Hi,
It's Brooks,
And it's good to be here with you.
Today we're going to talk about gentleness,
Being gentle.
My experience as a clutterbuster is that gentleness is very effective in helping people take a kind look at the things in their lives.
It's like looking with love,
And I encourage that when I'm working with people.
Initially oftentimes people are very harsh with themselves when decluttering.
They'll say things like,
Am I your worst client?
What's wrong with me?
Why didn't I have done this myself?
Why did I let it get so bad?
Which is the opposite of kindness.
It's basically meanness,
Right?
And that's been a popular way of getting things done for hundreds of years,
For a long time back.
There's a sense that you have to be mean for change to happen.
But there's something about meanness that reduces people,
Diminishes their capacity,
And it obliterates their connection with themselves and with others.
When we're in pain,
We constrict.
So if we're harsh with ourselves about anything,
Like why can't I do this?
What's wrong with me?
I should love myself more.
There's a lot of harshness in that.
And there's something wonderful and very gentle and kind,
An acceptance of,
All right,
This is how I am right now.
This is what's happening right now.
This is where things got to,
Where they are at the current moment.
And I tell people when I'm working with them,
All right,
None of that matters.
Any of those harsh opinions of yourself don't matter.
Clutter happened.
Oh well,
You know.
It's not our fault.
As far back as we can remember,
We've been told that we're not enough and that we need more to be enough.
We need more things.
We need more money.
We need more certain kind of activities.
We need to be a particular kind of person.
And then we'll be enough.
So no wonder we brought so much into our lives.
And no wonder it's been really hard to let things go.
And the gentleness is the acceptance of,
Oh,
That's what happened.
You know.
It's part of the culture we live in.
Oh well,
You know.
Let's see what we can do today.
Let's take a look around.
Let's take a curious look around.
So curiosity is gentleness incarnate.
It's looking with openness.
Curiosity.
I wonder what things I have in my life,
What activities,
What people are hurting me.
Aren't serving me.
I'm curious,
You know.
It's looking with kind eyes.
It's looking with gentleness.
And it's a great way to start to introduce gentleness into your life.
And I like to say introduce because otherwise there's this feeling of,
All right,
I gotta be gentle.
I gotta be gentle.
Why am I not gentle enough?
Being gentleness.
Kindness.
You're beginning to be kind and gentle.
So that way there's a letting go of everything that happened in the past that got us to where we are today.
It doesn't matter.
What can I do now?
It's nice in our hearts to be gentle.
It's nice in our whole physiology and psychology.
And our body and our mind.
Gentleness is like fertilizer.
It's like vitamins.
It's like water for the crops.
You know,
It's just there's something so tremendously wonderful about being gentle with ourselves.
There was some research that was done by the army that showed that kind encouragement was the greatest motivator.
You know,
The army,
They wanted to know what works most effectively to get people to do things.
And kind encouragement was the answer.
Punishment doesn't help.
Threats don't help.
I've had some clients,
They had clothing that they used to wear,
But they couldn't wear anymore because they were 20 pounds heavier.
But they would hang on to those clothes when they were 20 pounds lighter as a way of creating,
Trying to create an incentive to get them to lose the weight.
And it never worked.
And to all the people that would do that,
It never worked because it's not kind.
Every time they go in the closet or open a clothing drawer,
There'd be the clothes to remind them like,
Oh,
I don't,
I'm not this.
I'm not this idea of an ideal.
You know,
You can't help but feel badly.
Oh,
I'm not okay.
I mean,
That's the message.
I'm not okay.
And nothing comes from that except pain.
Gentleness is here I am.
This is who I am today.
This is what and who I am.
These things in my life are around me.
These activities are part of my life.
These are the people in my life.
I want to take a look around at all of it with the curiosity to see if there's anything that doesn't feel right,
That doesn't feel good,
That's ill fitting.
Because I want to be kind and gentle to myself.
I want to remove anything that hurts.
And we get to do that.
Part of our nature,
You know.
I mean,
We've been trained to go the other way,
That pain is okay,
That we can live with pain and that we're not enough.
And we have to bring more stuff in to be enough.
But if you're listening to this now,
There's a part of you that doesn't want to continue living that old way.
You know,
It's being living,
You know,
It's being tired of living that old way.
It's like,
I want to be gentler.
So we introduce this new way of looking at things.
And this new way of treating ourselves.
And it doesn't mean that sometimes we might not be mean.
Meanness might show its face.
We might find ourselves going,
You know,
Saying something critical or harsh and we notice it.
And I wouldn't rather that add more harshness to that.
I shouldn't be thinking that.
What's wrong with me?
Again,
There's that curiosity,
That gentle looking,
That kind noticing.
Oh wow,
I just had this really mean thought or this mean feeling.
It's echo from the past.
It didn't feel good.
I didn't really like it.
Huh,
That's interesting.
And this again is introducing gentleness.
And because we're working on a heart level,
Then change can start to happen in a natural,
Spontaneous way.
Rather than this is how I have to be,
You just start noticing,
Wow,
I've been thinking a lot less critical thoughts or I just noticed I've been gentler to myself in these particular ways.
And you're surprised,
You know,
It's like a surprise.
It's a really nice surprise.
So I encourage you to consider this,
This gentleness.
And see what happens.
Wherever our attention goes,
It increases that thing that we're gazing at or what we're aware of.
And introducing gentleness starts to bring that more and more into our lives.
So I wish you the best and take care.
