Mental Housecleaning

How much unnecessary junk is accumulating in your attic? No, we’re not talking about the one you may have in your house. We’re talking about your mental attic.

Since we are in the middle of what many of us, in the northern hemisphere, call “spring cleaning” time, we have started to sort out and discard possessions we no longer use and give them to charity or sell them at a garage sale. But have you ever thought about how valuable it could be if you took the time to perform the same kind of housecleaning for your mind?

Removing the superfluous, the unnecessary, the destructive, or the outlived from our mental attics is a vital part of making room for new possibilities. Every day we are learning more about the world around us, and that cannot help but teach us more about ourselves – if we listen.

We can’t possibly stay the same if we are living creatures. Each surprise, each unpredictable turn, each new venture, produces the potential for new insights, new responses, and new resilience. A willingness to change is a prerequisite for openness to life. And without that willingness, we become stuck in our need for stability and certainty. Eventually, if we stay stuck long enough, we stagnate. We exist, but we don’t really live – individually, as a group, or an organization.

Is there any junk in your mental attic that you would be better off without – a grudge, a hurt, maybe an outgrown assumption? Perhaps it’s an old job, or an outworn “must” or “should,” or maybe even an old anger that has outlived its welcome. Why not clean it out? There is no time like the present.