Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Nice looking day today. Pulling the chairs out of storage again to use in the patio and deck areas, like we do every Spring. We’ll need to start mowing the lawn soon as well. Recently, I started looking around at all the stuff I’ve accumulated and the piles that are kind of everywhere right now. It seems to be a pattern for me. Throw everything in a pile until said pile becomes ridiculous – like probably years of junk builds up – then just go nuts, purge it all and start building it back up again. I’m sort of in purge mode right now. I told myself I was going to go through one specific cabinet I knew had things in it I needed to go through at the office yesterday, and I wound up spending hours on it. It led to cleaning out other areas as well (of course), and finding stuff way in the back that was from 2006 when I first started. Outdated and totally useless stuff that has been there for sixteen years. Sometimes we run our brains like this as well. We hold onto something that happened sixteen years ago and it affects what we do today. We have piles of memories that we refer back to when making a decision, and sometimes it’s those memories that hold us back. For example, let’s say you had a rental property once and it didn’t go very well at all, you never got decent renters, the ones you did get trashed the place, never paid on time (if at all), and it was a terrible experience for you. What are the chances you would consider buying a rental unit again, even if you were presented with a fantastic deal? Probably none. That memory from a long, long time ago has locked you in to never even considering doing it again. And on the flip side, positive memories also can cloud our judgement going forward as well. If you’ve found a place you like to vacation at, sometimes it becomes the only place you vacation at because it’s familiar to you. You stop looking at, or even considering anything else. We like to stick with what we know. And, ”what we know” is a collection of everything we’ve seen, felt or heard up to this point in our lives. Every once in a while it pays to take a look at the stuff we’re holding onto, but physically and mentally, and reshuffle the deck. Our pasts do not have to equal our futures… and they will only affect our decisions as long as we let them. Springtime is a great time to purge, rethink and remodel.
