If I offered you the opportunity to tame a lion you would think I’m nuts. You would decline my offer, first out of fear of dying or pain then because you’d think its impossible for you to tame a lion and then your logical thoughts would start to think about all the hours of relationship building required between you and the lion before you could step into his lair.
And yet, you might be excited at the thought of being that close to such an incredible animal … let’s be totally real – you’d be even more excited to feel the power of being able to make a lion do what you tell it to do.
Will you ever have that opportunity? Probably not, but you can certainly have that powerful feeling, that awesome adrenalin rush and a deeply satisfying relationship with yourself if you take control of those paper piles! I think though that most people would prefer to take the time to work with that lion over sorting through the piles of papers or the disorganization in their life that torments them.
Getting organized certainly seem to be a painful process for a lot of people for many different reasons. Some are tormented by the paper in the home or in the office, others by the clothes, the dinner planning or staying on top of an endless list of things to-do and for others it could be the family photos. It took me years to catch up on my children’s life books because of the emotions I had to process in order to complete them. In those books there are a million stories. The birth of my children, the sadness of divorce, my mother getting Alzheimers … and everything attached to that phase of my life. Other than the emotions I had to process to get to the happier days in the life books I also had to ensure that I had the right pictures printed, the right size books, all art work sorted by year AND the time to pull it all together. No wonder I put it off for so long!
The desire to become organized can also be trumped, consciously or unconsciously by various factors. I’ve noted three of the most common here:
a) Organic prioritization – this is when individuals choose to do what is considered more important than taking care of themselves such as helping aging parents or working long hours.
b) Planned avoidance – this is when individuals choose to fill every moment of free time with activities which prevents them from scheduling time to work on areas of their life that feel disorganized.
c) Unplanned freeze – a natural response that usually occurs because of one major unexpected event (death, dying, divorce, depression, physical injury, job change or job loss). Following an event of this nature, the thought of tackling and organizing even one aspect of our personal or professional lives can feel daunting and potentially unattainable.
Time to Tame the Lion
Start thinking of yourself as more powerful than that ridiculous pile or mound of paper that you stare at every day. Imagine yourself stroking the incredibly powerful back of the lion. Start thinking of yourself as powerful and start spending the time that you need to to lift the weight of what isn’t working.
The Core Four System (TM) will give you a solid starting place to sort and organize all that darn paper in your life. Print this sheet off and pin it to your wall to remind you of the four categories that all paper falls into kAos_CoreFour
To Do – Get more done and in less time
To Pay – Empower yourself to grow financially
To File – Effective systems for reference or archive
To Read – Stay on top of reading what is valuable to you
And download your step-by-step kAos_CoreFourSystem_Booklet that explains how to start organizing the papers around you.
Happy lion taming!
