DeClutter Your Life

 

When we speak about decluttering the first thing that comes to mind is our closet. Most of us have way too many clothes, shoes, purses, ties, socks, papers and can use a moment of out with the old to make room for the new. Spiritually speaking, decluttering your life means getting rid of everything that no longer serves you. Decluttering includes material things, thoughts, people, bad habits, anything that makes you feel tied down to a past that no longer fits into your new life and new mindset. The first and easiest place to start, yes, that would be in your closet.

As you move along in your healing journey you may notice that your old clothes no longer fit who you are and make you feel uncomfortable. I know this happened for me because I get emotionally attached to everything, so everything I wear mentally relates to a time in my life. Some of the clothes I was wearing no longer had room in my life because what they represented was a time I was moving on from. They made me feel uncomfortable wearing them, so I knew they had to go. Go out and find a new look that better portrays who you are now. Maybe you need to bring more color into your life, or maybe just need an update. You are getting to know yourself again and becoming your own best friend, so look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Are you portraying your true self to the world or are you like I was and find yourself hiding behind black or baggy clothes – or both. Embrace the weight you are, embrace the age you are, and just learn to embrace your true self. You will feel so much better when you just accept you for being you.

Decluttering anything from your life always feels good because you are releasing. When you find yourself hanging on too tightly to material things, ask yourself, “would someone else get more enjoyment out of this than I do?” When your answer to this question is yes, then donate it. I read somewhere that it is selfish for us to hang on to things and not use them when someone else could be finding use for it, and that stuck with me and gave me a new perspective on the material world. Things we have outgrown others may have a need for, so look at it as being generous. Look at it as you are helping someone else have the joy that you did, and now you are letting it go to make room for the new in your life. Follow the rule that for every one new item you bring into your life, one old one has to go. You are healing and growing and changing and have respect for that. When you find yourself feeling uncomfortable and don’t understand why, just follow your intuition. Get rid of it. Why would you hang on to something that doesn’t make you feel good. Let it go and find something else that does.

That concept also goes for thought patterns we have. Learn to declutter your mind. Old ways of thinking won’t hold a place in your healed life. Remember that until you are in total control of your life, old thought patterns will keep screaming to be heard until you learn to release them. Don’t let anyone or anything rent free space in your mind. Learn to control your thoughts. It sounds easier said than done, but the trick is to shut it down as soon as it starts. I have spoken the words, shut up, out loud, when I know I am spiraling down an old thought pattern that holds no space for where I am and who I am now. Quiet your mind and move on. Do something else. Go for a walk. Learn to declutter your mind by filling it with something that looks good, feels good, anything positive. Think about ice cream if you have to, that will make almost anyone feel good. Ice cream doesn’t work for you, then try something else that will. The only way old thought patterns can become old thought patterns is to replace them with new ones. Utilize the same concept as getting rid of clothes and that is a new one in means an old one out.

Decluttering your life may also include releasing people who no longer fit into your new life. Self-love and self-care raise your vibration. People in your life who aren’t doing the same work and stuck in a negative way of living will no longer be a match for you and will make you feel uncomfortable. This is where you detach in love. Respect people for where they are at and move on. Be grateful for the time you had together and everything they taught you on your journey so far and release them. Some people are only meant to be in our life to teach us things about ourselves that we couldn’t learn without them. Dragging out the lesson creates chaos and disappointment for everyone. Learn to trust yourself when its time to let go and move forward.

Decluttering isn’t something that happens overnight. Letting go happens in stages. I have been decluttering my life for years now, and yes that includes material things, thoughts, habits and people, and my life has slowly taken on a new look and a new feel. I am starting to feel like myself again. I am in tune with my sense of self, so I can tell what can stay and what must go because I have learned to trust myself and my intuition. When I find myself resorting back to old ways, I do a check in. I ask myself what I need, what has to change, what has to go. Decluttering is an ongoing process and one that helps me to feel free and at peace – on the outside and on the inside.

Remember that decluttering is the same as your healing journey, it is a process. Your life is never about the destination, but always about the journey.



In love and light,

Fran

Gratitude

Every week I usually just wait to hear what I should write about and am not really sure of the topic until it presents itself. Then I hear from my readers that it is exactly what they needed to hear, or it is exactly what they are going through, and noticed that we are all going through the same thing. Our lives and our situations may be different, but the core of the lessons we are learning is all the same. The common thread is self-care and self-love.

The time I have spent on healing you would think I would have this perfected by now, but I don’t. It is a continuous journey of healing, lessons learned, falling back into old patterns, getting back up, finding our voice, moving forward, repeat. I am way beyond where I was a decade ago, but I am still fumbling around trying to be the best version of myself. I still deal with abandonment issues, trust issues, low self-esteem, lack of confidence in myself, never feeling like enough and every time I think I have it figured out and well on my way, an old hurt or trauma that I think I healed from shows its ugly face and I am left to deal with my inner demons again. Last week I woke up from the worst nightmare and couldn’t breathe and I haven’t had one of those in over a decade. I took it as a sign that something in my life is triggering old wounds that need to be dealt with when I am awake. I took it as a sign that just when I thought I was healed, I am being shown that I am ready to start dealing with the next layer of that onion that I wasn’t strong enough to face earlier. A new layer of healing always shows up exactly when it is supposed to and you either ignore it or face it head on. My advice for you is to just know that you can only ignore it for so long before it starts screaming at you to be heard and dealt with.

Signs are great but what to do with them is another story, and that is where gratitude comes in. While on this healing journey you will find yourself in places where you have come so far yet finding yourself feeling so confused. I believe that happens right before our life is going to be making a big shift again. We put in the work, we made goals, we are staying positive, we are trying to show up more confident, but then you wake up feeling like you have no idea what you are doing. Are you feeling lost right now? Are you moving or must move soon? Thinking of a new job? A new relationship? Are you just feeling tired and lost and at a stopping point? Look at it as a resting point and start practicing gratitude to find the answers and find your strength to keep going. Being grateful for what we have always opens doors to receiving more – it opens the door to receiving answers from God, Source, The Universe, whatever you are comfortable calling that force outside of yourself. That force is there for guidance and answers and the best way to receive that guidance is to be grateful for everything you have right now. You may not be where you want to be, but being grateful for the little things that show up on the journey is a great way to bring yourself out of your head and back to reality. Gratitude is the best way to get in a mindset of abundance rather than lack. You will be forced to see what you have rather than what you don’t.

The other important part of being grateful is to understand that when you aren’t thankful for what you do have and appreciating what has been given to you on this journey, then it will slowly be taken away from you. We are then forced to live without what we just took for granted. This is a very hard lesson to learn when you have walls up, or feel like you have nothing, or when you feel like you have been waiting and waiting for something or someone and they never show up. The truth is maybe you were missing all the small things and gestures that were being given to you. Sometimes it takes them being taken away to really have your eyes opened to see what you had. Gratitude keeps you humble, and gratitude keeps the people around you feeling loved and feeling safe to keep loving you. Gratitude leaves you feeling like you have everything you need. The lesson is that having that gratitude for the little that you have or what you are receiving is when even more of everything you ever wanted shows up tenfold.

I can remember back to when I first learned about practicing gratitude and at that time, I had nothing. I had just sold everything I had so I was forced to ask myself how do I show gratitude when I am feeling a little hurt and betrayed that I just had to sell everything and every piece of jewelry I had from when I was a teenager to an adult – but I was determined to make these changes so I started being grateful for everything. I was taught that you will get back everything you lost if you just try and stay positive so I put all my trust in that (and yes that part is true – if you stay on this journey, you will eventually get it all back). That is also the time I started keeping a gratitude journal. I was grateful for waking up, grateful that my car was working, grateful for my work, and my kids, and my life and always, always grateful that I had my health. I learned not to ever take that for granted because that is the one thing that I had that could keep me doing everything else I had to. Life was hard but imagine how hard it would be if I wasn’t as healthy as I was. I knew that without my health I would really have nothing, so that was what I would be grateful for everyday when I woke up. That was over a decade ago and I am still grateful for that every day and something I will never take for granted.

The best way to start practicing gratitude is to just be thankful for everything. Be grateful for the people in your life that show up for you. You want more of anything, then be thankful that many times a day. I remember when I first started, I would say thank you with every step I took walking to my car. Then I would do it again getting out of my car. I had thank you stickies all over my house. Thank you for this, thank you for that, thank you, thank you, thank you. I had to get out of my head with being so angry at everything I had lost, so being grateful was going to help me with that. That was a big lesson back then, and one I find myself going back to right now. Start writing in your gratitude journal. Whenever life is getting hard and you are faced with dealing with the unknown, then the best path to take for the right now is to practice gratitude.

 

In love and light,

Fran

 

Raise Your Vibration

Once you have been on this healing journey long enough, you begin to understand that everything is about positive and negative energy. The hardest part is learning to walk away from the negative while protecting the positive. This is done with strong boundaries. You will begin to feel what is right for you and what is wrong for you. I always mention in my blog how I protect my peace with everything I am and that is because it took me so long to get here. I had to learn to embrace the positive and walk away from the negative. Now that you are on this journey, you will learn to do that as well.

Energy is everywhere and you can feel it. Have you ever walked into a room, and it just doesn’t feel right – or be around someone who is just so negative. This is where you are going to learn to protect yourself and to level-up and raise your vibration. This is a very important lesson to learn while trying to create a new life. Our thoughts and our actions create our life, so we want to be positive. We must be positive to attract positive. We are trying to undo a negative past, so if you sit around arguing, or gossiping, or partaking in negative behaviors, then that is exactly the type of energy you are still attracting. Learn to level-up and learn to walk away. You don’t have to be rude about it, you don’t even have to say anything. Someone is reeling you into an argument, walk away - you notice the people around you are talking about a co-worker, walk away – someone asking you about your ex and you feel the need to talk negative about them, don’t engage. Learn not to partake of anything that will keep you at a low vibration. You want to lift yourself up and you want to lift up the people around you. Be compassionate, be respectful, be understanding of others, practice forgiveness. That is how you will create happiness for yourself and anything else will keep you in chaos and despair. We attract who we are so become the person you want to be with – attract the people you want to be with.

We all go through very hard times and very low times in our lives. The lesson is not to stay there. I have been in that low place, and I understand that even though it is a very unhappy place it can get very comfortable because moving out of it is hard and requires work. That is the moment to level up knowing that you want to be better than your past. Learn from those moments and move forward taking the knowledge with you. The difference between living at a high vibration and a low one is all in your attitude. Situations around us don’t change, how we look at those situations and handle those situations is what changes. Learn to be the better person. Learn to value yourself because once you do that you no longer feel the need to always feel right. You will value yourself enough to know that others can have a different opinion, but you can still have yours. Agree to disagree. Detach in love. These small things will help you to keep peace on the outside and on the inside while you are trying to change your life.

Everyone has a different story and situation, so leveling-up will mean different things to different people. My situation, raising my vibration means I walk away from anything negative, and I stay away from negative news, negative movies, negative tv shows, anything that doesn’t have a feel good, positive message I stay away from. I do this because I do not want anything to get in the way of how I feel or what I am thinking. Movies and news affect us more than you think, so for me this is how I stay in a place where I can change my life and attract only the positive. Others it may be walking away from confrontation, learning not to argue, eating healthy, not drinking, exercising, anything to change your lifestyle that raises your vibration. You may have a messy house, clean it and get organized and see what it does for your mood. Do the same for your car. Walk away from someone trying to start an argument and see how good you feel that you kept your cool. Raise your vibration. Protect your peace and your happiness with everything you are. Once you find that place, the outside world doesn’t have as big of an effect on you – you will remain strong through anything.

I understand that this can be very hard to do. People around us affect us. They affect our life; they affect our mood, and they can bring us down to their level if we aren’t careful. You must get to a place where you understand that people must rise up to you, not the other way around. As soon as you engage in negative energy through behaviors or conversation, you are brought down to that level, you are brought down to that lower vibration. That is why taking the high road and staying in your higher vibration is very important. Let others rise to the occasion and meet you where you are, don’t allow yourself to be brought down. Stay strong in how far you have come. The people who don’t respect where you are will eventually phase out of your life, but remember that will be their choice. We can only control ourselves – we are not meant to control or be controlled by others. We must respect everyone’s personal journey.


In love and light,

Fran

Here are a few ways to get you started on raising your vibration:

Eat healthy

Exercise

Call a friend

Smile at a stranger

Go for a walk

Watch a funny movie

Listen to music

Clean your house

Donate your old clothing or furniture

Learn a new hobby

Pray / Go to Church

Avoid arguments and gossip

Shut down negative thinking

Only use positive words in your vocabulary

Be compassionate

Forgive someone (remember forgiveness is always for us)

 

The In-Between

Last week I mentioned that healing is like having a second job and we must make time for it. This week I thought it was important to talk about that moment in healing that I like to call the in-between. This moment comes after you have been doing so much work on yourself, and you reach a point where you start to question yourself and you begin to doubt yourself. You are journaling, you are practicing self-care, you are no longer feeding negative people and situations, and then one day you wake up and feel lost. You look around and realize that you no longer feel comfortable in your old life. Negativity and toxicity no longer fit you like a glove. The opposite is true, which is why your old life makes you feel very uncomfortable. You find yourself feeling uncomfortable both emotionally and physically. This place is what I refer to as the in-between because you feel confused. You no longer fit into your old life, but you haven’t yet reached the part where you are in a new normal of your transformed life. You begin to second guess your choices and wonder if you are doing the right thing for yourself. This can be a very scary place. You are at the in-between.

The good news is that this place is where you find yourself again. This is the place where it is very important to trust yourself. Trust that you are changing for the better. Trust that it is ok to feel confused and not know where you are going. This is where that trust in the universe and in yourself will come into play. You will be tested. You will have to make choices that show how much you are serious about wanting change and wanting a new life. Your old life, no matter how toxic and negative, also became your comfort zone. Once you release that comfort zone you will set yourself free. Learn to be comfortable in the quiet. Learn that life doesn’t have to be all about drama. You will be tested to see if you want to go back to it. People who are in your life and not on the same journey will show up to test you. Detach in love. Stand strong in your power and remember this is your life. You will be tested to see if you choose healing. This journey is all about self-love, so you will be tested to see if you are choosing you.

The in-between is an important part of this experience because many of us on this journey suffer from black and white thinking. We go to the extremes in our thinking and feel that it must be this way or that way. That is why the in-between makes us feel very uncomfortable. We want it all now. But there is another way. Once you find yourself at a stopping point in your healing practice gratitude, practice patience. Learn to get comfortable in the gray area because most of life happens in the gray area. Life doesn’t have to be only about extreme highs and extreme lows. We lived in trauma and chaos, so that was all we knew. The gray, quiet and peaceful area of life makes us feel very uncomfortable because we aren’t used to that kind of living. Learn to live life one day, one moment, one hour, one minute at a time. Remember when you feel uncomfortable, those are just old tapes playing until you get used to your new normal. Ignore those thoughts and learn to embrace the quiet. You will get to know yourself in the quiet, and you will learn to embrace a non-stressful, chaotic life. Once you move along on your journey the quiet and your peace become something you cherish. I know that I worked very hard to find that place and that is why I protect it with everything I am.

The in-between is the time to journal about your fears and where you want to go. Don’t try to rush the process, because this is the time to relax and meditate about what you want your future to look like. Think about it, envision yourself there. Fake it til you make it is a phrase used a lot because it works. Old tapes will try to keep looping in your head and your job is to turn them off. Your goal is to start playing new tapes for yourself. Even if you aren’t there yet, play those future tapes. Set goals for yourself. Keep your new routines. Look back to see how far you have come on your journey. Be kind to yourself. Be your own best friend and cheer yourself on. My son likes to call them little w’s and big w’s. Big wins and little wins. The nice thing about healing is that every little w counts and gets you further on your journey. Remember this is a journey not a destination, so the in-between is just as important as where you want to be, and those little w’s will add up. You will learn lessons you didn’t even know you needed. The in-between is where you find your strength and confidence in yourself. The in-between is where you find all the knowledge you will need for the next chapter.

You will have many in-betweens on your journey because we are always growing. I started this journey over a decade ago and I am still learning new things about myself every day. Once you meet a goal you will set another one. You will gather up all your information and start to move forward and then find yourself at another crossroads. Every crossroad you will have more knowledge to fall back on than you did before. Each crossroad is easier because you know yourself better and you are treating yourself better. This is the time to rest and regroup and do a check-in with yourself to make sure you are heading in the right direction. Remember everything you have learned so far and congratulate yourself for how much you have grown. Heal – Rest – Grow - Repeat.


In love and light,

Fran