With the claim ofKeep what you need and find happiness!, three months ago I got my hands on the book Dan sha ri: order your life, by Hideko Yamashita. Everything that sounds like happiness is suggestive to me, but I don't have such a good relationship with order. Do you tidy your house and order your life? Happiness got the better of me and I started reading it.
This reading was followed by The magic of order and Happiness after order, by Marie Kondo, titles that are part of the Japanese tidiness phenomenon that began with The art of throwing, by Nagisa Tatsumi, and the origin of this new trend that revolutionises even the way clothes are folded.
What is new and attractive to me about this Japanese tradition is how physically arranging a space can bring about changes in our lives. Every time we are confronted with the things to be sorted it is as if, in a way, we are confronted with ourselves.. To tidy the house, a room, is to tidy oneself and a chaotic room is a reflection of a chaotic mind, say Yamashita and Kondo, respectively. It seems that when a house is in disarray, the cause is not only physical., It is a reflex that we instinctively do to distract our attention when we have a problem.
Ordering to enable change
I can also see that organisation is a thermometer to discover what is going on inside me when, before an exam or the delivery of something important, I have a compulsive need to tidy up my room and study table. I have to get down to studying, but I can't get it out of my head that I need to tidy my room. For Marie Kondo, this happens because we need to put 'something in order' and not because of a real desire to tidy the room. In fact, she explains, the urge to tidy up usually disappears once the crisis (in my case, the exam) has passed.
Cleaning and tidying up can be a good starting point to discover the real cause of a malaise and organising can become the instrument to discover what needs to be readjusted in your life. Once we have made this change of observer, of seeing reality in a different way, and after doing a visioning exercise to imagine our ideal lifestyle, we would get down to work and draw up a plan of action to organise our home with the popularly called Konmari Method, that Kondo develops so well in her book.
Order to be happy
When your room is clean and organised, you have no choice but to examine your inner state.
It is estimated that such an organisation can last half a year but, rest assured, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. After that, she says, maintenance takes two hours a year. For me, who has always been rather untidy, it pays off, because I want to 'tidy up my mind and achieve the real objective behind these processes, which has more to do with the psychic and with establishing the lifestyle I want.
Keys to the Konmari Method
1. The first thing Kondo suggests is to do this organisation all at once and not a little at a time. Our space will be drastically transformed 'bringing about a change that will affect our emotions and this will affect our way of thinking and our habits, Kondo points out.
2. Organisation must start with disposal. In deciding what to keep, we must identify what we want to keep, not what we want to throw away. We should keep the things that lead us to answer the question: does this make me happy? The only criterion is that the object touches our hearts and makes us happy.
To choose, Kondo recommends starting with the objects that have the least value and then moving on to those that have the most value (in terms of emotions). The correct sequence would be: clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous objects, and finally sentimental objects and memories. We must decide with intuition and not with reason, as the mind adds obstacles such as the function of these objects, information (they contain useful information) and emotional attachment, and if rarity is added, it is even more difficult to choose what to eliminate.
Strategies for getting rid of sentimental objects
The secret that the author shares for making a choice is to hold each object in your hand and give yourself time to feel what the object conveys to you. In this tutorial on Youtube, in which the author herself teaches how to fold clothes, the emotional relationship that he tries to create with the objects. Also, how important the hands are in the oriental world to generate energy.
On the very difficult part of discarding objects of sentimental value, two ideas seem to me to be salvageable.
First, how storing objects from the past that do not bring us happiness today or that link us to extinguished relationships prevents us from living in the here and now.
The second is the key points that the Japanese tidiness consultant proposes for getting rid of these delicate objects. It is a matter of thinking about what their purpose was and whether they are still fulfilling it today; if not, we should thank them for their service and let them go. œTo put things in order is to put your past in order in order to readjust your life and take the next step forward.
3. The last step is to find a place to keep everything we have decided to keep. A task that should be done at the end of the whole process of discarding what does not make us happy.
Get your house in order and your life in order?
I must confess that I sometimes worry about the excessive personalisation with which objects are treated. Kondo explains that she has been very introverted and that the relationship she has had with them has been very important. This new way of tidying up is based on continually listening to our emotions. After all, if what I keep in my home brings me joy, we already know what the mirror neurons will do with it 🙂 and the new actions that will go hand in hand with it.
As soon as I finished these books I was tempted to put them into practice, and since last week I have started to do so. I am open to discovering what changes in my ordination process will be linked to my personal life. Once I have finished, I would like to share their effectiveness. See you in 6 months!
