Staying motivated and keeping your drive are essential. The key is to make progress, not perfection. Thoughts of perfection are the enemy. There is no such thing as perfection. Perfection is an illusion. Nothing in this world is perfect. These thoughts will just overwhelm you, cause you to be unmotivated, and lead to procrastination. Once you procrastinate long enough, your living environment will get out of control. Once your living environment is out of control, it will impact you in negative ways especially when it comes to your mental health and well-being.
Have you ever seen the movie Limitless? It’s a movie that came out in 2011 about a guy that is in a bad slump until he takes a nootropic drug named NZT-48 that gives him the ability to use his entire brain capacity. The thing that I think is so interesting is that one of the first things that he accomplishes is cleaning up his apartment aka his living space so that he can think more clearly. Here is the link to the scene for those that are interested. I have since kept that thought in mind that our environment has a huge impact on our sense of well-being, mental health, and in turn our motivation and drive.
So how do you stay motivated??? For me, it’s having a goal and a why. A goal has a set deadline that has to be met. So for instance, yesterday when I was cleaning out my garage, I had to be done around 3 pm going through all the things. Worked out that day at least. The why for me was that my son was getting more and more displeased with the way our house looked. Why was he displeased? It’s simple, me and my late wife Anne both have the tendency to pile things up. We work on projects and there are books and papers and miscellaneous things piled up from working on the project. Now not everything in our house is in disarray, but enough of it that it was really wearing on my son. So, the solution was to roll up my sleeves and take care of it.
How do you get a good why to stay motivated? It can be tricky, but I think at times you have to dig deep. When it comes to practicing Clean Fu, maybe it’s as simple as inviting someone over that you want to impress. As soon as the plans are made, the deadline is set, so you better get your butt in gear and start cleaning! I think also you can reduce the number of things that need to be cleaned if you develop good habits. For example, on the topic of organization, if you constantly put things back in their place after you are done using them, this drastically reduces the number of random things that are making the mess in your living environment.
Stay motivated and never give up!
This is the Clean Fu way.
(Have your own methods of staying motivated? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.)
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