Self-Improvement

Have You Taken Out the Garbage Yet?

You know how stinky your kitchen garbage can get. Have you thought about how stinky your mental garbage can get?

How long does a full garbage can sit in your kitchen before it begins to stink? Do you take it out to the garbage can outside before that can happen? I suspect you do. Why?

Well if you’re like me it’s because you don’t want to prepare and eat food in a stinky room. It seems like a no-brainer.

If you regularly take out the kitchen garbage what about the mental and emotional garbage you are carrying around?

At first glance, this seems like a silly question. Are you taking out the garbage? Really? Before you roll your eyes and move on think about it for a minute.

Positive mental health begins with cleansing the psychological and emotional garbage that builds up day after day, year after year.

What Does Your Garbage Look Like?

Think about that kitchen garbage. Compare it to the mental and emotional trash you carry around every day. It builds up just like the garbage in your kitchen.

Think about the stinky consequences of that build-up of kitchen garbage if it is left unattended. Just like that kitchen garbage, personal garbage is generally nasty, stinky, and unwanted.

So, where does your personal garbage come from? It originates in myriad places including your childhood, your relationships, your environment, and more.

Every time you have felt diminished when you were compared to another, individual garbage was thrown into your personal garbage can.

Whether it was true or not doesn’t matter, it still landed in your can. It was someone else’s perspective based on incomplete or inaccurate information.

Even if it was purely malicious or designed to manipulate you — you still became the recipient of more garbage.

The more garbage that is in your personal garbage can and the longer it stays there and the more it stinks.

How Does It Stink?

Just like the kitchen garbage is a mixture of a variety of different nasty aromas, so it is with your personal garbage.

• If parents taught you, even if only in an occasional moment of frustration, that you were “stupid” and couldn’t do anything right that will color everything that comes after.
• Innocent comments from teachers and bosses later in life will be heard through the filter of “stupid”. Those comments will reinforce that self-perception that you are in fact stupid.
• An equally destructive influence is parents who teach you that you are perfect and can do no wrong. This will set a child up for arrogance, victimhood, defensiveness, an attitude of entitlement, and other attributes that don’t work well in the real world.
• Teachers play a pivotal role. An older sibling’s reputation may unfairly color their perception of you.
• In a class of 30 there will be students of varying abilities and aptitudes as well as different interests. Does it feel as though some are valued more highly than others?
• When a student is made aware only of those areas that require improvement, without equal recognition of counterbalancing strengths, this will be destructive to their self-esteem and add more stinky garbage.
• Bosses tend to pick up where teachers leave off. The vulnerabilities we experience there are almost identical to ones we had in school. Consequently, an opportunity for more garbage to be added to our overflowing personal garbage can.
• We choose our friends and associates, right? Certainly, they wouldn’t add to our garbage. Wrong. Friends and associates come from a variety of places.
• They come from the neighborhood, they may be people we work with or go to school with, part of a larger social group.
• They each come with their own agenda. Some are genuinely delightful, enjoyable people who radiate good to all they come in contact with. Others believe the only way for them to be important is to tear someone else down. Then there are those individuals who are so self-absorbed they are unaware of how they come across.
• Spouses are supposed to be our #1 advocate but even in the best of marriages, this is not always the case. Hurtful things are said. Sometimes out of anger. Other times it may be a result of a lack of sensitivity as to how a comment will be perceived.
• Children go from believing we are perfect and can do no wrong to “knowing” we are wrong and can rarely do right. Hopefully, as they move past the teenage years their view becomes more nuanced and they can put our strengths and our weaknesses in perspective. We invest so much in our children and their judgments can be incredibly devastating.
• All of these things have the potential to continue to dump garbage into an already overflowing can.
• Then there is that loop in the back of our head. The voices of parents, teachers, bosses, friends, spouses, and children become intermingled to create that endless loop that keeps playing in the back of our heads.
• When we find consistent themes and comments we proceed to link them together. This reinforces their veracity in our minds. We continue to replay them over and over again in a continuous loop. Sometimes these comments have become so ingrained that we hear them in our own voice. This is particularly destructive as we expect to be able to trust ourselves.

That loop and all those voices as they combine together are the biggest, stink-filled can of garbage imaginable.

How Do You Take Out the Garbage?

It starts the same way as any other change. Before you take out the kitchen garbage you make the decision to do so. It may be something you do every night as a part of cleaning up the kitchen.

Perhaps you are aware that you threw something in there that you know will begin to stink quickly and you want it gone.

Or you may be inclined to wait till it is full before taking it out.

Whenever you choose to take it out, it involves a decision. Taking out the garbage in your mind is not as simple as taking out the kitchen garbage but it begins in the same way — awareness and a decision followed by action.

Become aware of each of those voices. This may be a painful process. You may have spent years tramping down some of those voices and doing everything possible to ignore them because they are hurtful.

This is a classic case of short-term pain for long-term gain. Dredge every one of them up and record them. Start where ever you want, but start.

I would encourage you to start with your parents because so much of what comes after is built on the foundation that they laid. As an alternative start with the most recent, perhaps something your children have said. Then peel it back layer by layer.

Lay out a plan. If it is about people ….start with one person or a group of connected people who reinforce one another.

Make a list of everything that person has ever said that felt hurtful or demeaning. Valid points can be put on a list of things you want to change and will address later.

The unnecessarily hurtful context in which it was presented is all about them and not about you. Toss it aside immediately.

It is their desire to feel powerful, self-righteous, important or whatever. You don’t need it. You don’t deserve it. Throw it out.

If it is about a behavior start with a specific behavior.

Perhaps you hear complaints that you are always late. If that is true, and you are frequently late maybe you need to step back and examine why this is true (assuming that it is). Do you chronically over schedule yourself causing others to feel unimportant as they wait for you?

If it is “You never come out for a drink with the gang after work. Do you think you are too good for us?” Then it may simply be that your priorities are different. Hanging out with the gang and wasting a few hours doesn’t appeal to you. That’s perfectly OK. It is a choice you are entitled to make. Their judgments definitely belong in the trash can.

Identify the garbage and throw it out. Valid points can be set aside for further examination at a later date.

Go through this process for every person and every behavior on your list.

Don’t Be A Hoarder!

Think of those pictures you have seen of a hoarder’s house. The house is overflowing with junk. Old, unused, and often unidentifiable and unusable junk that stinks.

The idea of clearing it all out appears overwhelming and beyond hope. Yet there are specialists who will go into a hoarder’s home and with dumpsters and protective clothing begin to clear out the garbage.

Any treasures found along the way will be set aside and they will be carefully cleaned and preserved, while the garbage will be hauled away and the home will then cleaned and restored to a desirable condition.

While the process initially seems impossible, consistent action brings about the desired result. Then it is simply a matter of talking out the garbage on a daily basis to maintain a clean and healthy home.

Starting the process of clearing out your personal garbage may feel very much like looking into the hoarder’s home, leaving you feeling over whelmed and wanting to run in the opposite direction.

Just as with time and persistence the hoarder’s home may be cleared of the garbage, so may your personal mental residence be cleared of years and even decades of garbage. Start the process and get rid of the garbage.

Once you have completed this honestly onerous task you can maintain it by taking out the garbage daily and not allowing it to take hold.

Just as a clean physical home invites the purchase of furniture, art and other desirable things to enhance your comfort and pleasure in your home, a clean garbage-free mental and emotional home invites ideas, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and actions that will provide the momentum and the space to build a life filled with joy, happiness and a sense of accomplishment, value and well being.

So are you ready to clear out your personal garbage can so you can build momentum in creating the life of your dreams? That is your birthright. To learn more about how you can silence those pesky voices once and for all reach out to me at [email protected]. This is your time. Embrace it. Don’t let another hour pass by without starting the mental and emotional decluttering that will set you FREE.