Dear Friends,
This morning I have been lifted up by a God Breeze Hurricane. To start with the first two emails I opened were about butterflies. As I was posting them in an email; I was listening to the radio. The next song they played was about butterflies and girls. Tears started to roll down my cheeks and I had to call Paddi. The only words that came out of her mouth were WRITE!!! So I am.
In the third grade we are all taught about insects and the metamorphosis that they go through to become adults. As a fly fisherman and an avid fly tier; I have studied these stages in detail to be able to replicate the cocoons, nymphs, caterpillars and adult stages of a trout’s favorite food. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that this part of my life could help me to help you.
As humans we are born, raised by our parents to adulthood and then set free to sink, swim or FLY! We all hope and pray that what we teach our babies will help them live their lives. We cannot live our children’s lives for them any more than our parents could live our lives for us. I mean protect our children from the mistakes that we have made.
Let’s throw our clutter into this for a minute. When we are born; we start the process of consuming. Just like the little caterpillar that is hatched from the egg: It starts eating right away and growing. Our little head start taking in all the influence from our parents and the world around us: Commercials!!! As a result we begin collecting our clutter. This clutter slowly begins to isolate us. We are building our own cocoon. A cocoon that does not protect us, but it imprisons us behind walls and doors of CHAOS!
Now tears are flowing down my face. I guess we all have to go through this process. It is not fun but it makes us who we are.
The next stage is our isolation. This is our cocoon. We have surround ourselves with all this stuff that we think identifies us as who we are. We are not our stuff any more than we are our jobs. Who we are is inside of each of us waiting to be set free and until we get rid of our clutter/cocoons, that person is going to stay in that pupa stage. Now here is the hard part; we all have to go through this stage to realize just who we are and what our purpose for living really is. Inside this cocoon we are practically dormant. Our creativity has been locked away and our bodies are just going through the paces. We are walking zombies that look normal on the outside but the inside is going nuts. Our minds want to do everything at once and as a result nothing gets done. Here we are suffocating in our little or shall I say big cocoons. Clutter is all around us. We feel closed in and have no clue where to start to work our way out of our cocoon.
This is where we start searching for help to get us out of our cocoon/mess/CHAOS. We hire housekeepers and buy countless self-help books: Looking for that instant cure that is going to free us. We buy everything we can get our hands on; all this really does is make us sink deeper into our despair because it doesn’t fix the problem. Our heads are still spinning. It is only until we realize that we are the only ones who can get ourselves out of this cocoon. You cannot forcibly declutter anyone. It is a process of taking one bite at a time to open up the cocoon so that you can see a little ray of hope shining through.
That first bite is shining your sink! I know it sounds stupid but if you have not done it then you have no clue how this is going to open up your heart and begin the process of struggling out of your cocoon. And I mean struggle! Decluttering your home is a piece of cake compared to the decluttering process that you have to go through in your own brain. For me I had to purge 40 years of stinking thinking. And no I didn’t have to be knocked in the head and have amnesia to get rid of it. This was the main part of my struggle and yours: One bite at a time to release myself from my cocoon. Slowly and I mean slowly I replaced each negative self-destructive thought with kind gentle empowering messages to build up my strength to help me free myself from my cocoon.
It is that overriding instinct of our spirit to be free that keeps us eating away at our cocoon. We know there is something more to living than just getting up and going to bed each day. We have all asked is that all there is? Well I am here to tell you that there is more to living than taking up space in the world. I never knew what my purpose for being here was until I opened up my cocoon and spread my wings. It was like giving birth to a new me, in fact that is exactly what happened and it didn’t occur overnight. The process of eating my way out of my cocoon took about nine months. Imagine that nine months of struggling my way out of my cocoon to find me!
Cocoons are not safe places, but I am beginning to see that we have to go through the darkness in order to find that desire to be free and find the peace we deserve. Now I am crying again. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I could mentor 1 person. Listen to me very closely now, here is the most amazing part of freeing yourself from your cocoon. In science there is a Chaos theory. I promise I am not making this stuff up. It uses an example that one little butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico can set in motion the air currents that will create a hurricane on the other side of the world in China.
Well this morning that God Breeze of a Hurricane has me flapping my wings as hard and fast as I can. The ripple of change starts someplace; we are all connected and the world better watch out for our flock of butterflies that are emerging from their cocoons because they are going to change this planet. The power is in us all; we just need to bite through that cocoon and release that beautiful butterfly!
Are your ready to FLY?
FlyLady
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