Jan. 25, 2021: Releasing to Make Room for Change

image courtesy of Alexas_Fotos via pixabay.com

This is something we talk about seasonally, or at the year-end. But it can be ongoing.

As I go through boxes of whatevers in preparation for moving, I reconnect with my past. I am so grateful for so many things.

I am not someone who lives by “if you haven’t used it in a year, throw it out.” I would not have made it through lean financial times OR the pandemic that way. I keep things. Not only do I keep things, I end up USING them – sometimes years after I’ve accumulated them.

“You can always replace it” is a fallacy. Companies intentionally stop making products and build products to fail to force purchase of more product. Books go out of print or vanish from the Kindle.

When you find something wonderful, keep it. Use it. Enjoy it.

If and when it no longer serves your life, donate it, or toss it, or otherwise remove it, unless it has positive emotional value or holds an important POSITIVE memory.

But do it because it serves YOUR life, not because someone else claims to know so much more about how you “should” live your life or what you should and shouldn’t keep. It’s YOUR life.

As I sort through things, I release what I no longer want and need, I give thanks for the time that they were in my life and worked in my life. And I wish them well on their next adventure.

Releasing what is no longer needed is liberating – as long as I am the one making the decisions!

Releasing objects also makes me think about the patterns to which they are attached – patterns that I can release because they no longer fit into the way I am re-structuring my life.

Recovering from last year, both mentally and physically, will be difficult. We can’t go back to the way it was. There’s been too much loss, too much grief, too much cruelty. But we can build something out of the ashes that works better.

That may mean releasing some people from our lives, as well as objects. I’m doing that, too.

Part of that is making room in your life for the “better” both in a physical and an emotional sense. We don’t need to know what it is yet, or have all the answers. The fact that we are taking small, regular actions – MINDFUL actions – matters.

What are you releasing?