Get the Kondo Effect for Your Mental Space Marie Kondo has made a significant impact in the world of space clearing, and personal organizing. She’s changed our way of thinking about our stuff and has positively transformed many lives. I’d like to extend my deepest appreciation for Ms. Kondo and share how our work is very similar. I had a client come to me recently that had been struggling with money. She was in debt and hated having to review her financial information. She’d start to feel constricted when she needed to sign into her online bank account. She’d even get a stomach and felt nauseated. This wasn’t a pleasant experience, so she coped by avoiding it all together. This only made it worse. You see, thoughts and emotions can be like personal clutter. If we avoid them, they just start stacking up in the corner. Then we have to rent a storage unit to make more room. Our emotional clutter can also be the accumulation of other people’s stuff, like inheriting furniture and brick-a-brack from the family. It’s the kind of inheritance that we may not even realize we’ve been given. A money mindset can certainly be inherited. The trick is to figure out if it’s supportive, or destructive. My client was in a destructive pattern with her money mindset. She came to me to help her declutter and do some mental Spring cleaning. Here’s a couple things to know:

1. We’re all attempting to get our needs met. Our basic human needs are: certainty (safety), uncertainty (variety), significance, growth, connection, and contribution.
2. We meet our needs through four behavioral styles. When we can observe our behavior, and determine whether it’s supportive or destructive, that’s when we can begin to make positive changes and heal.
3. We all develop certain coping styles when we’re younger, in order to get our needs met. Again, reflecting on how you cope under stress, and deciding to make changes, will help you live your best life.

My client discovered that she was using avoidance as a coping style and learned it’s one of four major psychological traps. This behavior felt good to her in the moment, and gave her some temporary relief, but wasn’t going to serve her in the long run. Awareness is the precursor to change. We started to take inventory of her memories, and emotions around money. I helped her find past experiences she had around money, and we healed them. These memories surprised her. They weren’t the obvious memories she thought would be holding her back from feeling prosperous and abundant. That’s the beauty of this intuitive type of coaching, because the client is resourceful, and has all the answers. Once they can move out of a stressed state, their wise heart and mind know how to guide them to heal in a way that’s just right for them. Here’s what helped. I taught her how to recognize unresourceful emotions and patterns and stop them in their tracks. She learned how to do a pattern interrupt in order to choose a new experience. She learned how to rewire in new behaviors and emotional states. She learned new ways to organize her behavior to create positive, lasting changes. Now, she feels at ease and confident with her finances. Money is no longer a source of stress for her. She believes now that money is currency, and it’s always flowing. Her new mindset is bringing her joy. Just like Marie Kondo says, “If it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it.” And, that’s exactly what we did.