Let It Go - Peter Walsh Page 0,10

around the cycle again.

So now you’re here in this moment. You’ve come upon a big transition in your life that requires you to downsize. You have a number of options. You could just launch yourself into downsizing head-on. You’d tackle the superficial layer of the stuff you see. You’d discard the items you obviously no longer want, and you’d haul away the trash. Then you’d box up the rest and take it with you.

I predict you would bring along more than the amount that would reasonably fit into your new home. Most of this excess would be stuff you don’t truly want, or like, or need (or stuff you simply couldn’t make a decision about). You would be starting your next phase with not only an uncomfortable amount of stuff but also the deep layer of unhappy emotions attached to it. You would arrive at an untainted, untouched new space in your life, and this is what you would unload into it.

Alternatively, you might just announce, “I’m done with it. This is all too much.” You zip through your home on a slash-and-burn mission to take as little as possible and leave the past behind. You drastically reduce the physical burden you’ve been carrying. Essentially, you’re shedding the thin outer line of the circle—the stuff—from yourself.

But you’re still left with the deeper emotional layer, in which the negative aspects might still feel more prominent:

These bad feelings are like seeds you’ll carry into the next phase of your life, where they can regrow.

But that’s not the process I’m going to walk you through! True downsizing success comes from dealing with both layers of your life before moving forward: your stuff and the emotions buried beneath it.

That’s the Let It Go way of downsizing.

Always remember that the stuff you own influences how you think. Since downsizing requires you to put your hands on items attached to deep emotions (a lot of items, and a lot of emotions), now is your best chance to adjust both. You can go from this:

To this:

You can achieve a lighter, more open mindset that will help you better enjoy your new life. You’ll also be moving forward with only two kinds of items in your material convoy: treasures that trigger very specific, happy, and significant memories that you actually want to have and functional objects that will help you thrive in your new space.

You’re not bringing objects coated in negative emotions that can immediately poison your new environment. You’re no longer so loaded with unwanted old memories—“Damned if all of this stuff from Aunt Edna doesn’t remind me of how I hated the mothball smell in her home!”—that you don’t have room for new memories of your choosing.

You won’t be living in a shrine devoted to people who’ve died or a way of life that has vanished. You won’t arrive at your destination feeling miserable because you brought the wrong gear, like a tourist who shows up in Thailand after packing for Sweden.

I’m excited about helping you downsize your possessions while you dig into the invisible stuff that’s attached to them. It’s these emotions, thoughts, and memories that change your life for better or worse. I want you to focus on these elements, then discard them, as necessary, and reframe the remaining elements of your life so they work for you.

Break open your stuff—figuratively, of course, but maybe literally, too—and inside, you’ll find the gift of downsizing.

LET IT GO EXERCISE 1:

Downsizing Readiness Quiz

At the end of each of the first six chapters, I’m going to provide exercises for you to complete. I know it’s a bit of extra work, but doing these will equip you with information that will make your actual downsizing faster and easier. Before you even get your moving boxes, you’ll already have a good sense of what will (and will not) go into them!

For the first exercise, I’d like you to take this quick quiz to help you learn more about how you relate to your stuff, and how much excitement and/or dread you’re feeling about your downsizing. Answer each question on a scale from the left (this doesn’t apply to me at all) to the right (this applies to me a lot), then total your score at the end of each section. For some of the questions, the numbers are reversed due to the issue they’re covering. Just answer according to how you feel from “not at all” to “very much.”

Scoring Your Quiz

For each section, you can have a possible score of