Decluttering and Personal Power

I’m always drawn to explore issues that are shared by a number of people at the same time, and at the
moment I’m noticing that many of us (including myself!) are being challenged by Personal Power in our living spaces, social groups and workplaces.

So, what is “Personal Power”? It’s something I would have known little about (and even dismissed) up until the last couple of years, as it always seemed a bit fluffy and irrelevant.

Personal Power is our ability to say No in a nice way. (Yes, imagine you can do that!) I was first faced with the notion of Personal Power when I began to study Life Coaching and Reiki a number of years back. On hearing that it was actually possible to say No to someone or something you didn’t like or want, my initial thought was “A nice person doesn’t do that!”. This, for many of us, is the default response. Most of us were brought up to say Yes as quickly and frequently as possible to almost anything asked of us, and later suffer the consequences. We certainly weren’t taught to say No nicely in school! The odd time we do say No, we tend not to say it with conviction, and we feel guilty – often to the point of over-compensation – afterwards. When we continually say Yes to what we don’t want or like we can end up feeling insincere, helpless and very frustrated.

Honouring your Personal Power is saying No in an energy of gentleness and strength. It’s calmly assertive. That may seem a contradiction of sorts, and most of us never imagined that we could feel gentle and strong at the same time.

Like many, I’ve had my own battles with Personal Power over the years. Saying Yes on a loop, and feeling automatically drained and sorry for myself. The issue of Personal Power especially rears its head for those who choose the self-employment route where people quickly learn that they have to value their time and expertise to put bread on the table.

When we don’t honour our Personal Power we are not claiming the free will that we are born with. We need to learn to say No, and that can take a while. We become more confident in our phrasing (written or verbal) and we become stronger in our energy as we begin to say No and mean it. We begin to recognise how our need to please others before ourselves is more self-destructive than selfless. We start to understand the importance of being true to ourselves and we make peace with that which we outgrow. Personal Power reverberates through all aspects of our lives – our homes, families, friends, hobbies and careers. We have a right to say No to people, places, experiences and obligations that no longer fulfil us or make us happy.

Decluttering and Personal Power

So, how does Personal Power relate to physical clutter? Well, in decluttering in a healthy and balanced way we are nicely saying No (“Thanks, but no thanks”) to any old beliefs around wastage, money, lifestyle, personal style or possessions that we picked up from those around us and are no longer serving us. We are saying No to the stuff we don’t want or need in our lives. We are saying No to the flatness, heaviness, guilt, overwhelm, regret and indecision of our clutter.

Ask yourself these important questions:

• What percentage of the clothing in your wardrobe fits and flatters you and makes you feel happy and inspired?
• How many rooms in your home make you feel good?
• How many of your contacts do you enjoy spending time with?
• How many hours in the week are you doing what you
  love?

The vast majority of us need to learn about Personal Power first-hand and, although tough to bear at the time, there is great beauty in these lessons because we don’t revert to someone who settles for just anything. The vacuum we create when we say No creates space for freedom, lightness, ease, happiness, joy, simplicity, fun, and anything else we want to say Yes to. 🙂

If you want help claiming your Personal Power you might be interested in my 6-month Declutter Your Life Programme, where my clients are learning to say Yes to all the good things they want and deserve in their lives. Click here for more information.