S10E17: Declutter your life to be Stress-Free Emotionally

Hello my beautiful survivors. This is Kirby, not the host and creator behind Stroke Surviving the Odds. The podcast. The mission of the show is to help you move forward past defense of the stroke, reclaim your life, reclaim your identity. How do I know this? Well, because 28 years ago I suffered a brain stem dissection myself that led to coma in the locked in syndrome. So in the show, I'm sharing everything that I've learned in the last 28 years that helped me survive this world as a stroke survivor and adapt to my best ability and live my best life today.

Grab a pen and paper because the faintness of ink is better than the best memory. Let the transformation of you begin. Before we move forward, I would like to clean house tell you that our show is on audio podcast on Spotify, Apple iTunes and Google Podcast. Here you can like, follow, subscribe, but you can also download the episode. This way you can listen to it while you're doing your own rehabilitation.

Sounds good. And on YouTube, I have once a week these amazing guests. They share their stories, but as well as how they're also living their best lives, how they're adapting. Not without fails, but they share every single strategies that they have to help you live your best life. So as you can see, this podcast is all about unity and collectiveness.

We are in this together and you are not alone. All right, let's go guys. You know how I start my episode? I often tell you how I'm inspired for a specific episode. I get inspired every day and these past few days here in Montreal it has been super sunny, almost spring like. Still cold, but the snow is melting.

You see where I'm going with this? So I thought this is an amazing time to introduce today's episode, Springtime Purge Your Life. How does that sound? Yep, you might really want to grab your pen and paper because I'm going to give ideas on things you can purge. Purge means also declutter. OK, so you know how I'm always saying that your space is how you are going to recover? A cluttered space is a cluttered mine, and a cluttered mine is a cluttered space.

So I want to start with this before we go in other areas of life, and I want you to look around you. Look at the room you're in right now and look around you and notice what is either out of place, what is garbage, things that can be dusting, things that can be thrown away or donated. Does everything in your room help you become the best version of yourself and help you be covered to the maximum, or is the room you're in weighing you down?

When you go in it, you're like, oh, because if it's not a hell yes, this room is conducive to me living my best life and being productive. Some work has to be done, and that's what the show's about today. It's not about telling you what to do. But I'm going to share what worked for me over the years and what is still working and what works not so well.

OK, so you guys are ready. OK, give me a SEC. I know that when we say the word declutter, a lot of people think of decluttering their closets, but there's many areas in our life that we can declutter and that can alleviate a lot of that emptiness and empty we dead weight that we carry along with us. But to make everybody happy, I am going to be talking first about decluttering your closets, your drawers. But before we talk about that, I want to tell you I'm not an Army brat.

I, I know nothing about army. But the one thing I do know is that when people go to the Army, enter the army, the very first thing or one of the first things that they teach them in their living quarters is to keep everything, all surfaces clear and clean. Their beds are made and if you look in that trunk where they have their personal effects, everything is in order. Everything is orderly.

It's not just shoved in there. So they don't carry tons and tons of stuff. They're in the Army. They have the bare necessities. So if it's good enough for Army people, should it not be good enough for us? Now, if you if I look around my room right now, of course there's little things that are misplaced, but there is no garbage. I make sure that every week I pick up the big garbage, the big piles of papers, I go through them, but there's no garbage. As for say there's a few pins here and there, there's a you know, my desk has a few things.

My my camera, my ring light, my Bible, my pens and papers that I used to work OK. But when I look at my room, there's nothing on the floor in my whole apartment. There is nothing because I trip and I learned the hard way, guys, I have broken toes. I have broken toenails. I have taken them off completely.

I have fallen. I had bruised my face completely black. I broke some limbs. So I know what I'm talking about. Guys. Keep your floors around you in your living quarters as clear as possible. OK, if you have a wheelchair or you're walking around with a cane or any sort of adaptation, you need to be able to maneuver around that. But at the same time, you need to have a discussion with the people you live.

You see, we have a thing. When we are stroke survivors, we tend to think that most of everything has to pertain to us. We cannot impose to other people what we need. That's where you got to pick your battles. I like my refrigerator or at my boyfriend's house, the refrigerator, to be orderly. I learned a long time ago I can't bend down a long time. So instead of going down in the fridge and moving stuff around, I keep everything in clear plastic bins. So I have all my olives, all my salsas, all my jars in plastic bins.

So instead of moving jars, I take out the bin and I put it on the stove. Does that make sense? So your living quarters should also be the same? Maybe you guys can negotiate not having shoes in the walkway the minute you walk in. I don't have any carpets. I'm on wood floor everywhere. You see, my apartment is wood floor. My boyfriend's house, There's a carpet in the living room. Guess what I do?

I trip on it every time I'm there and every day multiple times. OK, so look around you right now, where you are at. So first of all, we're going to go in the closet and in your drawers, of course, those are your living quarters. Those are your personal effects. I would love for you to look and take one drawer at a time, not 15, not 4, not 611 category of your closet, not the whole entire closet because it becomes overwhelming now in that, in that if there's colors you never wear, you never like they're not your colors, fits clothes you've been keeping from high school.

In the event that you lose 50 pounds, 20 lbs and you you're gonna put it again. No. So anything that does not fit that you do not like the color you bought on a whim and and with your impulse, because we're stroke survivors and we're very impulsive because we think that the end of the world is happening and there's never going to be any other of that exact item.

So we're going to buy it. Some people buy multiples. So anything that no style, no fit, no color that you do not like, that you haven't worn in the last six months, a year, bye, bye. OK, What you can do is in the bottom of your closet or in the corner of your room if you want, or under your bed because that box is not going to be staying there because it's going to become cluttered.

So you're going to shove it under the bed. You're going to kick it under the bed. OK, It could. So for each category of clothing, you're going to do that. Girls, your makeup brushes, I had double S and triples of everything. Did I use them? No, so I kept some here with me at my place and I kept I keep the most the ones I use the most at my boyfriend's and I donated the rest. I put them all in a Ziploc as a set and I donated them. Your makeup bags, girls, if you're someone that likes to wear makeup, if you're someone that does not wear makeup and you bought a mascara 6 months ago, I want you to throw it away.

A mascara's only good for three months. OK, guys, your belt, your belt, your ties. I want you to check. Just use the one or two or three that you use all the time. The rest can go right now. We want to declutter. We want to purge our whole entire life. OK, so you get the idea. And usually what happens is that when you start, you're just on a roll and OK, and, and, and you're gonna see shoes.

The same things. Running shoes. Some people have 20 pairs of running shoes. Sell them on Facebook Marketplace as a bundle. Sell 3 pairs at once and make one price for all three. That's amazing. Stroke survivors. Many of us can't go back to work. And when you go back to work, you can't go back to the job you had or you're on disability and you don't get the the money that you want and that you deserve. So this is an extra, a little way to make a little bit of extra income.

You're gonna say, yeah, but Karina, 50 bucks. What do you want me to do with 50 bucks? I don't know. Go put fucking gas in the car or go at the grocery store and buy not name brands item. Buy the the make of the the grocery store you're in 50 bucks buys you some some good stuff if you know where to shop for grocery. OK, so there's a way to make you can be selling all of that. I'll let you figure it out.

OK, Now second thing on your phone today we either do I do everything on my phone or on the computer for some of you All right, let's check this out. So you're sitting in front of the TV. You can't be as active as you usually are, but you are capable of scrolling on Facebook for a few hours a day. Yes.

All right, I would like you to take 15 minutes out of all this time, and I would like for you to go in your phone, clean up your files, clean out your downloads, your pictures, not all at once, one category at a time. Let's say you have 1000 pictures. Out of those thousands of pictures, I know, I know, some people have tons and tons. I encourage you to only keep the out of the thousand, only keep 100, only keep the 100 that you love. And at some point in life you're going to print them or you're going to make a disk and you are not going to put on your computer, you are going to put it on a disk where that CD disk or whatever you call that computer stuff, I don't do computer, OK, Whatever you do on

your computer, that disk is smaller than the computer. The point of this is to declutter everything that's there. OK files, download MT's, trash drafts, spam. Now, I used to think that when I would delete them all the time, but I used to think that deleting them was enough for them to magically erase.

And all of a sudden I found out that my phone was working slower and slower. And I'm like, what the hell? A friend of mine said, yeah, but Karina, you have to trash what you throw. Hmm. And that leads me to tell you guys this. You know, when I said look around your place, look around the room you're in, If there's anything garbage that needs to be thrown, throw it out. But it's in the garbage now.

But at the end of the day, you got to take the garbage back out, right? Or tomorrow morning, you got to take the garbage out. Same thing on your phone or computer. Phone your phone book on your phone. I get notifications that I have 4 identical. How can I say 4 names that are identical or 4 numbers that are identical that I need to clean them? Do I need 4 names?

No, I only need 1. So I got to clean my phone, all of it. You might want to clean your emails. Some of us have two or three different emails. Clean the emails and delete and trash the items. So you've put your phone book in order, you clean your files, you clean your emails, you clean your download. Wow, we are now at another point. Social media, well, you know, some of us have thousands and thousands of friends and we keep for what? So sometimes it's important to clean our social media, clean the friends that we've had, that we met in high school, we reconnected, but we never spoke again, right? So it's OK right now if you delete them, worst case scenario, if you really want to talk to them, you can friends request again, but chances are

you're not. Another thing you know, on Instagram, there's a lot of keeping up with the Joneses. Nice house, nice cars, nice bodies, nice this nice that I personally deleted when I started Instagram. I didn't know better. I like fitness, I like diets I like. That's what I'm not. I'm not a blingy person if you know me, I am not blingy.

But these people that had amazing bodies reminded me of what I lost because I used to train also for Miss Fitness. So this reminded me and made me feel like shit. Do you think I kept these things on my Instagram? No, I unfollowed them with respect because I respect myself a little bit more. So your social media needs to be cleaned out to make you feel better.

If you know anything about me, Karina, you know that everything I do has feelings behind it. Whether we have a deep profound podcast or live and we talk about very deep serious stuff or these are surface level things that need for you, they need to be done for you to feel lighter and better. Does that make sense? Now we're in the category of people. We talked about people on social media, but what happens to people in our lives?

Oh, no. Look, Jamie's there. She's an engine vampire. I'm exhausted after she finishes talking and she leaves. Do you need that person in your life? It doesn't mean you don't love them. It doesn't mean you don't want to see them. Maybe you can only handle 5 minutes and she's saying 2 hours. It's OK for you. It's your right to say.

Even if you're just mildly saying I need to go nap or I need to go home or I have an appointment my husband is waiting for me. I really got to go take my medication. Anything that can be said for that person to get out of your sight because she's draining your energy. And as stroke survivors, we don't have a lot of energy. So save whatever you can save.

And about these energy vampire people, ha ha. Some of us dare to declutter our family members. It's not because we don't love them, It's because they are not helping rehabilitation. They are not helping mental state. They are draining. They I, I have someone in my life, in my family that when I see I have a sometimes we can laugh like crazy and have so much fun, and some other time when she's in the mood, we are fighting to the death. And just thinking about the her makes me feel unsafe and stressed inside.

Do you think I still see that person? No, we occasionally she will send me a stupid e-mail or a funny thing that she saw and I'll just respond, ha, ha, ha. And that's it. I don't need that person to be in my life to know she's there. And it's funny I should say that because my, my childhood best friend, we get along and everything, OK. We, we, we love each other and all that. She has her life.

I have my life. Yet when we see each other, it's as if we never left each other. Our bond is that tight. OK, so you figure that out, and if you need help, you reach out to me. Now, last but not least, women in the kitchen. I'm saying women. It could be men too. Lord, whoever's in the kitchen, there's fucking tent wooden spoons.

You know where we keep all the kitchen utensils. You don't need fucking 10 spoons. You might need to get get rid of the rest. Do you know how good and light it feels to just clean 1 area of our lives, One area of our house? It is unbelievable. I don't have anything that feels so good. You could clean your dishes, your utensils, your pots and pans.

You don't need 5 different sets of pots and pans if you're always using the exact same. I have two pots and I have two pans. I'm keeping it simple. Life is hard enough as stroke survivors that I'm trying to keep my life as simple and cluttered as possible so I can have room to be present in my relationships.

I can go to my boyfriend's house where he comes here and we sit. No TV, no radio, no nothing. And we talk for hours and we laugh. Or some other times we might just put some YouTube karaoke on and start doing karaoke. We like doing that. And we laugh and laugh. It's so cool. This is what I want to be present in when I'm talking to you.

I don't want, excuse me, I don't want to be thinking of a million of the things that I have to do or that I want to do that I'm imposing on me when I'm here with you, I'm here with you all I have in front of me, my coffee, my pen, my, my folder with topics I want to talk about and that's it. And my dog is by my side. So it's all about regaining control, regaining life. Does that make sense, guys?

This is what I have beautiful survivors. This is what I have for you today. But I know you have control over everything. You can figure this out. If you can go on Facebook a couple of hours, you can declutter your life. Make sure you like, follow, subscribe, download and love each other because I love you.

S10E17: Declutter your life to be Stress-Free Emotionally

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin