Yesterday our landscapers were here. I could tell that I was driving them crazy (I’m really good at picking up on super subtle cues – seriously, even if you try, you can’t hide the truth from me…I probably should’ve been a detective or something).
Anyway, we were walking the yard and talking about changes to make – fall is here, now is the time.
Top of the list – remove all the pricker bushes – WHY are there so many flipping pricker bushes???
Next up – remove the bird feeder – raccoon turf wars have happened on that thing AND I feel confident they could easily break in while we’re all sleeping (yep, this happened to my parents – a raccoon broke in and ate brownies in the middle of the night – terrifying and true!).
Lastly, anything dead or on its last leg has got to go.
“But what do you want to put here?” He kept asking and would then go into a list of recommendations.
“I don’t know – I can’t see what I want until all this other stuff is gone,” I kept replying.
Sure, it probably would’ve been easier to do it all at once but my vision for what I wanted was blocked. I knew I wanted something different. I knew what needed to go, but I wasn’t able to see my next steps until that happened.
It’s so interesting to me because I am always talking first with people about, “what do you want???”
And I still think that’s a really great place to start because you have to know you want something different than what you are already experiencing. And you have to have some sense of what that looks like, how your life will be impacted and what’s important about it.
But you just might not be able to fill in all the details until you’re starting with a blank slate. And maybe that’s a good thing because it’s easy to get caught up on the details.
Then the details become a distraction. Or we get so fixated on the details that we don’t leave room for anything else, not even something better.
So know that you want something different. Know how your life will be impacted once you have that something different (what will you be, do or have).
Then get all the stuff that is in your way out of your way. Prioritize that.
Clear your space, start with a blank slate. Then decide what you want, what you need and what you love.
Go from there. One step at a time.
