This week, I'm excited to start my own 4th quarter alignments. It's the time that I take personally to figure out what direction I'm headed to in my life. It's when I spend time decluttering several areas in my life...a little at a time. I usually start with something simple like my contact list. Then I take on bigger tasks like dresser drawers, bathroom cabinets, email contacts, my kitchen pantry and so on and so on. This all culminates with a very therapeutic decluttering of my closet (insert masterful music here). I do this because it helps me take inventory about where I am, what I'm holding on to that I probably need to let go of, and what attachments exist in my life that are keeping me from reaching the next phase or potential.
We tend to not realize how many things we pick up or collect over the course of a year, and how many of those things become a part of us, often times doing us a huge disservice. Okay, so to be fair, not everything that you have in excess was a bad thing in the beginning. Shoes used to be one of my obsessions. I had almost 200 pair of shoes/sneakers/sandals. Why??? No shade if shoes are your thing, but depending on your lifestyle, you probably won't wear each pair of shoes more than once or twice. If that works for you, cool. But if you have a real shoe obsession, you are not just buying cheaply made shoes. So for the amount of money and effort to build your collection...at some point you want to wear them, more than once. But that could just be me.
So here is where my 4th quarter review kicks in. Your shoe obsession, on it's own might not be a problem. But if you're spending or budgeting is compromised so you can have the latest shoes and your finances are in jeopardy...it might be a good opportunity for you to figure out what your spending is, and if you can curb it.
The goal is to free yourself of those things that are holding you back from setting and ultimately reaching your goals in the next season. If you've got attachments or..."entanglements" that prevent you from moving forward freely, this could be a great time to start cutting back and letting go.
Eliminating those wasteful relationships and connections might be the difference between living a cluttered uncomfortable existence or enjoying a designed life where you can see the goals set before you and what it will take to get there. Check out the short video below.
And as always, these are absolutely my thoughts...
~ratedpg