When I met Carolyn and learned about her work, getting her to post here seemed like just the right idea! After all, opportunities for growing our resilience are both external and internal.

Here’s what Carolyn has to say about that.

Growing Your Resilience by Confronting Your Clutter

By Carolyn Koehnline

For twenty years I have specialized in helping people to release the clutter from their lives, both the physical objects that fill up their homes, and the excess baggage in their heads, hearts, and schedules. The Confronting Clutter process I teach is about taking stock of what you have accumulated, and deciding what is helpful and what is not.

I witness my clients going through this very intentional process of releasing what is no longer useful, relevant, or uplifting. Inevitably I see them become more present and grounded, more connected to themselves and to the world, and more able to effectively respond to whatever life brings.

In my early twenties I worked at an adult daycare center outside of Chicago . I spent my days doing poetry, cooking, and music with elderly African Americans and old world Jews. They had all lost so much – their youth, their professions, loved ones, homes, countries, and even various body parts. I wondered why it was that while some seemed so closed, rigid, superficial and quick to gossip, others were more like oak trees; deep rooted, unshakable, sheltering, and accepting.

I believe that the oak trees were the ones who had somehow mastered the practice of letting go. They had learned to use their changes and losses as opportunities to reassess what was truly important to them. Like shedding their leaves each fall, these people  were willing to shed roles and beliefs and anything else that blocked them from being their best selves.

Periodically Confronting Your Clutter can be a way to practice being an oak tree, keeping your life fresh and vital, keeping the sap flowing, letting go, choice by choice, growing your resilience.

Try these prompts to get you started, allowing 5 minutes for each writing.

It is time to release . . .

It is time to make space for . . .

For more information about Carolyn Koehnline and Confronting Clutter go to www.ConfrontingClutter.com