The state of my office reflects my state of mind. If things are bursting at the seams, so am I.

Have you ever noticed when your desk is a mess you feel out of sorts too? You might not pick up on your sense of disarray right away. In fact, that state of chaos might just seem normal to you. That is, until you start to clean up the piles of papers, the litter, the stuff that has accumulated over weeks, months or even years. When you create space for yourself with a rigorous decluttering regimen, suddenly the mental detritus lifts like a fog and you can think clearly for the first time in a very long while.

Then that clarity starts to seep into other areas of your life. You might observe the veil of cloudy thinking fall away, prompting you to capture your inner wisdom. You might start to make different choices based on the released energy that had been blocked by all that junk that surrounded you for years.

I recently made a decision to focus on just one area of my business. Subconsciously, I had been resisting this decision for almost a decade. But once I made the choice to put my efforts there, I magically had so much energy! It was as if I had regained a new flow of mental and emotional currency in the blink of an eye.

It all started with the shelf closest to me.

For the last five years, I filled that shelf with all my dreams, hopes and aspirations. It got so full I started lining books into two rows, one behind the other. I crammed more papers into it, thinking my dream would be realized if I only stuffed another thing on the shelf.

But that bookshelf, like our inner selves, started to sag under the weight of my resistance. I failed to recognize that what I was really doing was forcing an outcome that simply wouldn’t come at all. So I emptied all the contents, tossed out a laundry basket full of papers, gave away books, rearranged others to be placed at the farthest end of the room. I scrubbed the shelves clean, then placed only my highest priorities on them.

It wasn’t an act of giving up. It was an act of surrender.

Surrendering to What Shall Be.

So often we push ourselves (and others) into roles that do not serve the highest good. We try to make things happen, resisting the inevitable, while forgetting that we already possess everything we are so desparately searching for outside ourselves.

The moment I cleared the deck with focus and finality was the moment things started to shift. People showed up in record time to help me realize my new business idea. Within one week my skeleton notion had been converted into a real possibility. With the help of friends I began to see that my life’s purpose had merely taken on a new form. The function was still the same.

If you feel stuck, empty a shelf and give away a few things. You won’t be giving away your dream, but the resistance to the path that will lead you to it faster.