While Part One in this article series on transformation described the pre-conditions for creating lasting change — those elements that need to exist and be cultivated in order to successful change to occur — Part Two will begin to describe some of the “stops” along the way, common junctures and notable markers & milestones when one undertakes a journey of change.

First stop on the journey to generate change:

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Decluttering. Releasing the old to make way for the new…

“What do you want?”

A journey of transformation needs a desire to fuel the process. It is desire that moves you forward into new experience and change. And if desire is the fuel, it is the clarity and certainty in your mind of the desired outcome that ignites the process. You may want something, but if you can’t see it happening for yourself and you don’t believe that it can become true, if you don’t “own” it as your potential reality, your desire will forever remain as a wish without momentum.

So… clarity of what you desire, and the feeling of certainty that you can have it… where do these things come from? If you don’t have them now, or they are weak, how can you “get” them or develop them into stronger, more palpable forces?

In addition, at times we may know exactly what we want (or what it is we think we want…). But what if you’re not clear on what it is you want?

If you feel just a generally vague desire for “more” or for “better”, without having assigned specifics to what that really is and what it would look and feel like in your experience, don’t feel bad — you are not alone. Connecting with our desire nature, as natural as the mechanics of it really are, can be daunting at first if we aren’t accustomed to paying attention to what we really want. Like anything else, the desire muscle gets flabby from neglect. If this is the case, when we try to “tune in” to what we want, we just feel a kind of vague numbness. But no worries… all it needs is some attention and exercise for it to naturally strengthen into a useable force.

But whether you feel crystal clear or muddily vague, in my experience there is no more potent way to create dramatic momentum toward change than by decluttering.

Why Is Decluttering So Powerful?

The Pursuit Of Clarity

Decluttering ignites change and increases clarity like nobody’s business. If you don’t know exactly what you want, decluttering can help reveal that. And if you do know, it can release you quickly and powerfully onto a transformational arc into utterly new and wonderful terrain! I have launched so many successful journeys of utterly radical change through the exercise of radical decluttering that it’s now just a habit I automatically turn to when I’m ready to increase the momentum of my life in a new direction.

Decluttering is far more than just a way to tidy up your space… it’s a profound process of identifying what you need and what you love from a fresh perspective. What you need and what you love are basic personal values. As you sift through your belongings and say “yay” or “nay”, discarding items that you previously valued, you are affirming on an inner level that your values (and correlating desires…) have changed. Each toss is a statement that you now value new things so much that you are willing to make space for them to come into your life! And as you do so you automatically point the nose of your life in the right direction. The more you repeat this process, the clearer that direction becomes… and from that new direction comes the voice of your desire, speaking to you and giving you the clarity that you seek.

At first, this process begins on a physical level, with your physical space and even your body, because radically increasing living foods, engaging in a “cleanse” or a juice fast, are also ways to “declutter”. But everything’s connected… the physical with the non-physical… so once you start, you can trigger a series of new insights and awareness and personal clarifications that you would never have expected from such a deceptively simple action. And you can approach this decluttering business from a number of different angles all at once, or in bits and pieces, depending upon how radical a change you wish to create.

More than once I have reduced my belongings to bare-bones essentials in order to re-invent my life both personally and professionally. Another time, over the course of a summer, room by room, drawer by drawer, closet by closet, I moved out of my entire house and back into it as if it were a fresh beginning, without ever changing my address. As this website also testifies, I have radically decluttered my physical body (more than once), always using living foods. And in each of these instances, these exercises helped to catalyze massive change brought on by absolutely crystalline clarity and the certainty that I could achieve the experience I newly desired.

So… tackle your junk drawer, your pantry, your silverware drawer, your linen closet, your wardrobe, your filing cabinet, your stash of pens (seriously… you have dead pens & broken pencils in your house?); get rid of all the chochkes lining your bookcases, donate books you’ll never read again (seriously… move on), get rid of your handbags, your junk jewelry, the fabric in your closet which you’ll never have time to sew, the articles and magazines that take up dead space and leave you feeling like there will never be enough time to get to them; toss out your old cassettes, the CD cases you never use, old videos gathering dust. Either immediately repair or trash any clothing that’s torn, stained, or ratty; get rid of glass bottles and plastic containers that are overwhelming your cabinets because you think you’re being “green” without realizing that you’re actually polluting your own energy field and life with stagnation.

Beware The Excuses… The Snares That Would Keep You Stuck!

There are so many insidiously disempowering decisions involved in the journey of decluttering. “But… but… but… I may need this some day. But… it cost a lot of money! But… someone I love gave this to me” (even though you haven’t looked at, used, or enjoyed the thing for a decade).

The truth is, the more courage you bring to this process, the greater your statement that you mean business about creating the life you say you really want… and therefore the greater the rewards. No exceptions.

Creating A Powerful Serge of Fresh Momentum

As you are willing to let go of past attachments that no longer serve you, or which do not support the direction you wish to go in, you create momentum. The more that you release, the greater the momentum and fresh clarity that swoops in, and the louder the voice of your desire becomes, painting a picture of itself to you in ever more brilliant color and finer detail. It’s as if, as you declutter, you are creating an environment of dramatically reduced “static”, through which the “transmission” of what you want can become all the more discernible to you.

If as you begin this process you are already crystal clear about what your desired direction looks like, and if you make radical decisions to release what doesn’t “vibe” with it, it’s like pouring rocket fuel into your tank. Hang on, because you’re in for an exciting ride! What you are doing here is truly aligning with your desire, on every level. And you’ll have set the stage for a massive rut-breaking phase of your life, one that, if you follow through without applying brakes of personal resistance, can lead you to genuine, deeply rooted transformation!

“Or… Maybe I Don’t Want To Change After All…”

On the other hand, if in the course of decluttering you begin to refuse to release certain components in your life that are incompatible with what you say you desire, you will quickly find that to be like applying an emergency brake to the process of change. You can’t go forward if you’re rooting your feet deep into the muddy bottom of attachment.

If you find yourself doing this, there’s no moral “good” or “bad” to it. It is what it is. YOU are at the helm of your life, of what you want your life to be or not to be… no one is imposing the need to change on you. And your resistance to release these critical aspects of your life is nothing but precious information about what you value and desire most. That might be an insight that changes your paradigm and gives you peace, because you may have thought that you wanted something you don’t currently have, only to discover that you actually value what is already in your life more than the effort, trouble, or change required to move beyond it.

Initiating change and going for what one wants can all sound well and good at the outset, but when you come face-to-face with what that really means and what you will be called to release from your life in order to get what you want, it may entail the realization that, well, maybe it’s not really worth the tumult to you, after all. And that’s a good thing to know. The status quo may suddenly display new value to you as you realize that you don’t wish to align your life with what you thought you wanted. And you can then take responsibility for that choice, and choose to live in peace with it.

All this just from decluttering “stuff”?

Could be. But also along the way you may realize that it’s a relationship which you must release… or an attitude, or resentment. When you start decluttering “things”, you quickly descend into the core issues of your life, which are all attached to the things you value — your memories, your emotions, your relationships, your home, your comfort, your money, your work, your very sense of self.

So as you dig deeply into releasing these physical things, those non-physical components that are invisibly but inexorably attached to them also begin to work in your mind and come to the surface for accounting. And this is where the real work occurs, and why decluttering is such a potent force for establishing momentum for change!

Decluttering enables you to connect with what you desire and to get yourself into alignment with it at a very foundational level.

I wouldn’t begin any journey of change without this step.
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How To Declutter: The Very Best Way

I actually used to work as a decluttering consultant, going into people’s homes and helping them through this process. It can help to have someone encourage you to “rip off the band-aid” when your courage begins to waver. Heh.

This is the technique I use personally, and which I recommend to others I have helped:

1) Tackle one specific area at a time, be it a drawer, a closet, a cabinet, or an entire room.

2) Empty that area of everything that is in it.

3) Clean the area like the Queen is coming, like you never have before.

4) Then put back into that area, ideally NOT into the same formation that existed previously, ONLY: what you truly need and what you truly love.

5) What doesn’t fall into those two categories, break out into piles for Trash, Donate, and Sell, depending on your situation.

That’s it!

If you get to step 5 and have very little left over, my suspicion is that you have a lot of resistance to moving forward. Is it lack of trust? Fear? Greed?

Are you letting rip a stream of justifications of why you can’t let go, why you can’t do what you want, why you can’t have what you want? Take note… this is where your true work lies. You will need to resolve these bits and pieces of emotional gravity holding you back if you truly want move forward.

But that’s all part of the journey… And the courageous undertaking of a radical decluttering can set you well on your way to find the clarity and courage it takes to resolve your resistances. If you so desire…

Part Three will continue to explore the process of Transformation. What do you do once momentum starts to take you into unfamiliar territory? We’re going to see what that looks like…

Last Day for $20 Savings on my LGS Daily Recipe magazine…

The post below was originally published on my “This Raw Life” blog on June 26, 2009: Breaking Through Barriers: Working With Principles of Transformation, Part One

Article Series: Breaking Through Barriers – Working With Principles of Transformation

This is the first in what will be a series of articles on the subject of surpassing the limits that hold us back from being all that we desire to be.

Applicable on any level of human experience, from athletic performance to emotional well-being and creative potential, these articles are meant to provide some practical insights one can use to make progress toward real change in the areas of life one wishes to transform.

Part One:

The Pre-Conditions for Creating Lasting Change

There are many ways to frame the topic of personal transformation – certainly the subject can fill many books and take a lifetime of study. It’s been an area that has fascinated me since I was in grade school, and I’ve endeavored for decades to discover and apply principles of transformation to my health, my emotional life, my relationships, my career, my finances, my creativity, and my body and its performance…and the journey continues.

One thing I’ve found is that, no matter what the context or objective of my transformative work, it always invokes the same principles and laws. In addition, every transformational process involves a cycling through a series of steps that are always the same.

With this article series, I hope to provide an introductory overview of what it’s like to go through a transformative journey… and perhaps provide a few touchstones that may be of use to you as you navigate your own journey. Part One will explain certain components that must be in place in order for the journey to be successful, and Part Two will describe some of the steps that are commonly cycled through while on that journey.

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Transformation and Peak Performance

The topic of transformation and how to break through barriers is an excellent starting point for anyone who desires maximum peak performance and vitality, because sooner or later we all come face-to-face with our limits. Wishful thinking aside, the limits of our bodies, and any other dimension in which we experience barriers we just can’t seem to get past, do not go away by themselves.

The only way to transcend limits is to revise the patterns that gave birth to them, and this requires tracing those patterns to their source and replacing them with new patterns. No mean feat, this, because when we’re doing transformative work, it can seem like a “blind leading the blind” situation as we attempt not only to give ourselves an experience we’ve never had before, but to normalize it as the new way to “be”.

The journey of transformation is not for the faint of heart… but I have found it indeed to be possible to bear fruit, to truly free oneself from limits that previously seemed utterly insurmountable, and to re-mold oneself into new expressions of being.

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Change as Evolution

I am by temperament greedy for my transformations to be speedy. But I have found that, while sudden shifts in experience do occur, they do so as “punctuations” in the work of change, and the result of much determined work over time combined with profound shifts of understanding.

The process of change is generally like a gradual and constant “morphing”. As our understanding, awareness, choices – and re-choices – evolve, so does the object of our transformation. Until suddenly, a new experience emerges, and we realize that the limits that used to bind us are no longer there.

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Pre-Conditions for the Work of Transformation

Several pre-conditions exist for a successful journey of genuine change, and these are always the same no matter what one wants to achieve. You can say you want to change, that you desperately want to be free of certain limits, but without establishing these conditions, no matter how hard you “try” to change, you will eventually discover you have been spinning your wheels.

Whether the limit you are experiencing is in your body, your emotions, your relationships, or your finances, there is simply no way to get the work done that’s required for success if you don’t equip yourself with the following fundamentals.

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1) You must have a good reason for the change.

This “one good reason” gives the courage that is required to see you through the challenging moments and “blind spots”, when you’re in the midst of letting go of something old, creating space for something new… but don’t yet have that new thing manifested in your experience.

Courage is a theme that will come up repeatedly. People who genuinely transform do so because they have had the courage to face the limiting patterns in their lives. It is fear or “contraction” that in some way causes those limiting patterns. If you trace a pattern to its root in order to change it, you are going to experience some degree of discomfort as you encounter that fear or tendency to contract, and you need a very good reason to embolden yourself to see the experience through to the wonderful deliverance on the other side.

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2) You must be willing to question.

One cannot transform without questioning. If you don’t question the limits of your reality, you cannot expect to transcend them.

Questioning limits can become highly uncomfortable, because the process of questioning can invoke answers that challenge your beliefs, values, and general world-view. Our beliefs and values shape our every decision, our every thought, emotion, and the way we use and experience our body every single moment. This shaping results in the patterns that become our reality.

So when we start to ask questions about those limits, eventually we’re going to find our way to the source… to the limiting beliefs and values and habits that gave rise to the patterns we want to change. Asking questions brings answers and can reveal very uncomfortable truths we have been quite effective in keeping from ourselves. And facing these truths usually requires… courage.

Many people don’t want to question, and I understand their resistance – doing so is highly disruptive. If you’ve never questioned your beliefs and values before, start questioning the limits in your life and you will see how interesting things quickly become!

For many, just accepting the limits in their lives is easier. They chalk up the stiffness in their bodies to age, or the staleness of their marriage as the unavoidable outcome of duty, or their unfulfilling work as the inevitable side-effect of security. The longer we accept such limits as “normal”, the more durably they crystallize into our experience, and become more difficult to uproot.

If you are one who doesn’t want to “rock the boat” so-to-speak, the hard reality is that any change that you make in your life is going to be merely superficial. If you want deeper change, if you want true transformation, you must be willing to start asking pointed questions… and to face the uncomfortable truths that they uncover. There is simply no by-passing this component… no matter how hard you may wish it to be otherwise.

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3) You must be willing to listen.

Having “one good reason” and sincerely asking how to transcend the limits in your life will bring answers… together they will invoke potent guidance from an apparently invisible realm to help you along your path. But if you create so much distraction in your life so that your mind does not rest and find its receptive mode, you will not notice the answers.

If your television is always on, if you are addicted to entertainment in its myriad of forms, if you talk endlessly or fill up your conversation with nothing but complaints, negativity, and fretting, it’s like you have an “umbrella” up against the rain of information pouring down on you in response to your questioning. Barely a drop will be able to reach you because of the mental and emotional “static” you are creating.

You must be willing to get quiet, to listen, to pay attention, and to assume that there is something that you don’t currently know which is just begging to enlighten you a little bit more. If you listen, it will find its way to you.

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4) You must be willing to feel.

When you launch a process of change by connecting with your “one good reason” for it, and by asking how you can transcend your limits, and by listening for the answers that will always eventually come… you will trigger feelings. It is through your feeling-self that change must come, and so you absolutely must be awake to these feelings.

It is impossible to bring awareness to the feelings associated with limits without allowing yourself to feel those feelings. And certainly, you cannot bring in new experiences, with new associated feelings, if you disconnect from your ability to feel. This “feeling” quality pertains to everything you might want to change, whether it’s your body, your creativity, your relationships, or anything else. It is a completely universal business. You must be able to have sensation of what is in the moment, be it joyful or tragic or anything in-between.

So many methods exist to distract us from and insulate us from feelings. Food, alcohol, drugs, work, entertainment, shopping, sex, living in the future, living in the past, living in fantasy… anything that will keep us from being present, in our bodies and in our beings, to what is.

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Limits Teach Us… When We Give Them Our Full Attention

If you wish to transform some aspect of your body, you must be willing to bring your awareness to what the limit feels like in your body. If you want to transform an aspect of your emotional self, you must be willing to bring your awareness to what that limiting emotion feels like. This requirement to be present and feel with awareness is always the case, and there is no escaping it.

Limits by their very nature are… limiting. They do not feel good. We want to be on the other side of them. We want to be free of them… if we only knew how. And it is a normal and understandable response to want to numb the discomfort in some fashion. However, doing so constantly is not going to help evolve transformation, if that is what we wish.

What is generally not understood is that limits have information for us; they hold the keys within them for unlocking them. If we talk to them and listen to them and feel them, they tell us what created them, and how to transcend them, and what needs to be “un-done”.

Massive amounts of information exist in our bodies, in our painful emotions, in our frustrations, even in our fears… if we can muster the courage to resist running from the discomfort, and instead remain present to the feelings and keep listening, keep questioning, keep paying attention, keep in relationship with the discomfort while it speaks.

The wisdom of this tends to escape us because it’s an invisible domain, and it’s an edge that few have the courage to navigate. But it’s there all the same. It’s real, it guides, and the most profound transformational work occurs right in that place.

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5) You must be willing to trust and follow your own intuition – to make yourself the author (“the expert”) of your own life.

This last pre-condition is really the first, but I’ve placed it at the end because it really does serve as the last word when it comes to creating change in one’s life. We are designed to be the authors of our experience, and when we give up that creative voice and decisiveness, we give up our power to be the fullness of what we can be.

For most of us, the creative authority in our lives originates with others. To the extent that we have not questioned the values and beliefs and world-view we have inherited from our families, communities, and cultures, we are making decisions based on allegiance (unconscious though it may be) to authority figures outside our selves. We adhere to a sense of virtue espoused by our religion, we pursue an experience of health as guided by the medical establishment, we do what we can to be good citizens as dictated by the government, and we expect our children to be good students as outlined by our schools.

Our lives are influenced by dogma in ways we often do not realize, and certainly don’t want to hear because we all want to believe that we are free, independent, intelligent captains of our own destiny. But start reaching beyond your personal limits and you will quickly encounter territory that challenges dogma you may not have realized you bought into.

Expanding Into Unprecedented Experiences Requires Making Unprecedented Decisions

Having a good reason to make a change, questioning the reason why personal limits exist, listening for answers, and feeling with awareness what “is” will begin to tinker with and expand your consciousness of what exists in your life and what is possible. You will start to become more aware in many ways. New understandings will come. Synchronicities will emerge – the right teacher or information or exercise or opportunity will present itself just as you realize what you need. And the more you pay attention and listen and feel and respond, the stronger those inner impulses will become and the more frequently synchronicities and serendipitous assistance will emerge. But it requires heeding the inner promptings that come to the surface, as intuition and hunches, which may contradict with long-held beliefs. And turning one’s back on these deeply-ingrained beliefs is extremely challenging business.

We trust in dogma, in others, in established organizations, in “science”, in “the way things have always been done” because these familiar approaches give us a sense of security, safety, and order. Certainly, they may be valuable for assigning rules for achieving successful experiences up to a point. But to expand into unprecedented experiences requires making unprecedented decisions, and these can only come from within. Making the switch to following the dictates of your own inner promptings involves a huge paradigm shift, and requires tremendous self-trust and courage, which requires time to evolve.

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Courage to Stay The Course

As I have said… courage has plenty of chance to get some exercise with this work.

But if you stay and do the work, you can become your very own super-hero of a kind, because successful transformation unfolds new freedoms, new abilities, new energy, improved feelings, and unprecedented resourcefulness and power.

Do the work well and there is no avoiding it.