Rita Black: If you found yourself drowning and overwhelm, constantly distracted or convinced that you don’t have a spare moment to get the clutter out of your home and life, trust me, you are not alone. Our mission today is to tackle these challenges head on and equip you with the tools to reduce the overwhelm and skyrocket your energy levels. Imagine transforming your home into a place that supports your goals, where every corner radiates positivity and supports your journey to a healthier you. And who better to guide us through this transformation than Dr. Christine Li. She’s a trailblazer in the field, armed with insights that blend science with real world practicality. So if you’ve ever felt the walls closing in that clutter is just too overwhelming, or if distractions seem to lurk around every corner, or if the ticking clock makes you question finding time for yourself, this episode is your game changer. Dr. Christine Li is here to share wisdom that will have you reimagining your living space, reducing overwhelm, and creating a sanctuary that elevates your energy and your health. So grab that nearest trash bin and come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello! Hello everyone. Come on in. Ah, isn’t this time of year the best? We are all coming into our cozy homes and spending more time indoors, fixing things up, doing projects around the house. I know I am. I’ve got a big old list now that I am an empty nester. I think I’ve shared that with you. Now, being childless means lots and lots of household projects, but I admit the downside is that we start to look around at the house, the clutter and the mess, and feel overwhelmed by them.

Rita Black: So that is why I brought in my dear friend and colleague Christine Li. Today we are gonna talk about decluttering our home and aligning our mindset around that. As we all know, that part of weight mastery is having an environment that supports you. And so not only is it about decluttering your home, but just really honoring yourself and your space. And I want to share with you a really exciting announcement that Dr. Christine Li has a super cool free Five Day Challenge starting October 30th, 2023, and then with a final party on the fourth. It’s an online challenge called Reenergize Your Home, a Five Day Challenge. It’s to help us get excited and inspired to remove the clutter and to have our home be a place that supports us rather than stress us out. So just go to procrastinationcoach.com/home or find the links in the show notes and sign up. You’ll see me there.

Rita Black: Now, many of you may know Christine, Dr. Christine, I should say because I have had her on the show before. She’s an amazing, amazing procrastination coach, but now she’s on today, I wanna have her on to talk about this clutter and making our home environment amazing. Just so you know her background, Dr. Christine Li has been working as a New York based clinical psychologist for the past 20 years. And more recently, she has been taking her work online as the procrastination coach. She helps people who are struggling with underperforming at work and at home to work smoothly and at high levels of productivity. Her unique coaching process is a blend of mindset, strategy, time and emotion management tips, and a deep belief in the power we each have when we treat ourselves with love and good care so you can see we both, think or see, see, eye to eye, I was gonna say think eye to eye, but, scratch that one. Dr. Li is an author of the book, Five Minute Self-Discipline Exercises Stay Motivated, Cultivate Good Habits, and Achieve Your Goals. And the host of the podcast, Make Time for Success. Follow Dr. LI to learn how to ditch the guilt, judgment and self-sabotaging and unhelpful habits so that you can feel focused and fulfilled in your life.

Rita Black: Dr. Christine, welcome.

Rita Black: Hello, Christine. It is so awesome to have you back on the Thin Thinking Podcast to see your bright face!

Dr. Christine Li: Hi, Rita!

Rita Black: Hello. I know everybody else can’t see your bright shiny face, but I can, so I’m lucky. So this is such a great topic and I can’t wait to dig into it with you because I happen to have a husband who needs to declutter our attic. And so, but I know for a lot of us in our community, our home environment could use some organization straightening up decluttering. But for so many people, when we go to do that, like we’re in this shame of like, oh, my house is a mess. Right? It’s so cluttered. But when we go to do, you know, one, we feel personal shame, but two, but when we go to try to do something about it, our energy is blocked. We, you know, we get very distracted or we just don’t do it. We just don’t follow through. So I know you are gonna help us unpack this, right? Because you’re such a great expert at this, and we’re gonna go from, you know, taking the clutter away, freeing that path forward so that we can move forward with our lives, right? Because it’s not just about the clutter, it’s about like what’s keeping us from being our best selves and living our best life, right?

Dr. Christine Li: Yes. That’s a great explanation of the problem. And I actually think it’s a significant problem, and it’s a very complicated problem, otherwise people wouldn’t struggle and suffer from it as much as they do. And I, in all openness, am a clutter sufferer myself. So it’s kind of an ironic thing that I’m on here, as an expert in dealing with clutter. I have come to love coaching people on the topic, but in full disclosure, I am someone who is not quite fully healed from my own clutter issue. But I think there are some advantages to having people like me talk about the issue because there is so much involved. It’s our identity, it’s our private spaces, it’s how we deal with our stuff. It’s how we make decisions. It’s very personal business. And so I think sometimes it’s nice to hear from people who have the same problems that you do.

Rita Black: Absolutely. I mean, I am a big believer in only coaching from the path that you have gone on yourself, but now looking at your beautiful, I’m looking at your office, which is free of all clutter. I’m sure you’re talking about that spare bedroom, that we all have, like I said, I am the queen of my domain in my home. Like, you know, I was away for a week and I came back and my house looked, I mean, I was like, if this is a week, what would it be like if I went away for a month? Like I said, my husband loves to bring stuff home from garage sales and from everything. So everything goes up in the attic. That’s his space. And it’s just a big mess. And we have been working on it. But so tell us like, where does this, where do we start with, how do we start with this? Because this is such a hard issue.

Dr. Christine Li: I will start with the story that you just shared, that you went away for a week and then your space became a different space.

Rita Black: Right.

Dr. Christine Li: (inaudible) enough. Nobody was intentionally trying to sabotage your focus. And when I heard that story, the word that came to mind was, this is energy in action. This is energy of stuff. It’s energy of people not being around. It’s energy of people being around. It’s different people’s energy and difficult, different people’s preferences. And I know it’s not a rare situation that you have people living together with very different styles of how they wanna manage their stuff. There’s space and their energy. So there’s oftentimes some tension or conflict caused by how the stuff is arranged or not arranged.

Rita Black: Right. Yeah. So if somebody was struggling you know, where where would they start? Like, I mean, there is so much shame involved. Like when you struggled more with clutter, I know you are in clutter recovery, or like you said, you’re recovering healing, healed clutterist, what you know, and that’s an identity, right? That’s like a way we see ourselves and hold ourselves and that, you know, you and I have had many conversations about the importance of identity and, you know, how identity can set us free or it can strangle us. What do you see in the people that you coach? Like, how are they holding themselves and seeing themselves around this?

Dr. Christine Li: I would say when people are coming to me, or I’m inviting them into my world around the issue of clutter, what I hear is a lot of heaviness. So it almost feels like a physical weight that people feel like their energy is by the stuff. They feel completely overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the stuff they feel the intense lack of time. So it’s as if you’re facing a brick wall, what do you do when you’re wanna walk forward? And a brick wall is there, right? There’s, you feel like there’s no hope, but there’s no option. So that’s the emotional state. And then there’s always a frustration, whether it’s vocalized or not, it seems always to be there because clutter is, in my experience, a very frustrating thing when we’re looking at the clutter. We’re reminded of the unfinished business. We’re reminded of the drain of our energy. We’re reminded that there’s more that we need to do.

Dr. Christine Li: And, you know, that hotel effect is real, where you walk into a hotel, I just happened to have traveled myself this past weekend, and it was this lovely hotel. And there’s this kind of open freedom when you’re in a space where nothing is out of place and you know that there’s enough toilet paper, that there is this wonderful feeling of calm. And I think my wish for myself and my own healing, and for those of you who are listening, is that we give you that sense of calm in your space and that we give it to you not a couple years from now, but in a couple days or weeks from now, that it does not have to take a huge amount of effort, time, or energy to get you to that calmer, more open, more clear space in your home. And Rita and I have been preparing for this episode, and I’ve been saying that the home space is really your heart space. It’s your launchpad. It’s your your nurturing spot. And we want it to be beautiful, as beautiful as we can make it. And let’s do that together.

Rita Black: I love that. You know, I just wanna go back to that hotel idea, the clean room. So many years ago, my husband and I, I just remember this ’cause it was so hilarious. My husband’s father, my husband is British, and you know, his father’s therefore British as well, or I guess that that’s not necessarily true. But anyway we went on a trip with him and we were in Ireland and we were in Dublin. I remember, his father, you know, like got us a hotel room and we went into our hotel room and his father went into his hotel room and his father’s a doctor. So he is like very clean, fastidious kind of man. And my husband is the exact opposite. And so he, it was about 10 minutes, we checked into our room, we went into our room, and like you said, Christina, it’s like beautiful, clean, within 10 minutes, our room, but my husband takes everything out of his thing. It’s out of the, it’s all over. And his father knocks on the door and he walks in and he’s like, oh my God. Like, what happened? This was like a clean hotel room like 10 minutes ago. What the hell did you do? You know? And it was just you know, my husband’s ability to turn clarity into chaos is it’s probably why I love him. But anyway.

Rita Black: But so, so yes, I agree with you that heart centeredness that like feeling because our home is like our center, right? Yeah. So how, how do we start to clear that path, not just physically, but you know internally and mentally?

Dr. Christine Li: Great question. And I’m thinking along the exact same lines that you are. We have to have our heart match our desires for our space. So if you want more energy in your space, you’re gonna have to match that mood within you. If you want more calm in your space, you have to get there first before your space can match what you desire. So, what Rita and I are both getting at, I think together is that you have to shape your own identity vis-a-vis or space. And I don’t know that any of us have, I won’t, I’ll change that sentence. I think some people have that maybe naturally or they were shown that in their home of origin or that they learned that, and others of us don’t really have a sense of what that means. That they’ve always struggled. We’ve always struggled with clutter. And so there’s a comfort level. As complicated as it is, it is comfort. And so we have to decide we’re interested in a new self identity when it comes to our space that we’re interested in something different. That’s something that probably will work out better for us, that probably will make our lives a whole lot easier. This is where some people stumble because comfort is a big concept and we are creatures are of comfort. We don’t oftentimes like frustration, we don’t like to feel like we have to exert any additional energy to create what we need. But you and I know from coaching as many people as we have, that oftentimes it’s that ability to tolerate that initial frustration and follow through with the process that will get you to the positive change that you like. Whether it’s weight loss, clutter, procrastination, all the success routes require-

Rita Black: Yes

Speaker 2: It has to be traveled. And we have to get our energy to match the effort. And that’s where the clutter is now a foe. Because clutter has this energy that is causing us to say, you know what? I’m flattened. I I really don’t have it today. I’ve worked a long day. There is no way I’m gonna now tidy my space. You, until you have have that identity that I am the creator of this space. I’m the master of this space. I am the designer and beautiful resident of this space, and nothing will get in my way until you’re kind of at that point, stuff isn’t gonna move because the stuff is already established. Residence there’re with you and you need to decide, you know what, new boss is in town, we’re doing this differently. Couch is going over there. Now I’m pulling in my husband or my kid, or someone from outside the home because I need the energy to be different here and it’s gonna happen. And when you think about it, any habit, anything that we can call a habit is doable because we’ve labeled it a habit. And clutter is absolutely something that we’ve fallen into a habit with. Clutter is a habit. It’s not a, it’s not an identity. It’s not a permanent thing. It’s a temporary thing actually. And when we really dig into the fact that our desires are bigger and more important than whatever the clutter is making us feel, then we actually have some leverage over it.

Rita Black: I think that one of the things with clutter is that we have to make decisions like the decision making process. You know, like, do I keep this? Do I not? It was so interesting. I was telling Christine, my daughter had a fire in her apartment and she is now homeless, but she now, she has been moved into temporary school housing. It was just horrible. She’s safe. Everybody’s safe, thank God. But what was really fascinating this week, you know, like sorting through things with her is my daughter also kind of takes after her father. She’s very attached to stuff. And so even though we went into this foot soot, you know, this room with soot and this, and she has a lot of, my daughter spent I think if you guys have been listening to me, she was in Berlin, Germany last year, and she went to all these German flea markets and bought like so many clothes.

Rita Black: So she just, like, everywhere, she has attachment to clothes. So even though these things were soot covered and like, and you know, we went to the grocery, I mean, not grocery store. We went to the laundromat, we did, you know, and she was able to save a lot of her clothes, but she looked at me and she said, I really do need to declutter or, or, or like, get rid of some of these clothes and I need to have a different relationship to my stuff. Because she was just like going through this sweat and going, I wanna keep this and I wanna keep, I was like, it burned. It is like, it is like, it, it just such a manifestation of like, no, you, you wanna let that go? And, and I, and I can just see it, her decision making process. Like, do I keep it? Do I not that sentimental attachment to things or the way we, and it’s such it, we do see it as taking so much of our energy to even make that decision. Like getting rid of one thing. Right?

Dr. Christine Li: It’s a beautiful story. It’s a fun story. Thank goodness your daughter is okay.

Rita Black: Oh God. Yeah, thank you.

Dr. Christine Li: She’ll get a beautiful new clothes. That will be a joy and she can reconnect. But that’s also a story about the energy that’s involved, right? It’s so intense. It’s a dress, it’s a pair of slacks. But who’s to say why we do this? Why we get attached to things, and how different people get attached to different things at different levels. It’s not to be explained, perhaps this is just this state of being alive, of being human. But that is why decluttering is so painful and stressful and frustrating for people that they don’t wanna have to make these decisions. It’s a lot of cognitive effort and people are already feeling at their max. And this is just another thing, and it feels insignificant, but what you and I are bringing to the table today is that actually these decisions are not so insignificant that when you are able to create enough energetic room for yourself to say, you know what, I’m taking action.

Dr. Christine Li: Even though part of me feels like I don’t want to, or I don’t need to, that’s actually power. You’re showing yourself that you can generate energy and power and action even when you thought that there was no space for it. And that is really, I think in my life that’s fueled my recovery, It’s caused to be so excited about teaching people these techniques and these ideas because what do we have? But time and energy, everything else is stuff, right? And we really wanna not only protect our time and energy, but we wanna learn how to use our time and energy very powerfully.

Rita Black: Do you think that the, like creating that, you know, like I think one of the, it seems to me from what you’re saying when the stumbling blocks is we know we need to get rid of it, but we don’t know what it’s gonna feel like to have the lack of it. Like I think there’s that scarcity thing comes up too. Like if you’re used to having a lot of stuff, it represents you know, having enough, like I know with weight management, you know, it’s like people will we all will like that feeling of feeling full, you know, even though it might not be serving us, you know, cleaning the plate and feeling like we’ve had enough, and that’s a comfy feeling and it’s a painful feeling at the same time. So that idea of feeling just light enough like that Japanese, I think it’s called Haro Haro saying where you’re just, you’re eating just a little less than you want to, you know, to not feel full, but to, you know, you’re eating just a little less than what your body actually needs.

Rita Black: It’s an actual word in their culture that people, you know, it’s a ideal right. To, to live up to that. So it’s so interesting that in that culture there, and, and I probably got the word wrong, but so that just enough like stuff in your space, but that is a feeling of, you know, you’re moving from that full feeling to mmm. You know, and, and I could see that that would be a big pain point. And, but having that vision of how it’s gonna feel to feel lighter and, and more energetic and more, you know, like be, because like when you’re getting rid of stuff, you’re creating the void. And that void can seem scary until you get on the other side of the void and you feel the lightness. You know, like we can use the word void, like that’s a scary word, but lightness and energy and power and confidence are a different space and space. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I love your, I love your points and I wanna say I’ll share my own experiences.

Rita Black: Yeah, yeah, please.

Dr. Christine Li: I have two stories to share. One is about my own stomach and the other one is about my closet. I’ll start with the stomach. And I, long ago was having very severe migraines. Long story short, turns out I had a gluten intolerance. Wow. And so I needed to really rearrange my whole relationship with food and eating. This was way back when. And one of the first experiences I had was that I dropped a good five pounds within one week, I believe, if I remember correctly. And my stomach had a very different feeling, much like you were describing of that Japanese idea of not being full. And I told that to the acupuncturist who was helping me through this elimination diet and this change process. And she said, that’s actually how you’re supposed to feel.

Speaker 2: You’re not actually supposed to feel like you’re filled to the brimm with food. That’s kind of past the point where we’re really supposed to be. And that was an education. And now I’ve gotten used to that feeling. Do I never feel fully full? No. That that still happens. But now I understand that there’s nothing to be worried about and that it’s not a signal that I need to keep eating if I’m just fine and I’ve finished my meal and I’m not feeling full. That’s that. There’s no problem there. The second story is with my closet. And for me, my clutter or decluttering journey started with the closet and it was very natural. Nobody suggested I do this. It was just probably a mess and filled with stuff that was the wrong size and the wrong color and the wrong era. And I just decided one day, I’m just gonna figure this out. I don’t have a bunch of clothes. So it didn’t take that long. And immediately I realized a different experience afterwards. One that I did not expect. And that was that, I was then not late the next morning that I immediately realized that I had then simplified my entire morning routine by making my clothes choices much easier. And that no matter what I picked, it would actually work out for me. So I wasn’t spending excess time trying to figure out what was I gonna do for clothes. And I’m gonna share that with our listeners because Rita’s right. You don’t know what that void is gonna feel like, but let’s opt for an optimistic view of what that’s gonna feel like instead of siding with our fears. Because our fears are actually keeping us with the same pile of clothes, with the same pile of stuff, with the same overstuffed spare bedroom. And we really want something different. We don’t wanna be living next to our fears anymore. We wanna live in open space. I promise you you’ll be fine.

Rita Black: And it is that moment of, like you said, kind of throwing open your closet and it is those 30 seconds of feeling uncomfortable that we kind of have to walk through in order to get into that place of feeling in the zone. You know, like, like cleaning out your closet can be fun. But you, it’s just like opening that door and deciding to do it carries with it that sort of agitated feeling that I think we, we we get to. And then often we’ll just go, well, I can’t do this right now, I don’t have time.

Dr. Christine Li: Yes, yes. You wanna coach yourself with love so that you can see the success that you know is there for you.

Rita Black: Yes.

Dr. Christine Li: And we just wanna walk that gap and yeah, I’m just thinking about your daughter and all that. She has to, she has to do a lot of things now, but, but know that you’re safe. That that you get to choose your habits, that you get to choose what kind of sex success you wanna see. And I invite you to take the chance on yourself and really decide, you know what? I do have it in me. I I, I’m not gonna listen to the part of me that wants to say the same and wants to tolerate the clutter. I no longer wanna tolerate the clutter. And then you start piece by piece. It is a small bit by bit type of process. But here’s another tip is that we wanna do this together. You wanna do this with perhaps a coach, perhaps with a community of friends or friends online. Because the energy of other people, it, it, it really is additive and it really is energizing and it helps you to get out of the shame spot that you might be stuck in.. So that’s another quick tip.

Rita Black: Well, I know Christine, that you have a challenge coming up if you, and it’s free. Do you wanna tell our listeners about it? ’cause this sounds like the perfect cure or the beginning of a cure for decluttering. It’s a five day challenge. Can you tell us about that?

Dr. Christine Li: Yeah, thank you so much. It is something that I came up with organically because I realized that a lot of the people who were joining my Facebook group were noting that the most significant issue that was causing them to wanna join the Facebook group was a difficulty with either clutter or home management. So it’s not just the clutter, it’s how you do the chores, how you figure out the meals, things like that. And I really consider all of these issues to be under the same umbrella. It’s really how are we using our time? How are we using our energy and do we believe ourselves to be capable of meeting the, the challenge, right? And these are challenges oftentimes. So this is a free five day challenge, as Rita said. It’s called Re-Energize Your Home. And I named it that because I did want energy to be in the title.

Dr. Christine Li: Because do feel that when you know how to manage and manipulate your energy, instead of having your energy manipulate you, then you have agency, you have options, you have possibilities instead of feeling frustrated all the time. So let’s reenergize your home together. The challenge starts Monday, October 30th, and we’ll run to Friday, November 3rd. And all you need to do to register is to go to procrastinationcoach.com/home. Again, it’s procrastinationcoach.com/home. And my team and I will get you all the resources that you need. It’s gonna be fun. You’re gonna get a lot done. You’re gonna meet a lot of new fun people, and I think it’s gonna give you a little bit of a boost so that you can do things you didn’t think you were gonna get to for a couple years.

Rita Black: Oh, I love it. I’m gonna get my husband to sign up for this. Christine.

Dr. Christine Li: Sounds good. I’d love to meet him. I’ll know the Brit is yours.

Rita Black: Yes, indeed. So no, he, he actually moved to the United States when he was fairly young. So he sounds more American than he does British, but he does have that British isms about him all the time. So this is fantastic. So reenergize your home procrastinationcoach.com/home. And Monday, September 30th through Friday, November 3rd.

Speaker 2: It’s October 30th.

Rita Black: Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. I’m, see, I’m living, I’ve got September written down, but October 30th through November 3rd. I’m living in the past. That’s my job.

Dr. Christine Li: No Worries.

Rita Black: This has been so great and I really love that idea of energy because we do get so bogged down, not just in our stuff, but in our stuff, in our heads around our stuff and the shame and the self blame and the distraction and the, just the, like you said, it’s a big block of energy that we don’t realize until we actually have, I, you know, little story about my kitchen. I think I may have shared this story before, but my mother gave me all these recipe books and they take up a lot of space. And my mom was probably like a little like my husband. She had all these recipes. She would clip out of papers back in the day when you would do that. And, you know, she would put them in these books there, you know, like their works of art really.

Rita Black: ‘Cause The I do. So I was holding onto all of them and there was so many of them. And somebody said to me, you know what, why you can, why don’t you remove some of them? You know? ’cause I was really struggling with this. It, that’s what I mean, like, decision making is like that sentimental attachment. Like your, maybe you can just say a little something to your mom, like a prayer. ’cause My mom’s passed and I, or like a, you know, say, mom, I love you and thank you for these, and I don’t need them all anymore. I’m just gonna have this one that represents you, and then I’m gonna let go of the rest. And that was so helpful. You know, just that one moving out of that energy and I, and, and it, and, and so like, just to speak to your point now, when I look at that one that represents all of them, it just makes me feel so much better. You know what I mean? It just makes me, it gives me, so I was like, oh,

Dr. Christine Li: Can I share with our listeners that when Rita was talking about the range of all the books, there was a pained look on her face, and then when she talked about looking at that one, there was this excited, beautiful energy that came. And so we really, this energy thing is real and we’re really, we’re living it. We’re breathing it. It affects us. So let’s engage with it. Let’s just, let’s make our choices to say, I, I, let’s, I wanna be surrounded by love. I wanna do, be surrounded by stuff that I love and memories that I love. But it doesn’t have to be all the things. You’re right.

Rita Black: Yeah, exactly. Well, this is exciting. Thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been so great to have you again as a guest, and we’ll look forward to having you again, Dr. Christine Li.

Dr. Christine Li: Well, Rita, thank you so much. I love every conversation I’ve ever had with you and particularly these podcast episodes. Thanks everyone.

Rita Black: Thank to you Dr. Christine. Wasn’t that an amazing interview? She always gives a hundred percent. And so now, now, now please go and sign up for her totally free five day challenge called Reenergize Your Home, Five Day challenge, exclamation point, so you can get excited and inspired to remove the clutter and have your home be amazing as we all come in from the cold to have a powerful home for an amazing holiday season coming up. And again, just go to procrastinationcoach.com/home or find the links in the show notes and sign up. Thank you for being here today. And as always, remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will see you or be here with you next week.

Rita Black: Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking. Unlock Your Mind For Permanent Weight Loss.