Clearing out excess stuff is all the rage these days. According to Marie Kondo, best-selling-author-turned-Netflix-star, tidying up goes way beyond creating order in your work and living spaces. It can actually change your mood and your life.
“Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life,” she says. “The inside of a house or apartment after decluttering has much in common with a Shinto Shrine . . . . a place where there are no unnecessary things, and our thoughts become clear.”
And according to research, living in an orderly space boosts mood, reduces anxiety and stress, and improves creativity and concentration.
So if uncluttering your home can make you feel so much better, how about uncluttering your mind? Have you ever wished you had a vacuum cleaner to suck out all the extraneous, nervous, negative thoughts, the constant mind chatter that keeps you from being productive, focused and happy?
While self-help books tell you to control your negative thoughts, that rarely works. In fact, trying not to think a thought is a sure way to make it louder (have you ever tried not to think about your to do list when stuck in traffic before an overscheduled morning?)
Many women practise the Transcendental Meditation technique to transcend, or go beyond, the shallow chatter of the thinking mind and dive into the peace, happiness and silence at its depths. Plus TM is a proven way to release mental and physical stress.
“We are so pumped up on a daily basis our poor brains never get a chance to chill out,” wrote self-described “stress head” Siobhan O’Conner in the Irish Mirror. After instruction in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, Siobhan wrote, “I now look forward to my TM each morning and evening, the clutter is gone and I can see things more clearly.”