Thursday, June 28, 2012

10 Ways to Remove Clutter from Your Life

Our lives tend to accumulate clutter in every corner: on our desks, in our drawers, on our shelves at home, in our closets, on our computer -- you name it, and clutter finds a way to fill every available space.

But having a simple, uncluttered life is possible, with some very simple methods.

Devote a little of your time to tossing clutter from your life, and keeping things relatively clutter-free, and you'll be rewarded with much more pleasing living spaces, with a less stressful life, and with better organization and productivity. Clutter weighs us down, distracts us, brings chaos into our lives.

Let's look at some ways to kick it out ... for good.

1. Your desk. If your desk is covered in paper and other clutter, clear it off to create a pleasing work environment. The steps here are the basic decluttering steps we'll follow for many of the other steps below:

* Clear everything off. Take everything off your desk and put it in a pile on the floor. Clear out the drawers too, if you have time. The only things that should be on your desk now are the computer, phone and other similar equipment.

* Clean. Wipe down your desk, and clean your drawers if you're decluttering them too. It's good to start with clean surfaces.

* Sort. OK, here's the meat of the process: sort through your stuff, one pile at a time. Toss out or route as much as possible, so that what you're left with is a relatively small amount of stuff. If you won't be using it again in the near future, or if you can access it on the computer, toss it out.

* Designate homes. Now you get to place everything back in your desk. Set up a simple alphabetical filing system, with one folder for each project or client. Have drawers for your office supplies and other stuff. With less stuff to organize, it shouldn't be too hard. Be sure to have a place designated for everything, and keep things in those places. Sometimes it helps to label, so you don't forget.

* Leave flat surfaces clear. Don't put stuff on top of your desk. Have an inbox for all incoming papers, and then sort them each day and either toss, delegate, do them immediately, or file all documents, so nothing remains on top of your desk. The only thing that should be on your desk is your computer, phone, inbox, perhaps a family photo, and the documents you're working on right now.

2. Files. If you decluttered your files in the above step, you can skip this, although you should declutter not only your work files but your home files as well. Keep a simple alphabetical system, and try to fit everything in one drawer. It's good to take out all your files, and purge what you don't need. Many times that can be half of your files or more. Get rid of as much as possible -- most times, we keep copies of stuff we'll never need again. When you're done purging, you should have a minimum of files, and it shouldn't be hard to keep organized.

3. Information. In today's digital world, there are tons of ways that information comes into our lives -- and it can be overwhelming. It's information clutter -- we get too much of it. Instead, set certain times of the day when you check email, your RSS feeds, or various forums or other things you read daily. Reduce the number of things you read each day -- purge your RSS feeds of stuff that doesn't give you value, reduce your consumption of news and television, get rid of magazine subscriptions. Keep information to a bare minimum, and only check it at certain times of the day instead of letting it rule your life.

4. Computer. Purge your computer files, getting rid of stuff you don't need. Clear your desktop of icons -- they slow your computer down, create visual clutter, and are an inefficient way to access files, programs or folders. Set up hotkeys with AutoHotKey or similar programs. With online search tools (such as that in Gmail) and programs such as Google Desktop, you don't need to keep your files in a complex array of directories and subdirectories -- just archive, and search later. Purge old, unneeded files at least every month or two.

5. Closets. Use the same method for your closets as you did with your desk: clear everything out, clean it out, sort (and toss or donate as much as possible), and designate homes for what you decided to keep. Keep only what you love and use often. I recommend keeping your closet floor clear -- it makes everything look nicer. If tackling the entire closet is too intimidating, it can be helpful to just tackle one area of your closet a day, until it's done. It's also useful to go through your wardrobe, and donate everything you haven't worn in 6 months -- it greatly simplifies your closet.

6. Rooms. Are the rooms in your house too cluttered? A few rules about simplifying a room: first, start with anything that's stacked on the floors; then work to the flat surfaces (tables, shelves, countertops, the tops of dressers, etc.) and clear them completely if possible; then do the larger stuff like furniture and other things that clutter the room; and finally tackle drawers and cabinets and closets. As much as possible, keep floors clear and all flat surfaces. Sort through everything in piles as in the first step above, tossing and donating as much as possible. Organize everything else in drawers and closets and cabinets, out of sight but still neat and uncluttered. Tackle one room at a time, going for a clean, uncluttered, simple, minimalist look in all cases. It can be helpful to continually edit a room once you're done decluttering -- you can always find little ways to make a room simpler.

7. Drawers. The way to declutter a drawer is the same as outlined above: empty everything out, clean the drawer, sort through the pile of stuff from the drawer (purging as much as possible) and organizing the few things left. Keep like things together -- a drawer for office supplies should only be for office supplies. Avoid having a junk drawer -- everything should have a designated place. Go through one drawer at a time -- don't jump from one drawer to another.

8. Commitments. Aside from physical clutter, our lives are often way too cluttered by the things we need to do -- at work, at home, in our civic or religious lives, with our hobbies, with friends and family, etc. Go through each area of your life, and write down every commitment you have -- from things you've volunteered or agreed to do on a regular basis, to meetings and sports games and other things you do every month or week. It can be overwhelming. Now examine each one, and decide if it truly gives you joy and value in your life, and whether it's worth the time you commit to it. It can be useful to just choose a few of the commitments that your really love doing. Get rid of all the rest. Just call people and tell them your schedule is too busy, and you have to decline. Learn to say no! One by one, eliminate the commitments in your life that don't give you value, and you'll have more time to do the stuff that's really important to you -- stuff for yourself, or your loved ones.

9. Routines. It is extremely useful to examine your daily and weekly routines. Often, we don't have any set routines, and we tackle our chores, regular tasks, and obligations haphazardly. This leads to chaotic days and weeks, and often a drop in productivity. It's better to batch like tasks together -- do all your errands at once, for example, or all your laundry at once instead of throughout the week. Write down all of your weekly and daily obligations, chores, tasks, etc. and plan out a weekly and daily routine. Post it up where you can see it and try to follow it, at least for a week. It could bring some calmness and simplicity to your life that hadn't been there before. Be sure to schedule time for decluttering in your weekly routine!

10. Systems. Once you've purged clutter from your life, it will inevitably start to creep back in. To keep from having a cluttered life again, you need to set up systems that will keep the clutter to a minimum. Examine how you do things, how things come into your life, and see if you can create a simple system for everything: chores, laundry, paperwork, email, RSS feeds, yardwork, errands, work projects, filing. And then write down your systems, step by step, and try to follow them. If your systems are set up right, you will continually purge clutter you don't need. For example, a system for paperwork might look like this:

* All incoming papers go in inbox.

* At the end of each day, inbox is processed.

* Rules for processing: toss, route, file, do, or write on to-do list to do later and put it in "action file".

* Process to empty, leaving no papers in inbox or on desk. Clear desk of any working papers.

James Boehm

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Wealth Mindset and Your Fear to Fail

When you fear failure you set yourself up to being poor. It’s also possible to fear success, you also fear the responsibility that comes along with it.

You will almost certainly sabotage your efforts then say “I told you it could not work”, or blame some external force or others, and if you’re repeating this you’re not creating a wealth mindset.

Your Fear

In an “I am poor” frame of mind, and also you lack confidence, it all gets too hard, so you delay taking action and many giving up altogether. You lose out in terms of timing and opportunity, so it then goes elsewhere finding a more eager participant.

If you have not yet a wealth mindset, then things will take longer, that’s alright, since you can cultivate it with passion, persistent and patience and so when you put effort into it, it is possible to surprise yourself with what you are able achieve.

Fear is what stops people getting the things they want, and achieving whatever it is they desire, when you fear fail­ure, that is what you will have, when you see yourself creating wealth things will change for you.

On Your Way
When you dedicate your efforts to manifesting your desires, you see nothing else and everything changes.

One thing that matters is achiev­ing your goal, which means you assume responsibility, step up and relish in it. Wanting wealth you move quickly so you miss nothing.

You aren’t worried when something does not work, or maybe even fails, because you observe it as a way to reassess, that which you happen to be do­ing, and so you can perfect creating a wealth mindset and get one step closer to achieving your ultimate goal.

You have less emotional attachment, which frees you up to try many things, in spite of any risks there may be.

Now you are creating a wealth mindset, you’re on your way.

James Boehm

Thursday, June 7, 2012

9 Steps to Getting What YOU Want: Creating YOUR Reality

So you now have a goal you want so much you can taste it. You are living day-to-day thinking, breathing, and picturing the goal -- but alas, you have hit a road block. The barrier seems insurmountable. What do you do now?

Here are 9 techniques for facing fears and meeting challenges

1. Research How Others Overcame This Obstacle: This is often a straight forward approach for many people. If you come across an obstacle, see how others overcame it. The odds are, someone has already been in your type of situation and found a way out. Now all you need to do is find out how they overcame the situation and repeat it.

2. List The Blessings In Your Life: Using Gratitude To Overcome Obstacles Gratitude opens the heart and allows a healing to come in. Often simply listing your blessings from the smallest one to the largest one really helps. Include things such as being alive, breathing, being able to use your senses, etc.

3. Try Something Different: If what you have been doing isn't working, try a new approach. Often looking at a problem differently - or approaching it different will solve the issue.

4. Fear Room Technique: This is a synopsis of a technique is from How to Master Change in Your Life : 67 Ways to Handle Life's Toughest Moments by Mary Carroll Moore (page 76).

Imagine a dark, foggy room. You can't see in this room. It is dark, and very difficult to see in. Now imagine a truck with some hoses to suck out the fog and flood lights to brighten up the room. This takes a while, but after a few moments, you can see the room clearly and easily. What do you see? Write down as many details as you can.

What happens to your fears when the veils of illusion are removed and the light is shining on them?

5. Affirmations: There are many techniques on our Affirmations page. Sometimes simply repeating your goal over and over will bring you inside. I have have huge amounts of success using the 15x's a day technique where you write down a goal 15 times each day. Often this type of focusing will show me what I need in order to overcome the obstacle.

6. Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: Simply feel the fear, fill yourself with as much love as you can muster, and do what you need to do anyways. Often this will get you through the process of doing something you are scared of that is recommended by your mentors.
7. Contemplation Technique: Do the exercise where you fill your self up with love and allow insights from spirit fill your consciousness with a solution to your problem.

8. Constant Reminder Technique: Find ways to remind yourself of your goals. Find an affirmation, saying, or song that matches your goal. Repeat them daily -- the more often the better. If you can't find a positive saying that supports your goal, make one up. Keep it simple and easy to repeat. Have it be positive. Play with it. Maybe sing it to a favorite tune. Then sing (or say) it again and again.

9. Simplify Everything: Examine your life in regard to your goals. Does everything in your life support your goals? Do you have beliefs, attitudes, habits or patterns that go against your goal? Get rid of the things in your life that do NOT support your goals. This will make your goals stronger and in line with everything you do.

Other methods of support are also available. Try Gemstone Therapy, Essential Oils, Feng Shui, Flower Essences, Herbs, and/or Massage. I have used all of these tools to overcome limitations.

James Boehm

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Finding Your Heart’s Desire And Realize Your Potential

One of the most wonderful and exciting facts about your life is that you already know a lot of the things you need to know to become the person you want to be. You have your heart’s desire deep inside of you. There’s something that you were put on this earth uniquely to accomplish. There’s something that you, and only you, can do. And when you find your heart’s desire, you’ll have the key to unlocking your potential in every other part of your life. You’ll have the key to happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment and the joy that’s your natural birthright.

You can unlock your inner potential only when you’re doing something that you really love to do. You can fulfill your innermost aspirations only when you’re doing something that interests you, something that holds your attention, something in which you can become completely absorbed.
And this is the key to unlocking the giant within. You must dream big dreams and do what you love to do. You must decide what’s right for you, what will make you happiest, before you decide what’s possible. You must set ideal standards and goals and results as your aim and then determine how to accomplish them.

Take Some Time to Determine Your Ideal Lifestyle

Take some time to determine the kind of person you’d like to be, and the kind of person you’d have to become in order to live the kind of life that you’d like to live. Remember, you can’t accomplish it on the outside until you become it on the inside.

I recently read a beautiful line in a book: In order to achieve things you’ve never achieved before, you must be willing to do things you’ve never done before.

To unlock your inner potential, you must set very clear, challenging and, yet, realistic goals and then make plans to accomplish them. You need to work, step-by-step, every day, in the direction of your dominant aspirations. You need to develop an unshakable level of self-confidence that makes you virtually unstoppable.

Momentum is The Key to Long-Term Success

The momentum theory of success simply says that while it may take 10 units of energy to get you moving in a particular direction, it takes only one unit of energy to keep you moving once you’re in motion. You have the principle of momentum working in your favor.

For example, if you’ve come back from a vacation of a week or two weeks, you’ll notice that it takes you several days to start working at peak efficiency again. This is part of the momentum principle. When you stop, it’s hard to get started again. But once you’re moving forward, it’s easy to continue moving forward.

How do you use the momentum principle in your life? Well, it’s simple. You decide upon one key quality that you need to develop in order to accomplish one key goal that you want to accomplish. Then every single day, you work simultaneously on developing that quality and on taking steps toward the accomplishment of that goal. Once you put the ball into play, you keep the game going, every single day, without stopping.

Let’s say that your goal is to become financially independent. To do this, you have to pay off all of your existing debts and build up a cash reserve of three to six months of living expenses. When you reach that point, your entire personality will change. You’ll be more clearheaded, you’ll be more positive, you’ll be more determined, you’ll be more optimistic, you’ll be a finer and better human being when you absolutely know that you’re not dependent upon anyone for your living expenses. You’ll be able to choose the job you want to do and go to the places you want to go. You won’t have to tolerate any situation that you do not enjoy or that you feel isn’t the best use of your personal potential.

If you simultaneously work on strengthening your self-discipline and using it to achieve the goal of financial independence, you’ll become a better, stronger and more powerful human being. You’ll cast off the bonds of helplessness and begin to feel that there’s nothing in the world that you can’t do or be or have.

When you set clear goals or objectives for yourself, when you dream big dreams and then determine to become the kind of person who’s capable of achieving the kind of goals that you want to achieve, you convince yourself, at a deep, subconscious level, that you’re absolutely unstoppable. You realize at last that nothing in the world can hold you back except your own thinking, and you don’t even let your own thinking limit your potential.

If you learn to be powerful and develop self-confidence by working progressively, every day, toward becoming the kind of person you want to be, and toward living the kind of life you want to live, you’ll unlock the giant within you, and it will never go back inside.

Believing in Yourself

In her wonderful book You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay says that each one of us has feelings of inferiority that are manifested in the conclusion that we are not good enough. We think that we are not as good as other people, and we feel that we are not good enough to acquire and enjoy the things that we want in life. Very often, we feel that we don’t deserve good things. Even if we do work hard and achieve some worthwhile objectives, we believe that we are not really entitled to our successes, and we often engage in behaviors that sabotage our successes.

The fact is that you deserve every good thing that you are capable of acquiring as the result of the application of your talents. The only real limitation on what you can be and have is your absence of desire. If you want something badly enough, nothing in the world can stop you from getting it, if you are willing to persist long enough and hard enough. Over and over, we find that our beliefs, more than anything else, act as the brakes on our capacities. We have high hopes and dreams and aspirations, but we let doubts creep in and undermine our competence and effectiveness.

You need to develop your beliefs about yourself to the point where they serve you every day in every way. Men and women who accomplish extraordinary things are just ordinary people who developed themselves mentally to the point where they were able to overcome the obstacles that stood in their way, and they kept on keeping on until the goal was attained.

Psychologist William James of Harvard University said that beliefs create the actual fact. The reason for this is because we always act in a manner consistent with our innermost beliefs and convictions. If you believe yourself capable of accomplishing good things, you will walk and talk and act like it. Your behaviors will actually make your beliefs a reality.

The most harmful beliefs that you can have are what we call self-limiting beliefs. These are beliefs about yourself, most of which are not true; but they hold you back nonetheless.

Sometimes you, or others, will say that you cannot achieve certain goals because you did not get enough education. Sometimes you will say that it is because of your gender or race or age or the state of the economy.

Many people blame their parents or their bosses or their families or their current relationships for their failure to make progress in life. Others say that there is no opportunity in their particular area or their particular field. Some complain because they have no money. Others complain because they received poor grades in school or did not go to, or finish, college. Still others say that they have never had a natural talent or ability for a particular field.

The humorist Josh Billings once said, It ain’t what a man knows what hurts him. It’s what a man knows what ain’t true. It isn’t the actual truth about yourself and your abilities that hurts you; it’s the things that you consider to be true and that have no basis in truth.

The starting point to change your beliefs is to get up the courage to question them seriously. Question your basic premises. Check your assumptions. Ask yourself, What assumptions am I making about myself or my situation that might not be true?

It’s a fact that we fall in love with our excuses and our assumptions. We fall in love with our reasons for not moving ahead. Even if someone comes along and challenges those reasons, even if someone tells you that you have the capacity to accomplish marvelous things, you will argue with him. If someone tells you that you can do far better than you’re doing right now, you will come up with reasons to dispute this person’s greater belief in your potential.

The author Richard Bach wrote this beautiful line: Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours. Very often, we become the prosecuting attorney in the case against ourselves. We dispute and argue and attempt to prove to ourselves and others that our limitations are real. And the less justification these ideas or beliefs have, the more adamant we become in attempting to prove them to others.

What Beliefs Might You Have That Are Holding You Back?

Think about them. Remember, most of our self-limiting beliefs have no basis whatsoever in fact. They are based on information and ideas that we have accepted as true, sometimes in early childhood, and to the degree to which we accept them as true, they become true for us.

Your beliefs about reality are based on a thousand influences, many of which began even before you were aware of what was going on. You have beliefs that are deep and beliefs that are shallow. Deep beliefs, with regard to your religion or your political party or your family, or especially yourself, are very hard to change. Shallow beliefs are easily changed. And many of your beliefs are in fact very shallow. They have no substance to them whatsoever. If you challenge them hard enough, you’ll find that they are made of tissue paper. They’ll simply blow away.

You can always tell what your true values and beliefs are by looking at your actions. It isn’t what you say or wish or hope or intend that demonstrates what you really believe. It’s only what you do. It’s only the behaviors that you engage in. It’s only the actions that you choose to undertake. Your values and beliefs are always expressed in your actions and behaviors.

And out of your actions come all of the elements of your life. You are where you are what you are because of what you’ve said and done in the past.

The wonderful thing is this. Each of us is in a state of becoming. Many years ago, a great teacher of mine said that each human being is a becomingness. You are constantly evolving toward the fulfillment of your individual possibilities. You can become anything you want by sitting down at the keyboard of your own mental computer and beginning the process of programming in new beliefs.

To develop beliefs that serve your life better than your current beliefs, decide exactly where you want to end up sometime in the future. Dr. Roberto Assagioli calls this you ideal result. Robert Fritz, in his book The Path of Least Resistance, calls this your future vision. The clearer you are about your ideal result or future vision, the easier it is for you to alter your actions and behaviors in the short term to assure that you get where you want to be in the long term.

Once you’ve clearly decided on the person you would like to become, you are on the path toward developing new beliefs. You then discipline yourself each day to behave exactly as you would if you were already that person.

That simple technique, the act as if technique, is extraordinarily powerful. The more you act like the person you want to be, the more consistent your attitude will be with that person’s. Your attitude will have the back-flow effect of affecting your expectations. Positive expectations will have the back-flow effect of building beliefs that are consistent with them. And your beliefs will exert an influence on your values.

You have no limitations on your potential except for those that you believe you have. Remember this wonderful little poem: If you think you’re beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don’t. If you would like to win, but think you can’t, It’s almost certain you won’t. Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man, But sooner or later the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can.

People succeed not because they have remarkable characteristics or qualities. The most successful people are quite ordinary, just like you and me. Most of us start off poor and confused. We spend many years getting some sort of direction in our lives. But the turning point comes when we begin to believe that we have within us that divine spark that can lead us onward and upward to the accomplishment of anything that we really want in life.

James Boehm