“Mind is the projector, and the world is the projected. Work with mind and the world follows. It’s so simple.” –Byron Katie
“Just in case.”
This is probably the number one reason we hold on. It comes from a deep-seated belief that there is not enough to go around, the future is not to be trusted, and that life is just plain hard. It’s thoughts like “What if I need this again?”; or “I might miss vital information if I don’t read every single one of these magazine clippings [from three years ago]”; “They might stop making this brand so I better stock up.” Sometimes these scarcity patterns arise from beliefs held and passed from generation to generation triggered by major events like The Great Depression. The survival patterns of our pioneering forebears continue to be very much alive in many of us still, as seen by our little squirrel tendencies to hold on and store things just in case a swarm of locusts makes it impossible for us to venture outdoors.
If it isn’t enough to recreate the scarcity pattern, for some of us we also get to torment ourselves (and others) with liberal doses of ‘I told you so’ when the external reality proves our point. Next time you find yourself spinning over-generalizations like, “See, I told you! I just knew we shouldn’t have gotten rid of that computer, second bicycle, exercise machine (read: clothing rack), refrigerator, golf clubs…” use it as an opportunity to stop, breathe, and repeat the phrase “It is safe for me now to let this go.”
–Excerpted from Chapter 5, “Mental Clutter” – Your Spacious Self: Clear the Clutter and Discover Who You Are by Stephanie Bennett Vogt
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