My friends describe me as a “very organized person” and they’re right. I have to be, given all the plates I spin. But I do have my share of clutter and unattended piles around the house. I get overwhelmed by the pace of life and the volume of information and responsibilities that come with being a member of the “sandwich generation.”
So when a review copy of Jennifer Louden’s book, The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year
Louden’s new book takes a more feminine, heart-based approach to life planning that appeals to me because she says you don’t have to know the “big picture.” Instead, you can take just one step at a time or simply the “next do-able step.” That’s a comforting mantra to remember in our sometimes over-committed lives.
The Life Organizing Process
By using some of Louden’s tools, we can find time to tune in to our own voice and focus on our own dreams and desires with self-kindness and nourishing self-care. The way the book is structured, you can find tools to use in 30 seconds or on a Sunday night as you’re planning the coming week. The life organizing process consists of five steps you can use when planning your week or your day:
- Connect: Acknowledge and engage with your own life force.
- Feel: Tune into your heart, which knows what your next step is and gives you information your head cannot.
- Inquire: Ask mindful questions in order to discover possibilities you couldn’t see before.
- Allow: Open to your next step, allowing love, allowing inspiration, allowing your body and heart to inform you.
- Apply: Take action. It is the ultimate goal.
Louden provides simple questions we can ask ourselves to help us make decisions in many different situations. For example, it’s mid-morning and several minor crises have derailed you. Your plan for the day is in shambles, your to-do list feels like a boulder around your neck, and all you want to do is hide. She reminds us there’s another way. Take a deep breath, reach your arms overhead and exhale with a huge sigh. Put your hand on your heart and gently ask: “What choice feels the easiest in this moment?”
There’s a wonderful menu of simple exercises to help you connect with your body when you’re in the midst of insanity:
- What’s at Hand: Touch something and notice its texture — your shirt, your skin, the couch.
- Eavesdrop: Focus on a sound in your environment — bird song, wind in the trees, traffic.
- Ear Love: Massage the outsides of your ears from top to bottom.
- Liberate Your Neck: Allow your head to hang forward like a ripening sunflower; breathe and gently allow your shoulders to drop away from your neck. Move your neck gently from side to side.
There are mindful questions to ask everyday. For example, What do I need to know right now? How can I be gentle with myself in this situation? What am I not allowing myself to know?
The most important section of the book for me is “Minimum Requirements for Self-Care.” What must you absolutely have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to stay in touch with your center? By completing this list and posting it somewhere visible, you’ll discover you have less leeway to stray from what is essential.
One final key takeaway: So much of our experience of overwhelm comes from the story we tell ourselves about what we have to do. One of the most beloved tools in The Life Organizer is to sort your list by “have to,” “could do,” and “let go of.” Louden reports that having the permission to use that frame to look at our life — everything is not a have to — opens up the idea that overwhelm might not be this law of the universe that we must experience. It might actually be something we have a relationship to and that we can choose to change.
The Life Organizer helps us become comfortable trusting ourselves, our instincts and choices and directing our life more from that place. Not all of the time, but more. That’s really comforting to know.