Clear Your Space, Clear Your Mind

By Lauren Forsetra

Organization is key when it comes to getting your life back on track. I know. I’ve  had to deal with it plenty of times. The environment that surrounds you truly says a lot about who you are. And what I have noticed in life is that clutter in the room equals clutter in the mind. When I’m frazzled, late for appointments and dates, thinking about one thing and not thinking about the other–well, too put it bluntly I can be a hot mess. I’ve got an issue with time management, a bad habit that caught me off guard in college and something that I’ve been trying to shake off ever since.

But when my room is clear,my mind is clear. Everything seems to be on point.

One of the biggest things I realized is that sometimes I’ve just got too much going on in my life to remember everything that I need to do. I tried to be one of the mental note people, but it wasn’t long until I realized that I really needed to get a planner. I also had to start giving myself time limits and prioritizing things in my life because I found that in college I would spend hours on end on Facebook or one of my favorite blog sites, putting off papers and work. I’d get it done, but I’d also be foaming at the mouth around three a.m. cursing myself out for being so irresponsible. I had become careless, too. Tossing around things that mattered and forgetting about important things in life. I was always the person who talked about being on time to everything. And then I began to see myself slippin’, being not-on-time to anything, and just plain out looking like a hypocrite.

So I had to make a change. For the better. Along with getting a planner, I had to GCal my life and link it to my phone so I had constant reminders. This kept me on track and helped me keep going. Not to mention, all that late and time-management crap is just not professionally sexy. I knew if I was going to prove that I was the motivated, hard-working sistah that I said I was, I was going to have to ditch the excuses, get out of my rehabilitation (that’s what I like to call this stage of funk) and GET IT TOGETHER.

So I cleaned up my space, which was piling up with shopping bags, lost papers, empty food cartons (mhm, it was gross) and started getting organized. Clearing out my inbox each day is a blessing and less stressful than looking at a pile of 100 or more unopened e-mails. I needed to make sure I was on top of things as much as I could.

And once I cleared the clutter, my mental clutter was clear. Getting it together means keeping it together. Look around you. Are you as clear as you think you are? Or you could be?