Principles of Clutter Clearing 3: Observe Your Work Style

I wish I could say that there is one perfect formula for how to organize, and if you just implement it, your life will be all better. 

But my experience is that each life is different. Each job must be tailored to the specific strengths and limitations of each person and situation.  So a big part of what we do is to assess how you are already using your space and then adapt and create ways that support you moving towards what you desire.

  

We look at what you are already doing, how you are doing it, what your goals are, and what habits or physical limitations keep you from your desired outcome.

(Frequently used items should be in easy reach. Store rarely used items on the top shelves, have a sturdy step-stool handy, or in some cases, do not use the top shelves at all.)

While there are general principles that guide how we help you organize, each one must be flexible. Each one has to respond to the client and the space.  Each one guides the decisions we make taking into account all the other principles, the client's work style, and the space we are working in.

(Tall people have their own challenges with standard-height counters.)

One client, let's call her "Emily," has a very visually motivated work style.  She responds to what she sees needs doing, and doesn't tend to get to things that are out of sight.  As an example, for Emily, seeing a broken toaster would bump her into ordering a new toaster, whereas seeing, "order a new toaster" on a list might leave Emily feeling stuck. Emily had written plenty of lists in her life but wasn't getting things done. So we adapted to her actual work style.

In Emily's case, how she worked clashed with the Feng shui principle of having everything tucked away and serene at the end of the workday. She discovered that if she stacks visual cues in her workspace, she plows through her to-do "lists" in a much speedier fashion.  Now she sets up her workspace each night with visual cues for the next morning, and now has little trouble getting started or getting through. She ignores the rule saying everything should be tidied at the end of the day in order to honor her need for visual cues.

So don't get bogged down in  organizational "rules." Be sure to adapt them according to how you actually work!  The "rules" are there to support you in getting where you want to go. They are not there to be one more thing you have to implement perfectly. "Perfectly" means adapting the concepts to work for you, based on how you already work.  It's magical.

Principles of Clutter Clearing 1

Principles of Clutter-Clearing 2

"Great Expectations" - sermon from Sunday, March 30th

Great Expectations

Rev Alison Longstaff, March 30, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Habakkuk 2: 18-20; Luke 7: 24-35; HS 3857:6-7 Portions

Happiness is equal to reality divided by expectations. - Jodi Picoult from the novel, 19 Minutes

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. - Michael J. Fox

Did you know that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan”?  Well, actually, there is a yogic principle called “Ahimsa” and it means non-violence” or “do no harm.”  This is a broad principle with many applications.  But, because people are people, in our North American yoga culture “Ahimsa” has become narrowed down in meaning until it has become the expectation “be vegan.”  My favorite yoga teacher in Waterloo, Ontario—a top-notch instructor and excellent human being—gets judged regularly by other yoga practitioners when they discover she’s not vegan.  She’s not even a vegetarian, shockingly enough, though she dabbles in both from time to time.  This teacher lives and breathes and works diligently at non-harming in all aspects of her life, especially in her relationships and business practices; yet some yogis judge her for not living according to their rules, which is that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan.”

Brilliant author, life coach, and writer for O Magazine, Martha Beck, experienced a similar collision with other people’s expectations.  In her book, Expecting Adam, she describes her experience when she discovered that she was carrying a Down’s syndrome child.  She was working on a degree at Harvard at the time and suddenly found herself a political pawn, caught between warring expectations.  Many of her fellow academics and professors assumed she would abort, reacting with horror and judgment when they discovered that she was going to go ahead and “bring an idiot child” into the world.  One doctor even went on a campaign to convince her that she was doing herself, the world, and her unborn child a heinous disservice by not aborting immediately.

Conversely, once word got out that Martha was not going to abort, she was besieged by folks who wanted to make her the poster child for the pro-life movement.  They rushed up with all sorts of expectations about what she believed and what she would be willing to do for their cause, and they got very angry with her when she wanted just to be left alone with her decision.  She did not want to be telling anyone else what they should or shouldn't do in a similar situation.  On top of having to deal with her own grief and loss in discovering her baby’s special needs, she found herself battling insults and arguments from both sides of an ideological war by people who were trying to force her to behave according to their expectations.

In the gospel stories we see the clash between what Jesus was expected to be and do for his people, and what His actual mission was.  The Jews of the day had long been expecting a Messiah—a Messiah that would free them from Roman dominion, restore their Temple to its former glory, and establish an earthly kingdom of unassailable power and might.  The disciples themselves expected to be elevated to positions of power alongside Jesus when He became “King.”

But Jesus’ purpose was to teach and model that the important things are not physical power and might but the spiritual realities of love, service, humility, and compassion.  But the incredibly dense disciples kept mishearing Jesus’s actual message, deafened to it by their overriding expectations of what they thought He was supposed to be.   “Yeah, yeah, ‘love,’ okay.  But seriously, can I sit at Your right hand in the Kingdom?  I asked first!”

The thing about expectations is that the more attached we are to what we imagine something should be, the more blinded we will be to what it really is.  The more attached we are to our expectations of anyone or anything, the more likely we are to be disappointed or angry when that person or group or event doesn’t measure up to what we expect.  There is a direct correlation between our expectations in relation to reality and our happiness.

We live in a world full of expectations.  We all have them.  Expectations are not bad things.  We need expectations or we couldn't function.  We expect the floor to support us when we get out of bed.  We expect the air we breathe to be relatively safe and life-sustaining. We expect our hearts to beat and our blood to circulate.    

It is good to become aware of how some of our expectations affect our own and each other’s happiness.  Our default setting is to project our expectations onto others, and we do it all the time.  We can’t help it.  We just do, without even thinking.  We expect others to have the same “script” we do.  Then when someone inevitably doesn't behave or speak or choose the way they are supposed to, we tend to get rather grumpy with them and possibly quite judgmental.

Have you ever gotten annoyed with someone for not doing what you thought they should do?  Conversely, have you experienced someone being mad at you for not doing something they expected you to do, and you had no idea they expected it of you?

How recently have you found yourself thinking something along the lines of, “If that person really loved me, he or she would have known or done ...” Or perhaps something like, “All good church members (or committee members or family members or spouses, etc.) should know that we always … (fill in the blank)”?

And now realize that each one of those thoughts is rich with information about you and what you expected, and not-so-much information about what someone else should have said or done.  It can be uncomfortable work to unearth our expectations and realize that the things we have assumed are not the global, universal rules for everyone that we think they should be. But I promise you: the more you uncover and identify the expectations you place upon yourself and others, the more you will be able to realize how you have contributed to past miscommunications and disappointments in your relationships, and the more you will be able to both avoid, and/or navigate wisely such miscommunications and disappointments in the future.  You will have much more space to choose your responses, and be much more aware of your own expectations and be able to communicate around them rather than just project them onto others and then be disappointed.

 

All of our unacknowledged, hidden expectations have the potential to do harm to the health and well-being of all our relationships.  The spiritual work of getting to know oneself and learn about one’s own expectations pays off big time when it comes to managing personal happiness and having healthy relationships.  It simply pays to become more self-aware, because then we can own and manage our expectations, and reduce the potential harm we might do by speaking and acting from them without thought.

How tragic that Martha Beck had to defend her decision not to abort her baby from warriors on both ends of the abortion divide. 

How ironic that the principle of Ahimsa (or non-harming) is used as a justification for judgment, contempt, and exclusion.

How naive it was for the disciples to expect Jesus to overthrow the Roman government, and make the Jews great again in the land of Canaan.

And yet that is us.  It is what we do, again and again, until we learn better.

We have expectations of ourselves, of those we love, and of God; and unless examined, they can all get in the way of healthy relationships.

When someone is letting you down, know that it is connected to your expectations.  The part you can control and change is what you expected.  Sometimes our expectations are justified; sometimes not.  Regardless, it is reality that we must embrace, not what should have been.

Go easy on yourself and others.  Do no harm.  Assume the best when you can.  Try, try not to get mad at others for not living their lives according to your conscience.  And know that God’s plan is always bigger than we can envision, more wise than we can imagine, and more loving than our wildest dreams.  It is okay if we can’t see the Big Picture yet.  Isn't it cute that we expect we can?

The Readings:

Habakkuk 2: 18-20  “An idol does no good, because a human made it; it is only a statue that teaches lies.  The one who made it expects his own work to help him, but he makes idols that can’t even speak!  ¹⁹ How terrible it will be for the one who says to a wooden statue, ‘Come to life!’  How terrible it will be for the one who says to a silent stone, ‘Get up!’  It cannot tell you what to do.  It is only a statue covered with gold and silver; there is no life in it.
²⁰ The Lord is in his Holy Temple; all the earth should be silent in his presence.”

Luke 7: 24-35

²⁴ When John’s followers left, Jesus began talking to the people about John: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed blown by the wind? ²⁵ What did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, people who have fine clothes and much wealth live in kings’ palaces. ²⁶ But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and I tell you, John is more than a prophet. ²⁷ This was written about him:

‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way for you.’ (Malachi 3:1)

²⁸ I tell you, John is greater than any other person ever born, but even the least important person in the kingdom of God is greater than John.”

²⁹ (When the people, including the tax collectors, heard this, they all agreed that God’s teaching was good, because they had been baptized by John. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and experts on the law refused to accept God’s plan for themselves; they did not let John baptize them.)

³¹ Then Jesus said, “What shall I say about the people of this time? What are they like? ³² They are like children sitting in the marketplace, calling to one another and saying,

‘We played music for you, but you did not dance; we sang a sad song, but you did not cry.’

³³ John the Baptist came and did not eat bread or drink wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon in him.’ ³⁴ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! He eats too much and drinks too much wine, and he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ ³⁵ But wisdom is proved to be right by what it does.”

HS 3857:6-7 (Portions) HuSuch also was mankind was such when the Lord came into the world that we had grown even more concrete-minded, especially those who were members of the Church. This is illustrated by the disciples who were unable to understand things in a metaphorical or abstract manner, even though they were with the Lord constantly and hearing so many teachings about His kingdom. They were unable to have any other concept … of the Messiah than that He would promote their race to a position of power and glory over all the nations of the world. Even after hearing so many things from the Lord about the heavenly kingdom, the disciples were still unable to think anything else than that the heavenly kingdom would be like an earthly kingdom, where God the Father would be supreme, after Him the Son, and then themselves the twelve.

[7] If they had been told that the word 'disciples' was not used to mean themselves but all people who are truly good and are living a conscientious life, or that in the Lord's kingdom there are no thrones and no positions of government and dominion, and that they would not be able to pass judgment on even the smallest aspect of any other person, they would have rejected those teachings, and each would have left the Lord and gone back to his own employment. The Lord spoke in the way He did so that the disciples would receive what He said and gradually be lead to think more spiritually or abstractly. Spiritual or internal truth always lies stored within the Lord’s external words, and in course of time can be laid bare. 

Flesh and Bones: Meditations on Flexibility and Rigidity

Flesh and Bones

As my ankle heals, I am reflecting on the duality in our bodies of stiffness and softness, of stability and movement, of stop and go.

These things live in constant relationship, affecting each other and depending on each other.  These apparent opposites NEED each other in order to do their jobs well.  Firm and flexible, strong and sweet.  Furthermore, a loss or imbalance in one creates a corresponding loss or imbalance in the other.  For example, the loss of stability in my ankle makes me stop being able to move with any flow.  The return of some stability brings back a return to some flow, but my flow is in constant negotiation with the pain and resistance in my ankle.  Stop and go. Go and stop.

And balance is what we want. 

We need both our bones and our flesh.  Bones can seem to get in the way of stuff, but look at any yogi, and tell me bones get in the way!  We need the firm rules, AND we need the creative soaring beyond the "box."  

Okay.  Enough with the metaphors.  Let's get specific.  Let's get concrete.

What are BONES?  Bones are rules.  Bones are guidelines and laws.  Bones are the police and locks and barriers. Bones are STRUCTURE in all its forms.  Crappy structure equals system collapse and nothing can get done.  NO rules means no order, no sequencing, no clarity, no direction.  (That's an extreme, because there are always some rules in some form, like gravity.)  We need "bones" to be stable.  We need them to hold up, to support, to carry, to anchor, and to withstand. That is their purpose and their job.

What is FLESH?  Flesh is intention and desire.  Flesh is CONTENT.  It is the WHY.  (Hmmm.  Not very concrete....)   FLESH is the stuff that happens in the hospital building, as opposed to the building itself.  The ability to provide medical care is the flesh.  This need requires a place and it needs tools to be fulfilled.  The building and equipment are the bones for the flesh of getting the job done.

Abandoned buildings are like skeletons.  They have no life. Maybe that's why we make skeletons a symbol of death.  They are a concrete symbol of something lifeless.  We all have seen the horror of bumping into "stupid rules"---where we completely see the lifelessness of a barrier or law that is obsolete.  We have all seen someone enforcing a rule without understanding its deep "why," and how much harm that can do.

Isn't it funny that a pile of muscles doesn't have that same archetypal resonance with death?   It might evoke something kinda creepy, like "the blob."  But it just isn't energized the same way, eh? Though it is hard to imagine how I could accomplish anything without any bones, we don't use "bare muscles" as a halloween image.  (Sounds more like the Chippendales!)

Anyway, it is the metaphor of the interdependence of our bones and flesh that is interesting me now.  It is the need of the one for the other and the other for the one.  I get mad at my physical inflexibility sometimes, the same way I get mad at the inflexibility of some aspects of life.  But my inflexibility isn't actually due to my bones.  Bones don't bend, sure.  But it is my soft tissue that is overly tight, or weak, that gives me the inability to move every-which way.  Yoga has been showing me that.  It is my tissues and ligaments that can learn and be trained to be more expansive, less tender, more strong AND more free.

Just some thoughts.
Alison