Okay, we're living in really tough times. Jobless rates are soaring, home values are plummeting, 401K's are dwindling and bad people are running off with good people's money. And nothing is the way it was - or likely to be again.
Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know who we are, or rather who we could become. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know what we're made of, what we stand for, how good we are. And sometimes it takes a crisis for us to let go of the past - so we can grab hold of the future.
Darwin was right. It's not the strongest of the species that survives - or even the smartest. It's the one that can adapt to change - whether you're a country, a company, an institution - or an individual. And if we want to survive, never mind thrive, if we want to rescue ourselves from almost certain extinction, we've got to let go of anything and everything that would suck us back into the slime.
So I'm asking anyone within earshot to go home and throw out fifty things. (And, by the way, magazines and catalogs only count as one.) Why fifty, you ask? Because once you make it to fifty, a kind of powerful momentum takes over; before you know it, the throwing out thing becomes a habit, an ongoing mind-set. And then something really wonderful happens: you take control of your life. You start living it and it stops living you.
Look, there's only so much room - in our homes, offices and heads for all the physical and emotional debris - I call it "life plaque" - that we've allowed to build up. And there's only so much time before we're overtaken by the "slime" So there's no time to waste dithering about whether all this stuff should stay or go. It's got to go. And believe me, you've got plenty of stuff to throw out: You've got all those mis-matched socks, the single gloves, your teenager's old tricycle - and that drawer in the kitchen. You know that drawer. There are keys in that drawer that haven't opened up anything in decades. Throw 'em out. And when you get really warmed up, you'll get to the good stuff: the old regrets, the anger, being right about how wrong it all is, how this wasn't supposed to happen to you, and about how your best years are behind you.
Hey, and while you're at it, why not throw out that old, tired view of yourself - that set-in-stone notion about what you're good at and what you'll never be good at, your conviction that the way you do it is the only way to do it, your old beliefs about how things should be done and life should be lived - and what you need to be happy. Give it up.
Here's the thing, you can't grow if you don't let go. Of course, letting go takes courage - something that might seem in short supply right about now. So where do we find it? By taking a look at our "defining moments" from the past. A defining moment is a moment when you found something in yourself you didn't know you had and pulled it out. It might be a time when you said, "Here's how it's going to go," or when you drew a line - or erased one, if that's what needed to be done. But it's always a time after which you never thought of yourself in the same way. We've all got them. It doesn't have to be the time when you cured world hunger. It could just be the time when you fell down and got back up. Now's the time to go back into your life and remember them - share them with people you're close to. Listen to their defining moments. Here's what you'll discover: a pattern of courage. You'll find that you've already got the confidence you need to move forward into the change - not away from it - in spite of the noise, chaos and unpredictability of the moment.
This isn't the time to hunker down and wait for the light at the end of the tunnel. You could wait a lifetime. It is exactly the right time to burst onto the scene with the energy and optimism that comes from clearing the clutter and reinventing your life.
I'm not kidding about "fifty."
Gail Blanke, author, Throw Out Fifty Things - Clear the Cutter, Find Your Life; www.throwoutfiftythings.com