consequence, we change what we feel, do and achieve about it.

A much more powerful ‘clutterfree thought model’ could be:

1. 1. There is a circumstance. – ‘The desk in my home office is covered by 3 piles of paperwork, each of them containing about 100 pieces of paper.’
   2. I have a thought about the circumstance. – ‘I like clear surfaces. If I invest 2 hours in decluttering my desk now, I will enjoy a clear desk afterwards.’
   3. The thought creates a feeling. – ‘I feel determined.’
   4. The feeling fuels action/inaction. – ‘I start decluttering the desk immediately and use the 2 hours of time I have available right now to finish the work.’
   5. The action/inaction creates a result. – ‘The desk is clear and clean.’

Changing the results in our life is only possible if we become experts in analysing and changing the stories we tell ourselves.

Becoming aware of our thoughts is the starting point.

Whenever a result is not what we want it to be, whenever we don’t feel and act as we want to, we can ask ourselves:

• • What’s going on in my mind right now?
  • What am I thinking?
  • Does it serve me?
  • How does it make me feeling?
  • And acting?

And then we can decide to change our story by starting to think differently:

As soon as we purposefully decide to think thoughts that create positive feelings of motivation and determination, we start taking action – and we start getting the results we want.

Our homes are not the only places that can get cluttered. The clutter in our minds – thoughts and feelings that don’t serve us – can have much more serious consequences on our well-being and our life experience than the physical clutter in our homes.

Why I decided to declutter my mind

Self-responsibility has always been my strongest personal value. It’s my deep belief that we are all accountable for how we behave and what we do or don’t do, for how we live our life, for how we care for our well-being.

If things are not like we want them to be, it’s our job, in my opinion, to get active and make changes. If we don’t feel good about ourselves, or our work, our relationships, our homes, we shouldn’t complain but do something about it.

All my life I have used ‘self-responsibility’ as a guiding principle. It has helped me to make decisions whenever I felt a bit lost or stuck, or to choose a new direction whenever I ended up at a crossroad in my life.

However, valuing self-responsibility so highly has also caused a great amount of shame and guilt in my life.

Whenever I was miserable or sad, I felt responsible for changing these feelings to the better – especially as there often was no ‘real’ reason to feel miserable or sad.

But very often, I didn’t manage to switch from negative to positive feelings. And then I felt miserable about feeling miserable. 

And I felt guilty and shameful because often my miserable attitude and behaviour made the life of the people around me unnecessarily difficult and uncomfortable.

How I started the mind-decluttering work

Some time ago, I came across ‘The Life Coach School Podcast’, launched by Brooke Castillo in 2014.

Since then, a lot has changed for me.

I am still the same person and most people will not immediately recognise any difference in my personality or behaviour.

But I am different because I learned how to think and feel differently, and – as a consequence – to act differently.

It still happens that I feel miserable without any valid reason, but now I am able to handle negative emotions, and I no longer feel bad about having them.

Yes, I still believe that I am responsible for what’s happening in my life. But now I know that I am even more responsible for what’s happening in my mind. And that it’s completely within my power what’s happening there.

Knowing that I can think and feel the way I want to, helps me to act in a truly self-responsible way.

I am now actively creating the life I want to live. Without feeling shame or guilt anymore (most of the time).

How the mind-decluttering ‘Model’ works

The foundation of Brooke Castillo’s work as a life coach and as a trainer of life coaches is ‘The Model’.

The Model is a tool that Brooke created to help us to become aware of what’s going on in our mind, and to understand how it works. We can use the Model to learn how to manage, organise and control our mind in a way that enables us to create the life we want to live.

The theory behind the Model is nothing new, it’s actually what numerous great thought leaders and teachers have taught us for ages: Our thoughts create the results in our lives.

New about the Model is that it packages and structures the well-known and broadly shared insights – about the processes in our minds and their effects on our lives – in a new easy-to-understand way.

The Model simplifies the theory and makes it easier to apply the universal principles in our daily life.

The basic idea is:

If we want to change our life, we have to change our thoughts.

We have to ‘declutter’ our mind by letting go of any thoughts that no longer serve us and by bringing in new and more useful thoughts.

As soon as we (ex)change our thoughts, we automatically change our feelings, which changes how we act. And the changes in our actions then create the desired changes in our lives.

All these changes are, of course, not super easy.

However, they are much easier to realise than to continue living with self-limiting thoughts that limit our potential and our life experience. 

I am consistently improving my self-coaching skills which helps me make my life better – a little bit, every day.  

And, after becoming a Certified Life Coach, I now help my clients to do the same, to apply powerful coaching and self-coaching tools in their daily life, to make it better and more enjoyable.

The ‘Mind-Decluttering Series’

The purpose of ‘Mind-Decluttering Series’ is to help us clear up the self-limiting thoughts and feelings that keep us from living the life we want to live.

We’ll approach the mind-clutter from different angles, we’ll make it visible and accessible, and we’ll use examples, exercises and self-coaching tools to help us free up our mind – and consequently our life.