Quote: “If you completely clean out your house and then put things back in, you definitely know what is important to keep and what is not needed. The pain of cleaning the house helps you discover what things give you the most trouble and are not valuable to you anymore. This makes it easy to choose what things to put back into your house and what things to let go. When you get rid of something, you now have an open space. This gives the chance to shop around for things that match your new house and invite them into your world.” – From Life is Binary, Chapter 1, by Vivbala
This morning upon rising I realize what I am now in the process of doing is “cleaning out my house”, which inspired me to write this article. Lately, I have been looking closely at my habits to identity ways that I lose energy or work ineffectively, because I understand my awareness level is directly linked to my energy level. The more energy I can conserve, the more aware I am and easier I can recognize new opportunities that present to me and allow me to merge as one with the totality of life.
Two new opportunities have presented in the last days, and I have accepted to do both of them because I understand that my actions I take today create my future reality. If I keep doing the same thing, I will keep getting the same result. Because I have accepted these new vistas, it means I have to let something go to make room for them. Because these new things give me energy, are exciting and I feel I am more creative and enjoying myself with them, I am more than ready to let go of things, which drain my energy.
In just a few days, I have become more efficient with my daily tasks and have eliminated several minor time wasters that gave little back in return. One such example is watching TV, even watching the news is not interesting. I only listen to the beginning of it to hear the main stories, which takes about 5 minutes. Besides this, I am more closely observing any activity I do, such as preparing a meal or washing dishes and watching how I prepare them and clean up. Yesterday I saw that when I prepared my salad I spread that activity around to 3 work surfaces and then had to clean them all up, now I do it all in one place. Just a small example but it saves about 5 minutes, even it makes the salad preparation more interesting because I am engaged with it.
I identified that the major time waster is my used vinyl record store business, which I have online. I have actually known this for some time, but I have been wavering to let it go. The reasons I have difficulty to let it go is it gives me a feeling of security, it is the first business that I built from the ground up entirely by myself and the habit of it, I know how to do it well. It was an easy business for me to build because I had much experience with recycling materials and reselling them. I only had to learn about records and online retail. However, the reality is I spend much energy on this business and get very little back in return. It is a pittance of an income and it is not work that is inline with what I really want to do, which is healing and writing, in other words being creative.
This business takes space; it requires an entire room that is filled with stacks of records and shipping supplies. There are always piles of records I have acquired which I need to clean, select, sort and prepare for resale. Every time I walk by the piles of records I have not prepared for resale, it nags at me as something I need to get done. As the business grows, the room is increasing packed with materials, which I can feel the weight of this when I walk into it. The energy of this room does not have a good Feng Shui feeling! It is just too much stuff. Because I need this extra room, it means I need to rent an apartment larger than what I would need if I did not have this business. That costs money, which requires me to work more hours to pay my rent. Another aspect is I am tied to the business world, which limits my mobility and freedom to go places. Every day I must check the computer to take orders and prepare packages for sale and get them in the post office box to be sent out. I also must be there to get my mail, as I am often ordering materials. I feel I cannot take a vacation, as there is nobody to take this over if I did. It even limits what I can do on a daily basis.
Looking at it clearly, I see I no longer need it and will let it go. I am confident that once I have made the clear decision to do that, life will present me a way out. The exciting part is I can see that the new open space will allow me to invite into ‘my house’ more creative activities and people into my world, which are in alignment with my true self. The reality is even physical material can keep one in separation from life. I do not know what activities or who these people will be right now, but I know if I create this empty space I am inviting them in. That is what really motivates me to let go the most, because I understand that this is ‘the way’ to manifest my vision. Discarding old ways of being which drain your energy and welcoming the new requires trust that life provides you with exactly what you need. I finally am convinced of that and letting go of the old is so much easier! My vision will never manifest if I keep clinging to things that give me security.
Betsy
June 4, 2014
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