speaker 0:   0:00
Hello and welcome. It's Kelly Jim McCann, your professional organizer and clutter coach, and you are listening to de cluttered by to sign, ah, podcast, where I provide practical guidance to help you de clutter your life with ease. The topic today is personal. Expectations would start by sharing a quote from Margaret Neil, she said. Expectations drive behavior. The higher your expectations, the better you tend to reform. I think that is spot on when we set expectations for ourselves. When we plan out in advance what we're going to do, how we're going to do it. We are much more likely to follow through. So wanna share a quick little anecdote with you? We just had town meeting here in the 802 Otherwise, Vermont, um, got one area code 802 all the way through. So that's what we call it and tell Meeting day is its voting day. Um, the smaller towns actually have a town meeting. Everybody shows up. There's lively discussion. There's a floor vote. It's pretty awesome. I live in the city, though, if you can call it a city. I think it's a wonderful little city. It's Burlington, and we don't actually have town meeting because we are were just big enough that that doesn't work. So we go to the polls and all of discussion takes place prior, and there is plenty of it. Trust may. Anyway, As you can imagine, there's lots of campaigning that goes on. There's a lots of door knocking, and I had an interaction with a campaign volunteer. She came around, we had a great conversation. We talked about the candidates and, you know, her main goal was she wanted to get people to the polls. Now there is never a problem getting me to the polls. I'm like Johnny on the spot. That boat is so darn important to me. So as we're wrapping up our conversation, she's asking me some questions. Now, these questions, they're gonna sound pretty personal. She asks me, Am I going to vote? Well, yes, of course. She says, Well, how are you gonna get to the polls and told her how I was gonna get to the polls? She's like, Well, when are you gonna go? Told her when I was gonna go because anybody else gonna go with you. And I was like, yes, somebody else is gonna go with me. And then I was like this how it's gonna play out. And by this time I'm really smiling and she asks me if I'm thinking about anything in particular because I'm trying. I'm trying not to sort of smile out loud and laugh. I don't want her to think I'm laughing at her because I am definitely not. So I confessed to her that I was totally onto her methods and she's found. She said. You got May and it was obvious to me that all of that questioning that she was doing, that it wasn't prying. It was all about helping me to commit and follow through on getting to the polls. So why am I bringing it up? Because this strategy works so well for all kinds of things that we need to commit to the things that we want to dio. It helps us actually follow through and get them done. Setting an intention in detail, naming a time in a date in imagining yourself doing it exponentially increases the possibility that you will actually follow through and do it. So how do we apply this to Claire Cleary? Let's say that you need to de clutter your your closet, that that's a goal of yours. So if you say to yourself, if you set an appointment with yourself and you say tomorrow at 2 30 I am going to spend 30 minutes de cluttering my closet. And then if you paint a picture of yourself doing it if you If you envision yourself letting go of all the items that no longer work for you, you are going to greatly increase the odds that you're gonna follow through. You'll be setting a personal expectation that you will actually do it, and now you've also with that painting of the picture you've also you've also practiced for the task at hand. You've imagined yourself doing it, and if you're imagining yourself doing it, you should be imagining yourself, doing it with ease so that when you get to the task, you're gonna feel much more comfortable with it because you've already had that trial run in your head. And the thing is, our minds don't really differentiate between what we imagine ourselves doing and what we're actually doing. That's the really great thing about our imagination is that we can practice for all kinds of things and get really comfortable with it. So when we combine that that tactic with setting the expectation man, it makes doing stuff that might feel a little tough, so much easier, and it really increases the odds that we're gonna follow through and do it. So I want you to give this a try. That's what I want to encourage you to do. And once you do, they try this exercise. See if it works for you. Set an intention in detail. Name a date a time. Imagine yourself doing it. And then I would love to hear how it worked out for you. Pop on over to Facebook and let me know whether whether it worked really well or whether it was an epic fail. I'd love to hear either way. Now, if you need a little more support in your decluttering and organizing, I want to encourage you to join our private Facebook. Hello group. Clear your clutter. Find your happy. The people there are amazingly supportive there. They're just so gracious and, um, so generous with the help of the support that they offer each other. I'm just blown away by it. You can find us at clear your clutter. Find your happy on Facebook. Um, click the joint button. I will be thrilled to let you in.