Love Yourself Organized

It’s March 27th, and you have exactly five days to get all of your business receipts and paperwork to your tax accountant before her last and final deadline that she requires for a guarantee that your taxes will be filed on time.   

You walk into your office and utter a sigh of defeat as you glance around at the disorganized piles on your desk and credenza. You don’t even want to look inside the file drawers where you have been haphazardly shoving even more papers and folders in feeble attempts to clear a little space on your desk so that you could work.  

The truth is, you haven’t actually worked in your office for weeks. As a result, you’ve migrated your workspace and the mess that goes with it, to the dining room table.  

Now, faced with the seemingly impossible task of getting all you sh*t together to send to your accountant, you go right to beating yourself up: 

“I am a disorganized slob.” 

“No wonder I can’t make enough money.”

“I can’t believe I put myself in this position AGAIN this year!”

“I’ll never be able to learn to stop procrastinating?”

Out of pure necessity, you decide you’re going to get your paperwork organized for once and for all. After all, you have five whole days to get the job done. And you hope that in the process, you’ll find all the paperwork that your tax accountant needs.

You diligently clear a space on your desk (by moving those piles onto the floor), and start going through the first pile. You sort, shred and toss the papers - as you’ve been taught - and feel relieved when you finish the first one. You continue on all afternoon, working through piles, finding tax receipts here and there, and feeling determined to complete the task at hand.

Then something happens - when it’s time to stop for the day, you take a good look around and realize that you barely even made a dent in your piles! As a matter of fact, the room actually looks messier than when you started - thanks to the newly sorted piles sitting on your desktop.

Once again, thoughts about being disorganized, a slob, and a procrastinator rear their ugly heads, and the feeling of defeat washes over you.

The results are that over the next few days, the feelings of shame or disappointment lead to you to INACTION,  and you find yourself, in order to avoid those uncomfortable feelings, doing everything instead of organizing your papers. You might find yourself doing “unimportant” busy work on your business, or responding to other peoples’ “emergencies,” or procrastinating by surfing the internet.  

What is the end result? On the afternoon of the day before your tax documents are due, in an almost panicked state, you tear through your office piles, unearthing any and all receipts and materials you can find that pertain to the finances of your business. Then throwing them in an envelope, you drive them directly to your accountant’s office the next morning and vow to yourself that this IS NOT going to happen again next year.

The Never-Ending Cycle

The high of starting a new project like organizing your paperwork and then the low of giving up is a cycle with which most humans are all too familiar.  

In the beginning, we are super motivated as we begin what we’re sure is THE answer to finally becoming organized. Sure, we’ve tried many things before. We have shelves full of organizing books; we’ve gone on more than one shopping spree to The Container Store, and heck, we actually spent time setting up a filing system last year.

But this time, we are convinced, will be different. So, with gusto, we roll up our sleeves and get to work. And we plow through - for a while.  

But then those niggling thoughts pop up again, and just like that, our motivation dissipates, and we’re back to our old ways again. 

So, what goes wrong?

Negative Motivation

In the above scenario, even though you were probably unaware of it, from the beginning, you were trying to hate yourself organized. All your thinking and motivation was based on negativity and force. Believe me, motivation from a negative place will always fail – every time. Think about it - you have proof in the many times you’ve started and stopped trying to get organized over and over again.  

The fact is, motivation from self-loathing never lasts for the long haul. Negative force will always inspire resistance rather than cooperation. The crazy thing is that you want to be organized so that you can feel better about yourself. However, being disgusted and angry with yourself feels terrible. So, to avoid all those bad emotions, you give up. 

Love is a Better Choice

What if instead of hating yourself organized, you tried loving yourself instead? There are countless benefits of treating yourself with kindness. You have worked long and hard - as a business owner, wife, mother, or volunteer - for many years, don’t you deserve to be treated better? What if you decided to think of getting organized as a gift to your glorious, hardworking self? 

Some people believe that if they were kind to themselves, they wouldn’t be motivated to change, but the opposite is actually true. You can’t mentally beat yourself up and expect to stay motivated to change that which you hate about yourself.  

Thinking kind and loving thoughts about yourself and your abilities will inspire you to take the action needed to reach your goals. That doesn’t mean letting yourself off the hook – it just means you are motivating yourself from a place of positive thoughts and actions rather than hateful, punitive ones.  

So next time, instead of thinking, “I am a disorganized slob,” you could try on the thought, “I can be the organized person that I want to be.”

It’s time to re-start your journey toward being an organized person with a new perspective. This time, make your effort one of positive change that is guided by loving-kindness. Undoubtedly, you will make mistakes along the way – but, when you find yourself taking steps backward or falling into old habits, kindly forgive yourself and get right back on track - out of love and compassion.  

This time, decide to love yourself organized.