GO Month: Mental Clutter - N

Let's celebrate Get Organized (GO) Month by ridding ourselves of mental clutter from A to Z!

To celebrate Get Organized (GO) Month I'm doing a series of posts on the mental clutter that can be just as pervasive as physical clutter. For each letter, I'll talk about a mental stumbling block that often impacts our well-being.

Let's focus on N ... Nervousness

Starting a new job, a new role or a new phase of life can bring out the nerves in all of us. Many folks feel nervous at the start of working with a Professional Organizer (or any other helping professional for that matter). People get nervous when they think of starting on an organizing journey or tackling a task they've been putting off. When life feels full of newness it's understandable to have rattled nerves.

Nervousness is common when we start something new. Our brains are hardwired for routines and familiarity. Once we try to mix things up by starting a new behavior or trying to break a bad habit our brains have a hard time processing this unknown and automatically move to stress, tension, and worry mode.

Ways to combat this thinking include:

• Lean into worry and embrace nervousness - use these feelings as a touchstone to ask yourself: What are these emotions trying to tell me? and What do I really want?

• Avoid things that can put your nerves on edge including caffeine, alcohol, sugar, lack of sleep

• On the flip side do more things that decrease nervousness including deep breathing, exercising, spending time in nature

• Use your nerves to fuel action (see the previous post on M for Motivation)

• Pull upon past experiences of being nervous and how you pulled through and remind yourself that you will again

• Orient your mindset around the goal of learning instead of achieving so that you'll feel less intimidated in the process of trying something new - think curiosity over success!

"Being nervous isn't bad. It just means

something important is happening."

Michael Jordan

Here's to freeing ourselves from the mental clutter of nervousness!

Please share with someone who needs a clearer mindset.

featured image by Free-Photos from Pixabay