7 Ways to Eliminate Emotional Clutter

Imagine that you are making a futile effort to find a piece of mail stuck in a large pile of clutter on your desk. You are spending an enormous amount of time and stress to find what seems lost in the dreary clutter. It’s exasperating and extremely unproductive.

Well, our emotions work the same way. Our emotional clutter absconds the life purpose, depriving us from connecting with our inner self. The deftness lies in building awareness to confront elements of emotional clutter and sort out what is important and what goes into the trash. If you can learn to make this separation in your life, you will begin to notice a new calmness as you go through your days.

1. Eliminate physical clutter: Clutter is an intense form of procrastination, both physical and emotional. Physical clutter plagues many people in the illusionary chase of possessions. Physical clutter is a symptom in the form of outgrowth of inner chaos that exists in our life. By managing physical clutter, we send signals to our subconscious about our intrepid resolve to eliminate our emotional clutter.

Healing Action: Resolve to go through all the mail, documents, magazines, and bills. Sort out to keep what matters now and toss the rest of it or give it away to someone who can benefit from it.

Second, resolve to use what you have now before making any attempt to buy more of the same.

Third, control your desire for the social acceptance and spending. The common myth of equating money with social acceptance can deteriorate into your physical and emotional clutter by having an ostensible desire to keep up with the Joneses. This habit creates an endless maze of financial troubles leading to emotional clutter. Learn to be frugal and pride in who you are and not in what you wear or possess.

1. Letting go of worries: Worries are like worms; they fetch countless more worries. Soon, our mind gets fogged with negativity that amplifies a minor problem into a major by directing our focus towards it. It becomes a perpetual bad habit that inhibits our mind and spreads like a cancer.Healing action: The best way to eliminate emotional clutter is by “clearing” meditation at the end of the day; focus on the positive changes that you want to manifest in your life and direct your focus towards it by meditation. I’ve personally felt profoundly relaxed and energized by meditating daily to attract the positivity in my life.

• Low self-image: If you are self-critical about your social acceptance, your skills or your body image, you have low self-esteem. Low self-esteem attracts emotional clutter and drains your energy and desire to succeed. 

Healing action: Develop a journal to write down the facts about your life that may have attributed to the low self-esteem. Those thoughts that trigger emotional trauma from the past ruin your present moment. Express those feelings in the journal and also write courses of action to bury those thoughts in the coffin. I’ve seen a rise in my self-confidence due to this exercise.

• Going to bed with unfinished business: Have you had days, when despite working hard, you felt a lack of accomplishment? This sense of misery creates emotional clutter by self-pity and thoughts of despair. We deprive ourselves of a good night sleep by obsessive focus on the unfinished business. As a result, we toss and turn in the bed and wake up next day feeling miserable. 

Healing Action: No matter how day went, take a relaxing shower and letting go the feelings of unease with the flowing water. Write down things to accomplish for the next day before going to sleep and loose you in the tranquility of music. You’ll let go the exasperation and feel calm before going to bed.

• Conserve energy: Be mindful of time spent on the phone with friends who banish your Positivity with their negativity or time spent on checking emails that drain your energy. These negative influences can exacerbate your emotional trash and hold you back from focusing on the positive change that you are about to bring in your life. 

Healing action: Be honest and express your sincere desire to your friends for the positive changes you seek. If that costs you a friendship, so be it. Forge new friendship that resonates from your inner feelings. You will find a boost in your energy level and positive perspective about life as a result.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us. –Peter de Vries (1910-1993) American editor and novelist. 

• Eating too much: If you are engaged in mindless eating or lack of, you are trying to resist emotional clutter by directing focus on the food or lack of; what resists persists. It drains our energy to resist what we don’t want to confront emotionally.Healing action: Develop a “check-in” process by seeking external support from a friend or a family member. Discuss with them what bothers you emotionally and talk about your eating and activity that day or day before. If you have a blog or website, add a “Checking-In” tab and list your plan of action with details of exercise and meals that you plan on eating. By seeking external support, you’ll lift your desire to confront the evil and thus focus more on the meaningful change in your life. 

• Difficult relationship: If you are feeling defensive with inexplicable altercations with your partner or feeling constantly criticized by your partner in public, you will attract an abundance of emotional clutter with thoughts of feebleness, despair and exasperation. This behavior may turn inward and make you disconnect with your partner by not having good communication or a sex life. All of these can make you feel punched square in the stomach with intense emotional trauma.

Healing Action: Have an honest and candid conversation with your partner about how you feel. Develop a feeling journal to write down your feelings as they arise. During an altercation, you did not have the deftness to feel those feelings and move through the pain. The hurt went underground and formed emotional clutter. With the feeling journal, you have tool at your dispense to identity the hurt feelings and eradicate them to eliminate emotional clutter. Let your partner read the feeling journal and respond to your feelings. By opening communication, you tend to improve relationship for the fulfilling, happy life.

-Shilpan