Posts Tagged ‘clutter’

Just this morning I was talking with my friend Karen Scates about how hard it is to get rid of the “stuff” that accumulates over the years. She’s been trying to clean out her closets but keeps finding mementoes she can’t part with. I’m in “deaccessioning” mode, wanting to simplify my life by having fewer possessions. Like yesterday, I was so glad that my husband got rid of our safety deposit box at the bank along with its few remaining contents. Two less things for my kids to deal with when we kick off, I’m thinking. This reminded me I’d asked my friend, author and executive coach Gail Blanke, to allow me to cross post her recent HuffPo article. It’s from her new book Throw Out Fifty Things – Clear the Cutter, Find Your Life; www.throwoutfiftythings.com, because I want to share it with everyone. Check it out! (Thanks, Gail!)

Okay, we’re living in really tough times. Jobless rates are soaring, home values are plummeting, 401K’s are dwindling and bad people are running off with good people’s money. And nothing is the way it was – or likely to be again.

Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know who we are, or rather who we could become. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know what we’re made of, what we stand for, how good we are. And sometimes it takes a crisis for us to let go of the past – so we can grab hold of the future.

Darwin was right. It’s not the strongest of the species that survives – or even the smartest. It’s the one that can adapt to change – whether you’re a country, a company, an institution – or an individual. And if we want to survive, never mind thrive, if we want to rescue ourselves from almost certain extinction, we’ve got to let go of anything and everything that would suck us back into the slime.