Natural disasters, trauma, and “stuff”

Hurricane Ian just came barreling through Florida and is about to attack Georgia and South Carolina.

These natural disasters are devastating—whether they bring water, mud, wind, fire, or a combination through your home and your life, the trauma and destruction are immediate and massive.

And when that happens, survival is all you think about. And hopefully, your neighbors … depending on your own bandwidth and how you’ve been impacted.

I wouldn’t wish this kind of experience on ANYONE … and there is a lesson or opportunity for learning and growth here for us, too.

So often we struggle between urgent and important and because urgent WITHOUT importance is still loud and demanding, we often try to shut it up, telling ourselves that we’ll get back to what is important as soon as we make the noise stop—this is one of our 200 lies.

Trouble is, there’s almost always more noise behind the last urgent thing we took care of.

So then we find ourselves on that crazy hamster wheel of addressing the urgency, quieting it down, addressing the urgency, quieting it down, and watching “important” slip away towards the horizon.

We don’t need to live through the horror of Ian or the Tubbs fire or the Phuket Tsunami to see that our attention (and our lives) are our most valuable assets.

What we choose to focus on matters.

Because when disaster arrives, urgent and important are totally in sync.

So the next time you are staring at a pile of unruly papers or rumpled clothes, ask yourself how long you actually want to spend in “confusion” or trying to decide on a strategy before taking ANY action.

And then remind yourself that when letting go of clutter, it’s almost impossible to make a big mistake.

Sure, you could let something go that you may need “someday.”

But it’s seldom a matter of life or death, right?

 It’s much easier to make those decisions when we right-size the consequences of our choices and remove the story. 

A tragedy actually IS a tragedy. Tossing out a random lid to a Tupperware container and then finding the bottom 3 weeks later is a minor inconvenience by comparison.

Too many ideas to choose from … so you do NONE of them?! Register for Your Next Big Thing™ and see how easy it is to get the right things done in the right order—no more guesswork or procrastination.