Book Review: Making Peace with the Things in Your Life

With the extreme numbers of organizing books available, this book was on my radar, though cannot be sure where it would have landed if it hadn’t been included as part of the coaching program I took. We weren’t required to read the whole thing, just a section – though once I had the book I was reading it. Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You – and What to Do About It by Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W., A.C.S.W. is quite possibly one of the best books on organizing I’ve read.

This book takes a different approach than many organizing books out there – it’s designed to help you look at the internal stuff that happens around Things in your life. Often when dealing with all the stuff that surrounds us, we target the physical items first and this doesn’t always work well – the stuff keeps returning. Cindy Glovinsky is trained as a psychotherapist and walks the reader through many aspects to explore around the problem with Things. It’s designed to get you ready to use all those other more typical organizing books available.

One of the aspects that I really appreciated was that early on she talks about chaos and order – how “the two interweave in a perpetual, ever-changing dance.” She spends a little time talking about how these are both part of our universe and serve a purpose. Here I go again, my passions – the balance, the self-acceptance, the inevitable changes of life – this is part of life.

You might have noticed that when the word Things appears, it’s always capitalized. This is done throughout the book to draw your attention to it and change your perspective on the stuff around you. Generally I dislike the device of using capitals in such ways, though I found that it did shift my perspective. The word itself is wonderfully vague so it can apply to any of us, with whatever it is that we have. Her language and use of aliens and characters convey her compassion – for others and yourself.

If you want quick and easy answers, this book is not for you. It takes you through the major tasks needed to make lasting change. The book is broken into 4 parts – Part I: assumptions about Things; Part II: systematic inventory of Thing habits and Thing feelings; Part III: possible causes of Thing problems with suggestions for coping with them; Part IV: putting what you’ve learned into action. In the introduction she acknowledges that figuring out what is going on for you with Things is hard work and that it might feel like this is a lot of trouble to go through, yet “[O]nly action informed by insight can lead you out of the circles.”

As with many things – from time management and scheduling to organizing and beyond – there’s a need for the foundation. I look at David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) as foundational work for scheduling and managing time (at least so far in my reading), which means that Franklin Covey might not work for you until you get the basics of GTD. If you struggle with handling your stuff well, Making Peace with Things in Your Life is a great foundation on which to start. Then you might move on to the books dealing with physically handling your stuff and space.

Your Needs and Values

It’s interesting how these words keep coming into my life. A friend shared an article about living a values focused life and in the coaching program I’m in, we’ve talked about values and needs – both for ourselves as well as for our clients. Each student was given slips of paper with words on them and we chose 3-4 words (some say values are 6-10) to identify our values and then again for our needs.

We all know that “needs” are things we can’t live without, yet in some ways it’s more than that. These are also our personal principles and priorities – the things we need to make sure life is working for us. These are the values and desires of what matters most to us and they help to create a meaningful life. As you will see, this is also beyond the basic elements to keep us alive, things that we all need, and is more about personally what our individual needs are – those things that if we didn’t have, there would be a hole.

These are 4 that I’ve identified for my needs: introspection, nature, connection, and self-worth.

What are your needs?

Then we look at our values. These are things that are your personal qualities or passions. What is important as you live each day? What is integral to who you are at your core? This is a reflection of what matters as you live your life and who you really are. These are often things that we cherish both in ourselves as well as others, when someone else shares or expresses the same value.

These are 5 that I’ve identified for my values: accountability (self), honesty, creativity, tolerance, and knowledge.

What are your values?

If your needs are not getting met, it can be a challenge to lead that a life that is fulfilling and meaningful for yourself. These are things that you make sure are part of your life – and the first step to living a life that works for you. Once you identify your needs, you can then integrate them into your life.

Once you are getting your needs met, you then need to focus on your values. Our values are shaped by all of our cumulative life experiences and are our compass for directing our choices.

In general terms, when we try to develop new habits and make changes to our life, it can be challenging. We might know what we need to do to get where we want to go – yet that doesn’t mean it just happens. How do your goals relate to your needs and values? When we set goals and make decisions based on our values, it’s more satisfying to accomplish them.

You are more than your job, your home, your clutter, your procrastination, your health, etcetera. Who are you down at your core? These are the pieces to remember as life happens – your needs and values.

Keeping Your Car Organized

From the time I started driving for quite a while longer my car collected various things. Eventually I would spend some time just getting it emptied out once it got bad enough. Then there came a time that the car would still get a little cluttered, yet it never required hours of work to get it cleaned up. It’s easy for our cars to collect things – we’re in and out of them regularly.

As with so much with getting and staying organized, how we handle our cars depends on how you want to do it. If you are one of the people whose cars collects things and then you eventually set aside some time to deal with – and don’t want to change that – no problem. You choose how you want to handle your space and things.

Then, there some steps you can take to handle it differently. You don’t even need to begin the following steps with a clean car; you can begin these from however your car is right now. We are in and out of our cars often, and there’s things we can do with our efforts to keep our cars organized.

Most of us completely empty the cars of our groceries after shopping. If we use this philosophy with everything else, we can maintain our car. Each time you get out of your car, you take a load to where it needs to go. You can take just one load even, and if you do that regularly, your car will rarely collect much clutter. If you have trash – you grab as much as you can and drop it in the nearest receptacle each time you get out of your car. If you are heading into a store, there are usually trashcans by the front door – use those.

Sometimes getting gas can feel like a chore. This is another great time to spend a little time emptying stuff from the car. There’s usually a trashcan right by the gas pump, and you’d be amazed by how much you can get done just while your car is getting filled up. If you tend to procrastinate getting gas, try to curb that and work at getting gas on your way home since you’re likely to feel less rushed. It might also lessen any resistance you feel toward using that time to clear out the trash. You can also gather the other things that need to go into the house while the gas tank is getting filled – make it easier to grab the things when you head inside.

I’ve used different techniques over the years for trying to keep the car organized. For a while I kept plastic bags in the car for collecting trash and recycling and when those got full would take them out. I discovered that I would procrastinate emptying them though until they were overflowing. I now keep a reusable bag in case I need it, though I’ve not used it yet.

The habit of each time I left the car I would take at least one load to its place has been the easiest for me. My procrastination habits interfere the least with this. It also never feels like a chore… well, almost never. 🙂 In my case, it’s also now minor stuff and not something I have to do each time – just when I have something for the trash or recycling.

For the various things that I want to keep in the car, and it’s gotten less over the years – I tend to look for ways to contain them. Before containers, the stuff would slide all around and look messier than it was. When you’re driving kids around, it can be even more of a challenge. I encourage you to enlist the children to help, they can return things to where they belong and even help carry things into the house.

As with probably everything about organizing – it requires some discipline and developing habits. How do you want things to be? It doesn’t have to require lots of time or energy, though it might in the beginning. Once you’ve established your routines, it can become easy. Decide for yourself how you want your car to look and take steps to get it there and then keep it there.

Define Your Time

Time is this fleeting thing. We all have the same amount as everyone else and nothing we do can make it multiply. There are a multitude of ways to approach handling your time – from those that encourage people to put all tasks into your calendar or to base your tasks on your current availability of context, time, energy, and priority. I’m certainly one that prefers the latter approach since if I fill my calendar with tasks, I will simply avoid doing anything in that slot.

You could even say that I’ve taken that idea of choosing tasks based on context, time, energy, and priority and put my own personal spin on it. I’ve even given it a fun name: “Whim time.” This term might even sound like an oxymoron, how can those two words fit together? Whim is defined as – “a capricious or eccentric and often sudden idea or turn of the mind: fancy.”

For me, “whim time” is when I listen to myself about what I feel like doing – this can be productive or it can be time for rejuvenating. It’s about paying attention to my mood and using that to help determine what I will work on. For instance, there is something about making phone calls – to search out speakers for the support group, or following up on insurance issues, or whatever else – that may mean playing phone tag, which I typically avoid. Yet, there are times that I am happy to tackle that process – and it makes sense to take advantage of that when it strikes. (This also doesn’t mean that I only wait for the mood to work on those tasks.)

There’s something light and easy-going about doing things according to my mood or more correctly called my state of mind. I am not being a taskmaster upon myself yet I can get plenty of things accomplished. When I can use my whim time as I’ve set it up – to make decisions about what I will do with my time and to do those things – I have a great feeling at the end of the day. It feels productive in the best way – being mindful of where I am at – both mentally and physically.

Sometimes, my “whim time” turns into escapism. This is not what I set out for my time. It’s a behavior that the equivalent to burying my head in the sand and ignoring both what’s good for me and what needs to be worked on. When this happens I feel horrible. In this age with all the possible ways we can distract ourselves and escape; it’s easy to slip into this. I wonder if it’s not even more of a temptation with our never-ending to-do lists. Is there ever a time when you are free from more tasks that need your attention?

I’ve talked about being mindful of how you use your time (in the blog, Use Your Time Intentionally) and I’ve talked about finding ways to make your tasks fun (in the blog, Make It Fun). In many ways, my “whim time” is my combination of these two principles (and somehow David Allen’s Getting Things Done). I didn’t set out to create this, but this is what it evolved into over time.

Maybe “Whim Time” is something you can use for yourself. Maybe it’s not. You are welcome to it, if you want yet I would encourage you to find your own way to define your time that makes sense to you and for your life. Experiment with different ways to handle your time, observe what works and what doesn’t (and this isn’t always obvious from one or two tries) and see what develops for yourself. It really doesn’t matter what you come up with, as long as it works for you.

I’d love to hear what works for you and how you got there. 🙂

Cultivate Curiosity

In this line of work, I run into too many people who are busy “should-ing” on themselves – “I should have done more”, “I ought to have time for that”, “I never get enough done” and on and on. And my heart breaks a little. I get it, it does hit close to home for me too, yet this doesn’t help anyone get more accomplished. Most often this can even derail our efforts to improve. We’re too preoccupied feeling badly, angry, frustrated, whatever and this doesn’t move us any closer to our goals. To some extent we become stuck.

“How do I get unstuck then?”

If we can cultivate curiosity about ourselves we can solve many of our struggles. One of the key pieces of this though is that we need to rid ourselves of the judgment that comes along with looking at what we do and why. Has there ever been a time when criticizing yourself has helped you get past a struggle or to solve a problem?

Instead, try to step back and examine what is causing your difficulties. Sometimes this benefits from a compare and contrast – so if it’s a particular chore – what is different about this chore compared to another chore you accomplish with minimal challenge? The answers you come up with could be a long list, as you want to consider as many different factors as possible: time of day, effort, energy, time consuming, complicated/simple, boring/interesting, dreaded/exciting, rewarding, etc.

Even if you cannot compare it to something else, you can examine what that thing brings up for you. What is it about that thing that has you resisting it? When you start to get the clues for where your struggles are, you can then start making changes to how you approach that thing.

In trying to make this applicable to many situations, this is vague. Therefore, let me give you an example. I was often procrastinating mowing the lawn. One of the major factors was the dread of lugging out of and back into the basement. Another factor was feeling like it was extremely time consuming. The first factor has now been dealt with as we have a garage, but until that happened, there wasn’t much I could do about it. The second factor – time – I could discover how much time it actually took up, so I timed it. From lugging it up, mowing the front and back yard, and lugging it back down, it took me 45 minutes. From that point onward I could easily dismiss mowing as an option if I didn’t have that much time and could plan when I would have enough time. I also began to stop procrastinating it as much, yes, I did qualify that, I will sometimes still procrastinate doing it, though it gets less and less as time goes on.

There are other chores I dislike because they seem dull, and I can take my iPad and play a show on it while I work or vacuum during commercials. Obviously I don’t need to watch it intently, it’s a way to make the chores a little more interesting. The point is that I’ve approached my quirks (my resistances) with curiosity, identified what factors contribute to my resistance to accomplishing them, and then found ways to lessen the resistance. Even when I falter and don’t get it done when or how I would like, I work at giving myself a break.

Is there another way to look at the chore (or whatever you are struggling with)? Much of our lives deal with perspectives – the way we decide to look at things. Yes, it is a choice and this means we can change the way we view things. Therefore we can decide to look at that dreaded chore differently. This rarely happens overnight, but if we discover the reasons that matter to us as an individual, we can begin to make the changes.

For me, making the bed was one of these. I didn’t care much if it was made or not and I struggled with wanting it to be near perfect if it were made. This meant I spent time and energy walking back and forth around the bed fixing it. Then I timed myself lying in bed doing a sort ‘snow angel’, slipping out from under the covers, and doing some minor straightening – under 2 minutes. Then I started appreciating the made bed when it was time to go to bed at night. I stopped looking at making the bed as a chore; rather it became something to look forward to – a nicely made bed –at the end of the day.

What is it about this situation that causes you difficulties? Thinking about the answers for yourself can help lead you to the answers you need to make the necessary changes. Don’t get me wrong, you might not find THE answer on the first try. Nevertheless it will lead you toward the solutions you need.

Get curious.

Delaying Gratification

If you were told that you would get 2 marshmallows if you could wait for 15 minutes while 1 marshmallow was sitting in front of you – could you wait? What if you were between 4-6 years old? This was a study, called Stanford Marshmallow experiment, done in the late 1960s (of all the articles and blogs I read, the information varied a lot between all of them). This study has fascinated me from the first time I heard about it (Crucial Conversations- book & my blog), and somehow references to this study keep coming into my life.

The initial results were that about 30% of the children were able to wait the 15 minutes to receive the 2nd marshmallow; they weren’t told to not eat the first marshmallow, they could just with the consequences of not getting a second marshmallow. Yet, of the children who managed to wait, many years later were the ones who scored higher on their SATs and had longer lasting relationships – they had a higher resiliency than their peers who couldn’t stop themselves from eating the marshmallow before the 15 minutes were up.

What made the children who could wait different from those you didn’t? Often the children that resisted eating the marshmallow, found ways to distract themselves from the temptation sitting there – they looked at the ceiling and sang a song, cover their eyes, kicked the table, etc. – essentially not focusing on the marshmallow.

You might be able to glean then why these “long delayers” scored higher on their SATs and in general seemed to be more successful – they had the skills to put off pleasurable activities to accomplish things. They would be able to resist going to a party in order to stay in and study. Many people are talking about how this is self-control – and yes, it is, the self- control to delay gratification.

Every day we face temptations. How we respond to these are what matters – and now I tend to think about marshmallows. I don’t know that I would have managed to wait long enough to eat two of them as a child, yet this doesn’t mean I can’t stretch those self-control “muscles” now.

The scientists are continuing to study the original group and other studies on this also are active. There is some data to suggest that we can learn how to become “long-delayers” – and focus our attention away from the temptation and avoid giving in. I think this requires enough practice to have success – we need the positive reinforcement, even internally, to have the motivation to keep stretching that self-control muscle.

The marshmallow study is motivation for me – the idea pops up periodically and I then pause to consider what self-control might be applied. Sometimes it’s walking away from a tempting purchase for a period of time. Sometimes it’s putting things away before I sit down and relax. Sometimes it’s waiting for time to pass and see if the desire is real – like the temptation to eat. Sometimes it’s exercising when I don’t really feel like doing it – not procrastinating when it would be “easy.” In essence, I try to apply this to most areas of my life.

Can the marshmallow study be motivation for you too? How would you apply it to your own life and choices?

Overwhelmed?

A month ago I was ecstatic, my craft room was going to get a closet system installed. Oh the anticipation! For the week before the date, I kept talking about it, the joy of having a system and the organization I would set up. I was excited, at least until the system actually was installed. Then something happened. I became overwhelmed with feeling daunted by the effort and process of setting the closet system up. It confused me in many ways too.

I love organizing. I don’t do this for a living without a reason; I am passionate about organizing. In fact, if I am feeling a bit down about something, I will tackle an organizing project and immediately start feeling better. Can you begin to see how puzzling it was for me to feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you can, yet you might be asking yourself – “what does this have to do with ME?”

How often have you gotten overwhelmed at the thought of tackling a project? Although I did not take pictures of the piles of my stuff meant for the closet – the boxes filled up 3 ½ rooms here. Since it is my craft room, many of the items are smaller. It was going to be a process to go through it all and get it organized. It’s easy to feel like there is just so much to be done. Where do I start? I don’t have time to delve into this project.

Interestingly, this is exactly how I felt. This is how my clients often talk about feeling with their own stuff. I joke that this is why my profession exists – help in getting started and having some direction during the process. I know all this. I knew what I needed to do. Nevertheless I was still dreading it.

My point – we’re all human. We can each feel overwhelmed and reluctant to jump into a project. It doesn’t even need to be a big project, like my walk-in closet. Papers are a common area that causes significant dread among people. They tend to be tedious and time consuming. I have a lot of scrapbooking paper – possibly the easiest papers to organize and it still took me over 3 hours to organize the 12×12 loose sheets.

Another point – all it takes is jumping in. You don’t need to set aside a huge amount of time to get started. I didn’t organize those loose scrapbook papers first. I did find an “easy” place to start – in this case it was the completed photo and scrapbook albums. I already had at least part of a vision for the closet. Then I grabbed the next box. I won’t say that my feeling of overwhelm went away just because I got started. If only it was that simple. Sometimes it is, not always.

Sometimes it also means stepping back for a break. As I was going through things, I found items I spent money on and knew I would never use. I felt sad and frustrated. Even that feeling got overwhelming at times. When I saw this happening, I would try to finish the immediate stuff and then take a break and do something else entirely. Other times, I just moved the stuff off to the side and stopped anyway. This also provides a way to gain perspective – all this stuff was personal to me – ideas and plans I’d had at some point or another. Yet, I needed to let some of it go. Stepping back can be just as important as jumping in and getting started.

I’ll admit I have been a bit ashamed of feeling overwhelmed by my craft room closet. I mean I am an organizer, how can I of all people be overwhelmed by an organizing project? Yet, it also means I can relate to other people feeling overwhelmed. It also means that I will bite the bullet and jump in. You’re not alone if you too are feeling overwhelmed by an organizing task – just remember you are human like the rest of us and to just get started, somewhere or anywhere.

What Type Are You?

There’s something I really struggle with when writing this weekly blog. Do you have any guesses? It’s not coming up with ideas to write about. It’s not about making time to write and edit it (though I could be better here). It’s not worrying about whether it provides value to you, the reader, though I do want it to be helpful. What it is for me – how to explain one way of doing something while I know that there are variants upon variants of how to approach the exact same struggle.

In the most recent coaching class we worked with processing modalities. I learned about these in Gardner’s Frames of Mind, where he talked about the school system teaching in limited modalities and this neglected the children who learned in non-traditional ways, yet they were equally intelligent. I was fascinated. Similarly, Meyer-Briggs (in Please Understand Me) can help classify how you interact and relate through 16t types, leaving you with 4 letters to describe yourself (the first one being whether you are an introvert or an extrovert).

Although these have interested me, they can be used to limit yourself – at least if you are willing to be boxed in by the results. Really, they are designed to help you see the spectrum that makes you the unique individual that you are.

So, Jennifer, what exactly is your point here?

We need to embrace who we are and find those unique systems that work for you, the individual. It can be challenging for me, in this blog, to provide a specific solution for everyone since we’re all different. This is why when I come to your home, I do not advocate one way of doing something. I love to recommend tools and tricks in order for you to learn what might work for you.

Let me give you an example: I had one client who worked from her bed. There was no health problem to induce this approach – it was simply her preference. Other people would be quite uncomfortable working in their bed. Does it make it wrong for her to work in bed? Certainly not. It works for her and we set things up so that the things she worked on would be nearby – easy to retrieve and put away. I would never go into a client’s a recommend they work in their bed because it worked for this one person. So, what works for you?

In order to figure out systems for yourself, you do need to be aware of your tendencies and preferences. It helps to look at both what encourages and discourages you. This is something to accept in yourself, not judge or try to change. Another client really resisted doing anything unless she could hear the television. Happily, she wasn’t embarrassed about it and we developed some systems so her tasks could be accomplished near the TV. What are the reasons for your resistance? Too hard, too complicated, too time consuming, too _________. What are the reasons for your successes? Easy, simple, fast, rewarding, _________.

My cognitive strength supports me in the near constant problem solving I offer my clients, yet encompasses the clients strengths so they get systems that work for them. Although I will talk about this approach or that approach to something – there is such a plethora of choices on how to tackle any struggle. As the modalities point out, we are all unique and this means we use our strengths to make things work for us and most importantly support us in the life we want to lead.

Using Your Planner

With my recent reviews of 2 different planners (PlannerPad & Taylor Planner), this is a great time for me to talk about time management and our planners. This becomes even more critical with all the digital options available. I’m sure there are people out there who will advocate one specific system. You might realize by now, that would never be me. Nevertheless, there are things to consider for a system that will work for you. Our planners are about our time and how we spend it – both our schedule as well as the tasks we need to accomplish.

Most importantly, use what works. If you already have something that works, don’t try to change to keep up with the crowd or for any other reason. Remember how I say, don’t try to fix it if it isn’t broken – this applies to our planners just as much as any other system we have in place. It also doesn’t matter if it’s some “no name” planner. I’ve worked with several people who’ve found some planner and use it successfully – from various non-traditional stores.

Using this idea of thinking about what works for you – one consideration is about scheduling tasks into your calendar which are not time sensitive. We all have tons of things we want to accomplish, those tasks that aren’t critical or time sensitive. Are you more likely to make progress on this if you put it into your calendar? Or if you put it in the calendar, do you end up ignoring it? We’re all unique and there is no one right answer.

I tested this out for myself, putting general tasks into “open” slots into my calendar. What I discovered was that unless it was time sensitive, I would more often ignore or procrastinate it. I was more likely to work on those same tasks if I left them on my to-do list and simply had a block of time for tasks in my calendar.

Do you know what will help you more? Play with it and find out – become curious to see how you respond.

With all the electronic gadgets available, exploring them if they’re accessible to you can be great. They do provide some benefits; my husband and I share a calendar and I can see when he’s scheduled an activity for us. Are you working with trying to schedule multiple people for meetings regularly? The electronic calendars are often cloud computing so you can access them from multiple devices with internet access – is this important for you? Of course, the size varies according to the device – so is it big enough on a smart phone to be useful?

When my Franklin planner was getting too heavy for my purse, I tried my smart phone for a calendar. I strongly disliked it. I now love the calendar on my iPad – I rely on it, trust it, and it works wonderfully for me. When I recognized this, I got a to-do app for the iPad. I mostly like this. It has all of my tasks contained and I can set priorities, time lines, and categorize the tasks. Then something interesting happened – I was working with paper planners in order to review them and I loved writing the tasks I wanted to accomplish during the week into the to-do areas of those planners.

Using this system provided me with that planning aspect that so many experts talk about – a review of my various tasks and what was most important for the coming week. I think it also helped me because I enjoy the process of writing it down and the color-coding I could do (although I didn’t do much, 2 colors). It also limited me from seeing the huge number of things I have on my general list daily (or more often), making sure I didn’t get overwhelmed each time I had some time to work on one of my to-dos. As I said with both of the planners I reviewed, I appreciated the limited space for to-dos and see too many people thinking they need to do MORE. Anything that can help us limit the amount we try to do is a great thing in my mind.

Do you want a monthly view or is weekly enough? Do you need a daily view? This is something else to consider when choosing a planner system – whether electronic or paper. With electronic you usually can change the view to whatever suits you. For planning to-dos I think monthly is too broad, so you’d likely need something in addition to that. Personally, the daily view is too constricting now and contributes to my losing the bigger picture. What works for you?

Size and weight can often be an issue. Does it need to fit in your purse? I do recommend that if you are using a planner, that it is with you all the time. It will only save you time and energy to be able to make appointments and know you’re available (and not need to reschedule later due to an accidental double booking). It also means you can make appointments on the spot, not after you return home to check your calendar. You can also add tasks immediately and not risk forgetting them.

Consider your personal tastes – do you remember better by handwriting things? Do you try to give yourself too much to do? Does scheduling non-critical tasks into your calendar focus you to actually do them? Do you need to coordinate your schedule with someone else? Remember there is no one right solution. No matter what you choose, it needs to work for you. There are lots of questions here rather than answers – giving you some aspects to think about if you are looking for a new system for the coming year.

Negativity – Nip it in the Bud Now

A few weeks ago, I found myself leaving some client’s homes feeling very frustrated. I realize most of you don’t know me, yet this is not typical. To make matters even more interesting, it wasn’t about the clients. No, really it wasn’t. It was actually about the family members I had been interacting with for a couple of moments here or there. Part of me wanted to absolutely scream at them! Sometimes wishing I could shake them – jostle some compassion into them.

It also had me wanting to grab and squeeze my clients, hoping I could through osmosis make them not believe the negativity. I know how challenging it can be to contradict the negativity of others. Especially when they come from someone you love. My frustration was coming from seeing the insensitivity to my client. How pointless to comment on how “easy” or “simple” this should be – at least according to them, and not considering the client’s struggles or even that they’ve asked for help. That’s why I am there after all (and hearing the comments).

Many people have different ways of approaching the same thing – while the end goal is relatively the same. Often the struggles of getting to that place can be overwhelming. Every person I work with has beautiful strengths, as well as the requisite challenges (this is called being human) and follows his or her own process. They work at different speeds and make progress in different ways.

Can you allow this for yourself? Can you have the strength to be whom you are and where you are at without negativity filling you?

The family members aren’t always the ones being critical. Often it is the client themselves, beating themselves up. Labeling themselves as this or that; at least this I can try to address directly. Negativity rarely serves any of us well. How often does it help you tackle that project? Or think outside the box to come up with a different solution to this struggle?

I truly wish that organizing could be easier – and easy for everyone. Just imagine the way our quality of life would improve! Also, frustration does often seem to come from love and the feeling of helplessness – the inability to help make a difference. In the meantime, stop the negativity – whether from yourself or from listening to it from others. There’s no easy answer to this, yet beginning to be aware of it and contradicting it. Discover your strengths and remind yourself of these.