Spring cleaning the psyche

In the winter I work in a rocking chair in the living room by the woodstove. In the winter my real office becomes a dumping place for unmade decisions. Today I moved back to my desk and it was a mess. I was feeling lazy and at loose ends, unable to start or finish anything.  With great reluctance, I began decluttering my office.

I not only dusted around the decisions but I made them, which mostly consisted of throwing papers into the recycle. Scribbled telephone notes; notes from long-ago meetings (was that just last October we were talking about that?); file folders full of information on topics that I might be interested in but am not, after all; thank-you notes and Christmas cards; all the do-this, do-that detritus of things that I have done or will never do. Time, as usual, had made a lot of decisions for me.

I found places to stash the few decisions I was not ready to make so they are at least out of my line of sight. I will leave them for Time to think about for a while. I put things into my line of sight that I am always losing track of—the good pens, the best headphones, my phone charger. I blessed my computer for the possibility of a near-paperless office.

This is satisfying work. I like both the process and the results. It soothes my cluttered spirit. Why don’t I do it more often? I really don’t know except I believe I have an inner Saboteur who revels in laziness and chaos, whose response to dutiful, purposeful, satisfying, and aesthetically pleasing existence is to turn away and suck chocolates in a dark corner with just enough light to read a trashy novel.

What does she want, really, this Saboteur?

She wants not to have to do things she doesn’t want to do. She wants not to be told what to do. So that nothing she ever does will ever be forced or difficult. So that she can sit still and veg. So that she can just be.

The Saboteur does not really like chaos and clutter. She does not feel better after an evening of watching TV. In fact, if I take the time to ask her what she really wants, take the time to probe, question after question, it turns out that she really wants the opposite of what she thinks she wants. She is not a permanent resident of my personality but a signal that things are not right, something is amiss, and I need to tend to it and get back to the basics of feeling good.

Now that my office is all tidy, the Saboteur is not sitting up there behind my forehead, growling and complaining. She is gone. In her place is a placid Sage, enjoying a cup of tea and a clean office.

I learned the probing, questioning technique from Connierae and Tamara Andreas’s Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within. It’s detailed and sometimes tedious do-it-yourself Neurolinguistic Programming therapy but it works. Friends and partners can do it together. Good for spring cleaning the psyche.