Spring Cleaning with a Twist

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Last night I was reading "The Science of Success" by James Arthur Ray for the second time. Like aging wine, the book gets better with each reading. He was one of the teachers in the wildly successful DVD, "The Secret."

James talks a lot about what I've written in this blog, namely the importance of making a life-changing decision to reprogram your mindset and change the way you perceive yourself and the world around you. He said something that triggered a long buried thought.

Raise your hand if you've gone through the annual ritual of clearing away the cobwebs in your closet. Maybe you've held a garage sale or two (or have been meaning to). Bulky winter clothes automatically go into hibernation in the cedar closet in exchange for old summer clothes. Sound familiar?

Now, how many of you see this spring cleaning ritual as closely connected with the law of attraction? If this one caught you off balance, you're not the only one. I was thrown for a loop too.

Stay with me on this.

Go take a look in your closet. Are there articles of clothes in there that you haven't worn in years? Perhaps you're saving them because you think one day they will come back into vogue (how about those bell bottomed jeans?).

You say they're a couple sizes too tight yet you're secretly hoping you'll lose enough weight to squeeze back into them?

Well, what about those shoes, belts, hats, caps, blouses or whatnot -- when was the last time you wore any of that stuff?

Last night I decided to take a good look and see for myself.

What I saw shocked me.

To my utter amazement, I still had a handful of custom-made suits and shirts that I used to wear during my Wall Street days (early to mid 90's). With the exception of professionally expanding the pants of my favorite charcoal grey pinstriped suit, I haven't worn any of the suits since the mid-nineties! Running my fingers along the closet, my jaws dropped at the sight of musty, yellowish ring-around-the-collar shirts that hadn't seen daylight since forever. What's more, some of those custom-made shirts still have plastic covering over them because for the life of me, I could never seem to find a matching tie so I never wore them!

My goodness. How could I have not noticed this?

This, of course, prompted me to examine my inner thinking. I walked out of the closet and sat on the edge of my bed with my right elbow on my thigh and the palm of my hand cradling my chin, deep in thought, just like Plato.

Why do you have so many unused clothing hanging in there Stephen huh??

Suddenly I had a light bulb sort of moment.

It dawned on me that on a subconscious level, I was hoping to save money by waiting until after shaving off unwanted pounds so that I could wear some of those tight fitting clothes again. Then my mind did a quick flashback to the price tag on some of the clothes in there. Much my chagrin, I found that I hadn't wanted to part with the more pricey ones even though I hadn't worn them in years!

Wow! What a shocking revelation!

Now, I don't think of myself as a hoarder because my mother used to tell me that ever since I was a kid, I never had a problem throwing things in the garbage or giving them to someone else. The moment I had no use for something, I always found a way to get rid of it. My home is a testament to that. It is the least cluttered place you'd ever see in your life.

But NOOOOOO, NOT MY CLOTHES! The closet is jam packed with em!

At that moment, I knew what I had to do this weekend.

Forget garage sales and e-bay. Give away clothes that no longer fit or those that are no longer of interest. Why not?

Think of it this way. If you have hard time giving away money as part of the law of giving, why not start by giving away clothes? Psychologically speaking, it's easier to give away articles of clothing compared to dollar bills or checks.

But remember that what you give away, you get back. In the last article or two, I mentioned that if you give away books, you'll get books back. If you give away money, you'll get money back. Give away love, you'll get love back. So be prepared. If you give away your clothes, you'll get new ones in no time flat. After all, nature abhors a vacuum and will soon fill it back up for you.

Do you see what happens when you make a life-changing decision? Everything you do and say becomes congruent with your level of thinking. Little things like the annual spring cleaning ritual take on an entirely different meaning simply because your perceptions have changed.

Thanks to my bedtime reading last night, I discovered that I had been harboring one last piece of scarcity thinking. By hoarding old clothes and not giving them away, I was allowing scarcity thoughts to permeate my mind.

Here I come closet, ready or not! GRRRRRRR!

Food for thought: Clean out your closet and give what you no longer want away. Affirm to yourself that what you give away, you will be able to replace easily and effortlessly. Your attitude about giving truly determines whether you have an abundance or scarcity type of thinking.