How Do I Get Off This Merry-Go-Round?

Freeing up energy involves seven steps. These steps build on each other. For clarity’s sake, I list them in order, and this order is a useful way to begin. Over time, you will find yourself working a few steps at a time, in your own way, in your own order. Don’t be overwhelmed by these steps—I’m just giving you the overview here. This is the map for the rest of the book. In the seven steps, you:

1. Establish Your Purpose. In the first step, you have an opportunity to explore your deeper purpose for getting organized. You look at how disorganization is a stumbling block for you. You identify what being organized can do for you and you make a deep commitment to change.

2. Envision What You Want. Now you create your vision for how you want to live your life. You visualize the details of how being organized can contribute to your life vision. You imagine how much better your life will be and you find some role models to help you see that you can change.

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3. Take Stock. You take a very realistic look at what you are doing to create chaos and frenzy in your life. And you examine the thinking, beliefs, emotional attachments, and spiritual orientation that lead you to disorganization.

4. Choose Support. Support, lots of it, is crucial to make this kind of change. You identify all kinds of support for yourself in this process.

5. Identify Strategies for Change. You learn what it takes to become organized—how to clear up the backlog successfully, how to build new systems and new habits. Then you incorporate the basics of time management, handling purchases and possessions well, learning to focus, and making sure that your word is good.

6. Take Action. You use implementation tools to put the approach into action. You set reasonable goals, you allocate time, you energize yourself when you get stuck, and you get good help.

7. Go Deeper to Keep Going. You learn to take care of yourself better and you do the deep emotional work that can free you from destructive habits and emotional pain. You deepen your understanding about how you want to live and what it takes to live that way.

As you can see in the Seven-Step Change Cycle diagram, purpose is central. You start with purpose and you return to purpose. You focus on your purpose for getting organized, but, ultimately, you are getting organized so that you can do more of what you really want to do in life.

I call this a cycle because in getting organized, you go through many rounds, and you work through many layers. The blast-through-the-mess approach or the this-weekend-I-am-going-to-get-totally-organized method doesn’t work for most people. Rather, you go through a cycle of working through the mess on your desk, learning to keep your desk ready for action, and then moving on to clearing the clothes off the floor. And that deepens your commitment to getting organized because you see the good results, which in turn allows you to go after what you really want in life because you are not getting in your own way so much. You get clearer about who you are. This is a cycle for life.

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