Our Minds often need cleaned out far more than our closets

​When I moved a couple of years ago, I took the opportunity to downsize my closet. I downsized a lot of things, really. When my buddy Solomon agreed to help me move, I told him don't worry, it won't take long, I'm going to be a minimalist.

After helping me move, he said, you weren't kidding.

So I walk into a fairly empty closet these days. I walk into an apartment without a lot of furniture or things hanging on the wall or much scattered on the floor that might trip me up.

I've cleared a lot of things out of my life. That's for sure.

It's helped me realize something. A lot of the challenges in my life have nothing to do with the stuff in my closet or in my living room or piled up in the back seat of my car.

I've come to realize transforming my life into something new and into something I can fully love isn't about transforming the spaces I live in. It's about transforming the space where life lives in me.

It's about transforming my mind.

Too often when we think about simplifying life, we focus on getting rid of the stuff we don't need on the outside. When in reality, change comes when we start getting rid of some of the stuff on the inside.

We think making room for the new me is parting with things that were part of the old me, but really, making room for a new me starts with getting rid of some of the thought patterns of the old me.

A new me isn't about giving all of my old shoes to Soles4Souls (as much as I highly encourage all of us to do so)!!

A new me is about getting rid of my shame and guilt and resentment and sense of abandonment and bitterness and self-doubt and discouragement and so many things of my mind that suffocate the life out of me in ways a messy closet never could.

Messy closets are often an easy way of saying "that's my problem."

Which is the easiest way to avoid owning that "I'm my problem."

Messy closets suck the life out of a living space.

Messy minds suck the life out of - well, life.

Emptying your closet makes room for new stuff in your closet.

Emptying your mind makes more room for life.

It's a journey. An often complicated journey. Emptying your mind of toxic thought patterns - and the people and places and things that contribute to those patterns - that is not as easy as a trip to Goodwill.

It just isn't.

But, when you start to breathe in the new life that comes with new thought patterns - that comes with surrounding yourself with encouragement and hope - you begin to lose sight of some of the things in life and begin to focus on what's truly important in life.

You wake up with a desire to live out and not clean out.

And that is the most beautiful kind of transformation.