Put
a few kids in loose dirt and they’ll explore digging, scooping, stomping,
tossing, carting, and the magic that happens when water is added and stirred
with a giant stick.
Oh
my!
This
week I knelt at my bathtub with an arsenal of weapons—namely a rag, water,
cleanser and elbow grease. As I scrubbed and rinsed away the residue of the
little Grand’s backyard fun, memories rose over their excitement of discovering
wind as they tossed dirt in the sky. They created laughter in the backyard and
muddy footprints in the house, which I washed away last week. Their tans will
fade, but the echoes of their voices will remain much longer.
As
I cleaned the tub—something I seldom do now because little ones no longer
inhabit my space—I remembered my own little boys born only 3 ½ years apart. I’d
line the little guys up in the tub after a long day in sunshine, sand and water.
They’d splash and play as I entertained myself with a book first, then cleaned
the bathroom as they grew waterlogged and time for draining away their fun drew closer. After toweling them off and putting
jammies on them I’d scrub out the darkest bathtub ring you can imagine. Not
only were my kid’s fresh, clean, smelling good, and ready for bed, but my bathroom
was sparkling and waiting for morning.
In
my last post #5 Homeward Bound – Clean
& Organized, Part I, posted on May 18th, I promised I’d
reveal what my research defined as the differences between those who clean and
organized their homes and keep them that way, and those who don’t.
Here
it comes (and don’t forget my bathtub story), the difference has everything to do with mindset.
Mindset!
In
my last post I shared two experiences. The first was of a stranger pulling
the most horrific face possible at me when she considered work, and the second
was of a friend saying the word drudgery. I wonder—what was happening in their minds concerning work?
Consider
your own home right now and its significance, not its cleanliness or order. Realize, our homes are our personal and family environment, which incidentally,
is where a huge chunk of our lives are lived, lifetime relationships are formed
and maintained, and where we express our most private and personal attitudes.
Now that you’ve considered the significance of this meaningful space, let’s
move on and discuss the two incidents:
Both
the stranger and friend had a specific mindset about work, and whether they
responded with their real mindset, or one they think is universal,
appropriate or acceptable, I’ll never know. But their initial reaction, whether
false or true, was obvious. It was their publicly
projected mindset—the one they were
willing to confess, share and spread. I thought that was interesting
considering all the research I had done and the blog post I was preparing. I
mean, how lucky could I get to have two unasked for opinions right before I
posted? But it was also sad that they were both negative.
Our
mindset is like a yummy cake
made with lots of ingredients.
It’s a mixture of:
- Thoughts
- Spoken Words
- Non-Verbal Communication & Body Language
- Feelings & Emotions
- Attitudes & Beliefs
- Behavior
I’ve
been craving a giant slice of oatmeal cake for several days. Maybe you prefer
triple chocolate cake or strawberry shortcake. Picture your favorite cake right
now, and maybe add it to your menu in the next week or two, and then let’s move
on to sample the Mindset Cake and its ingredients.
What
happens in the mind of an organized person who keeps their home clean—or what
kind of cake are they baking and serving? It’s definitely different than what happen
(or the cake) of the woman who pulled an ugly face at me. Those who are clean and
organized don’t act like they are facing death simply by thinking about cleaning,
and they don’t display an attitude or being defeated or facing drudgery when
the subject is mentioned.
A clean and
organized person approaches
these topics in a much different way
than the less
clean and less organized person
because their attitudes, beliefs, thoughts,
feelings, emotions and languages
are different—their mindset is different.
Their cakes tastes different too. One is heavenly, and the other isn’t as appealing.
Grab
a scrap of paper and draw a line across it (or draw it in your mind if
visualizing comes easily to you). On each end draw a dot, and place a third dot
directly in the center. The center is average. If you like numbers, then it’s
number five. The far left is the lowest point, or if you want to assign a
number, write zero. If you hate numbers, sketch a frowny face. The point on the
far right is the highest point, a number 10, or a brilliant smile. A straight,
emotion-free face is in the center at #5.
0*__________5*__________10*
With
this visual in place, consider this: those beyond the average mark—somewhere
between 5 to 10, or between a straight face and a smile, think differently than
those on the line between 5 to 0, or between the straight face and the frown.
Our
mindset
–all of those cake ingredients—determine where we are on the line in cleaning and organizing our spaces.
Now
take a mental snapshot of your home—just the front entrance or maybe a main room—and
place it at the point where you think your home is currently, or most of the time, when you consider its usual state of being clean and organized, or not. Choose your average day, not your worst day, and
not your best one either. Pick an ordinary, daily-living type day.
My
little mental home photo slides along my line a little bit, and yours does too,
because none of us have completely uneventful lives. We face disasters, high
points of energy, sick days, busy days, play days, days when we’re expecting
company, and pajama days.
We’ve
established the graph and where we view our homes in general and know what
ingredients are in a mindset cake, so now we’re ready to expand this concept to
realize most of us will move only a very little distance away from our selected or personally chosen spot on the line. Our homes will basically stay
the same. True, we will be continually bumped and pushed one way or the other
by situations, circumstances and sometimes by those around us, but despite
external forces, we love settling back into our preferred, comfortable, chosen
spot as quickly as possible, and staying there. It’s almost like we invest in a
little dot of real estate along the line and stand guard over it. We allow
changes in how clean and organized or how messy and chaotic it gets, but
generally we keep the range fairly constant.
If
we want to change our location—move our dot—we only do so according to our own
personal mindset, and how the ingredients influence us. For example, those we live with may wish we’d lighten up—say,
allow the family to eat in the family room, or quit making everyone pick up
their own stuff (and instead, the unspoken, “you do it, if it means so much to
you,” is implied). Or they may wish or pressure us to learn how to keep the
home cleaner and organized better because they prefer finding what they need,
not feeling embarrassed when friends stop by, or dislike seeing piles of stuff stacked
on all the horizontal surfaces. But, even if someone pressures us to move
one direction or another, or we exert pressure on another person to change
their location on the line, none of us will do so permanently until our mindset
changes and it becomes who we are internally.
External forces cause
temporary changes but never create permanent mindsets.
We create our own mindset.
External
forces may want us to change our cake recipe, but we alone choose whether we
will or not. For example, if our mindset is moving toward order, no matter
where we currently are on the line, our minds will move us toward improving and
gaining more order. We’ll search for new ideas and practice them, not just observe new techniques. Behavior
follows where our mind goes, or in other words, our cake changes flavor as the
ingredients change, and we choose the ingredients. Our dot moves on the line as we
change where we want to live along the line. We will naturally slide further
toward one end or the other as we make changes.
Listen
to a few of the cake ingredients or words spoken
and felt in the mind, and attitudes
and beliefs that determine our cake, or where we choose to keep our dots.
- I love…
- I hate…
- I can…
- I can’t…
- It’s easy…
- It’s too hard…
- I want to…
- He/she/they should…
- I will…
- I won’t…
- She/he/they think I can’t…
- I know I can…
We
could list hundreds of more mindset ingredients. We could add words spoken to us, around us,
against us or for us by ourselves and others, and a huge list of past experiences
and their effects on us. These are all ingredients of our mindset cake.
When
it comes to our mindset about cleaning and organizing there are three areas our
personal mindset influences:
1.)
The
task
2.)
Requirements
to accomplish the task
3.)
Final
possible outcomes of doing/not doing the task
We
have a mindset in place about who we are, and then it branches out to these
three elements—the task, what is involved to get it done, and our perception of
the final result or outcome we choose.
Who
we are always starts on the inside of us. We think it, feel it, believe it and
live our mindset. It shapes us and we shape it.
The
mindset of a clean and organized person sounds
and feels like love and is positive, and although mostly silent and unconscious, if heard, it could
be described like this:
“I love
influencing my environment to reflect order and cleanliness. I accept
responsibility for it without excuse. I love myself as I do what I do, and I
love working toward the outcomes I prefer. I enjoy living in a clean and
organized house. I love my life! I love my home! I love my time, energy and
capabilities! I love reaching success, even if that success is as short-lived
as the length of time a plate is in
the cupboard before being used again.”
If
you didn’t catch the three elements of how mindset flows in the above
paragraph, go back and dissect it. They are there. You’ll find the overall
personal mindset, the mindset about the task, the mindset of accomplishing it, and the mindset of the final outcome.
They are subtle, implied, and also stated.
The
mindset of the less clean and less organized sounds and feels different. As you
read the next paragraph notice the thoughts and feelings are just as strong and
flow just as freely, but it has different ingredients. As you read you'll easily pick them out.
“I
hate washing dishes. I hate getting my hands wet. They dry out. The water feels
grimy and gross. It takes too much time. Why do I always have to be the one who
has to do it? I can never escape it. No one helps me. If I ask, what do I get?
Belligerence. No thanks, I’ll just do it myself and spare the drama. I hate
this—I wash them and then do it again and again. I can never get away from it. It’s
mundane and boring. Oh, look at that pile of dirty dishes from the past three
days. Disgusting! It will take me 10 hours, or maybe 10 years to clean up this
mess. I hate cleaning my kitchen, and there isn’t anything clean to cook with and
no clean dishes to eat on at the moment. How frustrating. This always happens
to me. Poor, poor me. I don’t want to be here. I hate my home. The flooring
isn’t the right color and I want granite countertops. I hate being in my
kitchen. Oh, yuck, the towel smells sour! I need new towels. I want nicer ones
and they need to be green and white striped. I can’t stand being in here. Let’s
go out to eat. I can clean up this disaster tomorrow. Maybe someone will help
me then.”
Comparing
the mindset of the two above shows obvious differences, and if you were facing these two people you'd see differing facial expressions and hear different tones of voice. One might be stomping feet and huffing and use exaggerated angry movements, and the other might smile and appear to have more energy and be more relaxed. If we listened in on the mindset of a third, fourth and fifth person in their kitchen we'd see additional variations in their mindsets.
What cake we each bake and
eat is different. How we feel about our lives, the tasks we face, what is required to accomplish the
tasks, and the outcomes are all different. We don't all enter our kitchens with the same thoughts, face our laundry with the same mindset, or pick up a cleaning product and tackle the bathroom or a closet or muddy back steps with the same attitudes and beliefs.
If
mindset isn’t something you’ve studied or given much thought to, this is enough
information to tantalize your taste buds for now. I’ll return with Part II of Mindset
later. In the meantime, I’m dishing out cake á la mode homework to enjoy.
Homework:
- Listen to yourself think and observe how you feel, specifically about your home, its upkeep and your part in it.
- Listen to the words you say, your tone, and your non-verbal languages about your home, and how you feel about your responsibility toward it.
- Listen to what you think and say and observe how you feel about your perceptions about the outcomes of your tasks.
- In essence, I’m asking you to listen and feel, and to observe your mindset, be conscious of it, and understand it better.
If
you were to draw another line with three dots and expression faces, and number it 0
through 10, and place a mental selfie of your personal Mindset about cleaning and organizing along the line, you could overlay it on the first line of how clean and organized your home generally is.
At that moment your eyes will connect the clean and organized condition of your home with your mindset about cleaning and organizing it. It can be very revealing. Chances are they will line up better than you think. I'm not saying place your mental selfie where you'd like to be—your dream come true hope of utter and unobtainable perfection—but be honest and place it where your actual personal attitudes, words, beliefs, thoughts, emotions and feelings are—your current mindset.
The
second graph line is your extra credit homework assignment! Personally, when I do this I find I'm more of an excuse maker or procrastinator than I think and set about altering my mindset. (Maybe sometime I'll share my favorite excuses and show why they are completely invalid.)
If you want one more bit of homework—extra extra credit this time—practice creating and using a positive mindset while cleaning and organizing something in or around your home until you return.
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