Spring (Mental) Cleaning

From Lou Tice:

How much unnecessary junk is accumulating in your attic? No, not the one in your house - I mean your mental attic.

Since we are in the middle of what many of us call "spring cleaning" time, many of us sort out and discard possessions we no longer use and give them to charity or sell them at a garage sale. But have you ever thought about how valuable it could be if you took the time to perform the same kind of mental housecleaning?

Removing the superfluous, the unnecessary, the destructive, or the outlived from our mental attics is a vital part of making room for new possibilities. I know one man who often says, with his jaw tightly clenched and a no-nonsense expression on his face, "I know who I am!"

But we can't possibly stay the same if we are living creatures. Each surprise, each unpredictable turn, each new venture, produces the potential for new insights, new responses, and new resilience. A willingness to change is a prerequisite for openness to life. And without that willingness, we become stuck in our need for stability and certainty. Eventually, if we stay stuck long enough, we stagnate. We exist, but we don't really live.

Is there any junk in your mental attic that you would be better off without - a grudge, a hurt, maybe an outgrown assumption? A job, an outworn "must" or "should," or an old anger? Why not clean it out?