Sheree 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of The Wild and wild collective. Whilst we love to live wildly, we also love to live well, and a huge part of living well, especially as high performance humans, which we know you guys are, it is so important to declutter. This has been a personal thing for me at the moment, going through clearing things out, and it really hit me how good it felt to let go not just physical things in my environment, but also clearing out the clutter that can quite often consume our minds. So if we start off with the physical stuff, I'm super curious. Krista, what are some of the things that you either still need to maybe let go of in your household, or when you started to dive into really looking after your health and your well being, what were some of the biggest changes that you made to live well? Yeah,
Christa 0:51
decluttering is I would say I tend to be a very nostalgic person, so having kids, or just looking back at my own past of things, it's hard for me to let go of things being the same size since I was 12 years old, almost, wow. I feel like there's a lot of opportunity in my life to declutter. And moves, for sure, moves can really help you declutter your environment. But on the day to day, I find that my mind prefers smaller chunks. So if I see a project, let's say my closet really needs an overhaul. And when I look at the whole closet space, and quite honestly, when things are cluttered in my bedroom, particularly is a mess, it really does give me inner anxiety, like I feel more discombobulated or just feel behind in life, period.so. What I have found that has been really beneficial for me is I have said, Okay, this particular room needs to have an overhaul. But when I look at it, it feels overwhelming. And so instead of saying I'm going to spend two hours in this room on XYZ day, I say I'm going to spend 10 minutes a day for as long as it takes. And sometimes, if it's the weekend, let's say I'll I'll say I'm going to do 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon. But I give my brain little bite sized chunks, and even if I'm in the zone, I still stop at 10 minutes. So I'll have a podcast running, or my favorite music running, or an audible book going for this 10 minutes. So it tells my brain I'm excited to go back to that, because I remember I was listening to something I enjoyed, and I also know, and unconsciously, my brain knows we're only going to be in there for 10 minutes. We can do this, and an hour goes by after, let's say, six days of going in there for 10 minutes, and it's done within the week. And whereas had I told myself, this has to be done, and you have to set aside an hour a week later, I'd still be looking at the mess. So I have found that to be really helpful to take bigger projects and literally stick to a bite sized amount of time.
Sheree 2:50
I love that, and it's it removes some of the overwhelm, because I know when I've done big clearance before, you pull everything out of the closet, and then you're like, halfway through, oh my gosh, and then you put it all back in, because you're like, I can't deal with this right now. I've reached my capacity for letting things go, or I've reached my capacity for cleaning, or I've actually got to go and do something else now. So I love that you break it down. I think for me, it's been as I'm very much the same, very nostalgic. My goodness, was clearing some stuff out of my mom's place the other day, and the amount of sentimental boxes I had, and I was going through them, and I was like, Why are you keeping all of this stuff? And so it's quite funny. I have a little laughter myself, but I keep, I do keep the really important things with the things I feel like are really important. But one thing that's really helped me is, again, like we've talked about, your environment needs to be clear, for your mind to be clear. And if that includes a office or a workspace, your desk, your bedroom, actually feeling like a bedroom, not just a big dumping ground, even your lounge, your kitchen, everything like that really helps us feel a lot more grounded. But when you're letting things go, and if you're someone that struggles to let things go, you've kept things over years and years, I think it was Marie Kondo that said that. I said her name, right? And she goes like, you just say thank you and goodbye or something along those lines. And I that's really helped me to be like I'm acknowledging even though it's a object or a piece of paper or something that I don't need, but I'm acknowledging that was part of my life. I'm thankful for that part of my life, and I'm letting you go now, and I do my absolute best, like I gifted a whole lot of books, soft toys, went to a children's hospital. Yes, I have a whole lot of soft clothes. I'm either donating to a clothing bin and actually put a whole wardrobe together in the spare room in my house. And I've had friends come by and just I might take what you want, because as much as I have the room to store it, it's I feel so much lighter, and I think we don't realize how much we can be carrying around with us, even just when every time you walk into your wardrobe or you open the wardrobe doors, or you walk into a room that's really cluttering, how much that actually impacts your body and your physical state of being. Because it can be, it can feel overwhelming, or there's just always more to do.
Christa 4:58
It is really interesting when. You do a process like what I explained of like little bite sized progress, how it can affect other areas of your life, and how you feel so much more free and so much more confident in your ability to complete tasks. So I do find that I don't want to say mind games with yourself, but somewhat kind of playing the game of the mind, like we're not going to have this be overwhelming, but we're committed to progress, and progress doesn't have to happen all at one time, and it really does affect everything about how you feel moving forward with other areas. And that being said, our internal environment. A lot of times it really creates our external environment. So let's chat a little bit about our inner clutter in our minds. Because I know sometimes for me, when there's a lot of tasks to be done, and for me personally, that includes being a mom, being a wife, being a daughter, being a sister, being a business owner, being a friend, like, there's just, you know, taking care of my physical health and those commitments I've made, like there's just a lot of tabs, as we want to call them, a lot of tabs open in our brain. And much like when we open the computer, it can feel overwhelming to see 20 tabs at the top of our computer, but we do that day to day in our own minds, and it can be really, overwhelming. Share with me. I'm really curious. I know you had mentioned off camera a an app that you use. I'm really curious what you use to help you compartmentalize different areas of your life and your ways of thinking.
Sheree 6:31
Yeah, so some of the key things like I do, one of them is, and this was recommended by a mentor of mine, because I was one of those crazy humans that and I think a lot of us are, when you've got so many different projects going, especially as an entrepreneur, someone that you know might be in a high, high demand, high performance position, you quite often have a lot of different tasks that you have to complete and lot of different projects that you're running. And so what I do is there's this app called Toby that you can download onto your browser. So instead of having a million tabs open at once, you can start to categorize them. And I have my key five tabs that are always open, which I know sounds like a lot, but I have two inboxes that I need to manage. I have my little world calculator thing. I have my calendar, and I have my Asana, which is my project management tool open. So those are always open when I open my computer, and it just helps me give a rundown of what my day is, if I need to schedule that sort of thing, and everything else will go into its separate little file in Toby. And it's really cool, because you can just group the tabs, and all you have to do is drag and drop them into the little areas, and then if you want to open all of the tabs at once, fantastic, but it's so much easier than having, you know, like your bookmarks or your bookmark folder, or things for like filed. It's actually all I'm quite a visual person, so if I can see and I've just got personal I've got things that are important for this quarter. I've got resources for certain things, the AI that I'm starting to look into and develop, like you work with a lot more, has its own little tab, and so it's mentally organized so much better. So when I show up for work and I'm like, oh, where is that? Instead of having to go into a whole bunch of folders, I can very quickly, very easily, open tabs. And I find that really helpful. And then, like I said, I use that project management tool Asana, which is something I'm getting better at, but I think a lot of the time, because we can be so again, outward expenditure of our energy. A lot of people, we've jumped straight to their inbox, and that's the first thing they'll do. And your inbox is someone else's priority. It's not your priority. And so if you can go to a task management or project management tool to start your day, have a look at your calendar and what's really important, pick your needle movers and then have time blocked out, some of those times to go and look at your emails versus waking up and being in a reactive state, or going to your inbox and being in a reactive state, I also find that really helps me declutter the mind.
Christa 8:54
Yeah, and I use something more old school called a pen and paper, and I've labeled them buckets in my mind, because I feel like, okay, this bucket doesn't belong with this bucket, but they can all get meshed up. And so I have found that when I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed in my mind, just creating lines on a piece of paper and labeling 123, like these columns, let's say five columns. Each one is its own bucket. And so then I can prioritize each bucket. What is priority right now, in this one, this one and this one. And then if I can just knock out, much like how I have to piecemeal my closet, if I can piecemeal what's most important in each one of those buckets that day, then I can kind of wind down my day feeling really accomplished, and my mind just feels like I'm organized, right? Because rather than all of the thoughts meshing all together, it's very systematic, and I can visually see it, much like what you're doing on the app. Sometimes for me, also writing it down with a pen and paper can really help me move through some of that in a more tangible way. That feels good. So. So yeah, taps, buckets, whatever works. But I think it really is important to address the categories that are scrambled up in your brain, piecemealing them out and looking at them really can help you categorize priorities. And I think there's
Sheree 10:14
like the logical element, which you've just touched on, and then there's the mental and emotional and somewhat spiritual element where we need to be able to declutter our thoughts and doing some of the inner work, which we have touched on in a number of episodes in a variety of different ways, can really help you declutter your state and how you show up every day. Because if you're waking up in a state of feeling reactive, or your thoughts are negative, or you're feeling overwhelmed and you're feeling a lot of stress, or you're actually living in a state where you're not super self aware, it becomes a lot harder to segment things. Feel like you're in control of your life and how things are going. Feel empowered in your decisions, because you are running around, reacting to whatever gets thrown at you. And if we take this a layer deeper, there's also that element of working through and maybe it's not trauma, because we suggest you go and speak to a therapist if that's something that's coming up for you. But just being aware of the the stories that you're telling yourself that are taking up space in your mind that may be worthwhile, like this isn't serving me anymore. It's time I let this go and working through some processes that really help with that, like doing a little bit of a mental clean out, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Christa 11:33
I think a lot of times we could probably pinpoint some thoughts on replay, whether that's fear, whether that's anxiety, whether that's anger. Oftentimes, I think we probably can recognize, man, I really go there, and it's just cluttering the mind, and it's cluttering how you experience and perceive life on the day to day. I think that, combined with really assessing and decluttering who you choose to spend your time with, I think that that can be hard, but it can also be really cathartic to let go, maybe of relationships that even if they're not bad, but they're just not taking you anywhere. They're cluttering up your time. They're taking up time that you'd rather be somewhere else, and so really filling into what relationships are for you right now in this what activities to participate in, decluttering your schedule in terms of where, who you want to spend your time with, and what you want to be doing with your time, those can be difficult, especially for an outgoing person like you and I, where you almost just the people pleaser comes out and you're like, I don't want to say no to this event, but Really decluttering your schedule in a way that you're only spending time with people that you really feel aligned with, that you really feel like this is a positive use of this life space in my time can be helpful too, to just take that whole overall picture of feeling overwhelmed in your life and kind of categorize it and really be prioritizing time with others as well.
Sheree 13:00
And I think to take that in a slightly different direction, but it really inspired this next thought is look at your social media, because whilst you may be reflecting on the relationships that are physically present in your life, or maybe family relationships and that sort of thing, the people you connect with on a regular basis, and then look at the people that you're following. Look at the things that you're feeding your mind. We have an info where information overload. And one of the things that I read, and it's probably gone up since I read this, because it was a couple years ago, but the amount of information was subjected to day to day. Used to be before social media existed, the equivalent of one gigabyte. So if you imagine a standard truck, like one that's moving furniture and stuff, like your standard truck, it used one gigabyte. Is that entire truck stacked with paper top to bottom all the way through, that's one gigabyte of data that you were subjected to prior to social media now social media come along like we're talking 10 years later, 42 so 42 trucks you are exposed to every single day, and because so much of it is aimlessly scrolling, Doom scrolling, very easy, subconscious mind numbing. Be selective on who you're letting into your world, who you're letting into your mind. Because, and I do this at least once a year. It's normally at the end of the year, I try and do it more frequently. But if you see someone that it's not necessarily triggering in, like, the whole triggered word type thing, but triggering you in the sense like, oh, that doesn't make me feel good about myself. Or now I'm sitting sitting in comparison mode. Or Now I'm feeling really low, or I feel a bit yucky inside after looking at some of their posts. It may be worth if you're not sure if you want to unfollow them or something, you can put them on mute, especially if it's a family or friend member, but if it's someone else, hit the unfollow button. Declutter your socials so that the. People that are on your feed are uplifting, you are motivating, you are inspiring, you they're encouraging you to be a better version of yourself. And that's really going to help declutter some of those negative thoughts from a mindset perspective, because if you're waking up every morning, the first thing you do is check your phone, which, again, we advise against, but that's a whole another conversation, and all you're doing is filling your brain with these people that aren't actually making you feel better about yourself. How do you think that's going to affect the rest of your day? How do you think that's going to affect your week? How's that going to affect your relationships and how you show up and work? And I think it's really important that with that amount of information we're subjected to, that it's something that's fulfilling you and supporting you and not doing the opposite. Absolutely,
Christa 15:42
decluttering the intake as well, cluttering the exposure to things. I saw something today on social I don't know, I can't quote them, because I don't know who it was, but, and this is just a little piece of it, but to an ant, we are giant, and to like a giant tree in California, we are minuscule, and they can, you know, teeny, tiny, right? It's all about perspective, and it's just interesting how comparison and how external validation can really clutter our mind with a lot of thoughts that can really bring us down. And so picking and choosing wisely who you're taking your source from and who you're observing on social media. Yeah, I agree. Decluttering social media can be huge for your day to day mentality,
Sheree 16:27
absolutely. So I hope you guys found that interesting and unhelpful and insightful, because if our mind is too busy, if our environment is too busy, we are going to keep feeling that overwhelm, and if we're continuing to feel the overwhelm, we're not going to be living our best lives. We're not going to be able to be at our healthiest self because we're constantly going to be feeling on edge, or maybe we're going to be feeling our mood and our mental state brought down. And so we're here to help you live wildly well
Christa 16:50
on all counts until next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
