EDIT
ORIA L FEAT URE
Getting Organized:
Choosing to Change
By Holly Uverity CPO®, Office Organizers
G
etting organized starts in your head; it’s
only when you decide to make changes in
your behavior that change actually happens. No one else can do it for you. If you
approach the process of getting organized only
because you feel pressured by coworkers, peers,
or family members, chances are you won’t be
successful.
Each habit we create generates a neural pathway in our brain and the stronger the habit, the
deeper the pathway. We default to our strongest habits; so in order to create new habits, we
must create new neural pathways that become
stronger than the old ones. It’s only when the
new behavior becomes the new habit that we
will default to it; and we always have the choice
of which behaviors to make a habit.
Clients can run into obstacles when they try
to make decisions about their items. Often,
when they get stuck in the decision-making
process, this translates to them getting stuck
in the organizing process. Many times, people start to get organized and once they begin
feeling overwhelmed and emotional, they stop.
They may start again but the same feelings of
being overwhelmed hit them and which causes them to stop again. Add to that feelings of
guilt or inadequacy for stopping and starting
and it can be an endless, destructive cycle. But
it doesn’t have to be.
It’s also important to start with baby steps.
Take one small area and focus on making a
new habit in that one area only and let the rest
go for now. Remember that you are creating
new neural pathways by choosing the new
behavior and it can take some time for those
new pathways to deepen.
Change doesn’t have to be hard but it does
have to be conscious. Oftentimes, people make
changes when the pain of keeping things the
way they are is stronger than the pain of making the change. As an example, you’ll continue
to lose important items until that frustration of
constantly looking for items you know you have
causes you more pain than taking the time to
figure out where those important items belong.
You can, however, choose to make the change
easier; don’t think of how hard it is but reframe
and refocus your thoughts. Instead of thinking, “I might need this someday”, instead think,
“Someone else can use this” or “I can always
get this again if I need to”. It’s also important
to keep the end goal in mind. Start the process
by thinking about how much more effective and
happy you’ll be in an organized environment
and you’ll find that the decision-making process is easier.
It’s also important to start with baby steps.
Take one small area and focus on making a new
habit in that one area only and let the rest go for
now. Remember that you are creating new neural pathways by choosing the new behavior and
it can take some time for those new pathways to
deepen. It’s like driving a new way to work; your
‘habit’ is to go the old way but by consciously and
consistently going the new way, in time, the new
way becomes simply the way you go to work.
By choosing to replace your old, negative stories with new positive ones, you are choosing to
make the change easy and perhaps more importantly, laying the groundwork for the creation of
those new neural pathways. SBT
Office Organizers is The Entrepreneur’s Organizer. Founded in 1993, they
work with business people to create solutions for their organizational challenges. Contact them at 281.655.5022, www.OfficeOrganizers.com, or
www.fb.com/OfficeOrganizers.
[ MAY 2015 ] WWW.SBTMAGAZINE.NET 19