Reducing Stress & Clutter: A No-Brainer?

At the risk of sounding a bit like one of those late night infomercials, I have to say there’s more!

This is a follow-up to a post I wrote  a month back entitled “No Home No Have.”  If it didn’t inspire you to start picking up after yourself, you might consider the positive effect that repetitive actions have on your brain.

In his wonderful little book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, psychologist Dr. Robert Maurer talks about a part of our midbrain that controls the fight-or-flight response; a three hundred year-old thing called the amygdala. This alarm mechanism is our built-in secret service agent if you will, wired to spring into action the moment it senses danger. Very useful when your kid is reaching for the kitchen knife, not so helpful when you’re stepping out of your comfort zone to clear out the letters that your high school boyfriend (whose name you can hardly remember) wrote you forty-five years ago.

The problem with the amygdala is that it will jump at anything that poses a threat…or is uncomfortable, or overwhelming.

But there is good news. According to Maurer, it is not only possible to bypass the amygdala by taking the tiniest action steps as needed to achieve our intended goal, but we can change our wiring altogether! As he puts it:

“Small, easily achievable goals-such as picking up and storing just one paper clip on a chronically messy desk-let you tiptoe right past the amygdala, keeping it asleep and unable to set off alarm bells. As your small steps continue and your cortex starts working, the brain begins to create “software” for your desired change, actually laying down new nerve pathways and building new habits.” (p.27)

So, if clearing clutter, or reducing stress, or quieting the chatty mind is something you’d like to work on or improve in your life, you might consider adopting a daily practice–a literal no-brainer–such as this: Identify one thing that has no regular home or never seems to make it into it’s home, and commit to putting it away every day for a week.

Same thing in the same place, every day. One week.

Choose a thing or a task that eludes you. Maybe it’s your reading glasses, or the television remote control that gets lost on a routine basis. Takes what, five seconds to put in its place. How about the car keys? Dirty clothes in the hamper? Clean dishes from the drainer to the cabinet just above it? Cell phone connected to its power source before heading to bed…?

And if that’s still too much to manage, what if you slid the chair back in every time after using your desk or after eating dinner? Or put the toothpaste cap back on the tube? Turned the lights off? Toilet seat cover down…?

One thing, or one pile, or one area. Every day. One week. That’s it.

After you’ve completed any of the above tasks, you can ask yourself: How hard was that really? What does it feel to consciously place this thing where it belongs? How does the room feel to you now? You might be pleasantly surprised by what you discover, as did one of my students who shared: “… just putting the dental floss back every night in the same place has been MIND BLOWING!! Truly! And has flowed into other areas!”

See how it goes. If it goes smoothly after a week, consider increasing a simple action or routine and/ or the time you spend on it by a factor of one. For example you can increase to two things, once a day, for one week. Or increase a task by two minutes, once a week. Or increase a task to twice a day. Do anything as long as it feels good to you and does not stir up the fight-or-flight response (which would be indicated by a pang or feeling of stress or overwhelm).

Without even realizing it you may discover, as I have, small joys leading to bigger ones beyond your wildest imaginings.

p.s. If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to check out an interview I gave recently called “Simple Life, Spacious Life.” If you don’t have time to listen to the entire one-hour show, I recommend segment two – located at 16:00 on the counter.

Photo Credit: Bing Images/Clutter