Chaos vs Clarity

I’ve been reading the book Chatter The Voice in our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness it by Ethan Kross the past few weeks and I highly recommend it by the way. During the reading I had a personal epiphany that maybe some of you might relate to as well.

I’m home, as is everyone else in the house. Family belongings scattered about everywhere, including my own. None of which seems to be in the location it “should” be in. Sunglasses on the kitchen counter, shoes mid-room instead of on the shoe rack, blankets bundled on the couch in piles, dirty dishes in the sink, mail that needs gone through on the counter.

Clutter is my enemy and when my mind is filled with clutter, the clutter in my home makes me have a moment of temporary insanity. Here is where the epiphany steps in. I’m lying in bed after having my meltdown – that everyone needs to clean up their shit, like yesterday – moment and I’m reading a chapter in Chatter. Kross starts talking about the Nadal Principle an awesome Spanish tennis player who has some OCD like tendency’s or rituals that he must perform before each match. Nadal claims these customs are what he does to “quiet the voices in my head.” Kross sums this up as Nadal’s way of seeking control of his mental chaos by controlling his physical environment. And boom, it all made sense.

That day I was in the mental throes of decisions, judgements, fears, doubts, and much more that my mind was trying to make sense of. Having a shit fit about the chaos in the house was simply me trying to create structure in my environment so I could create structure and clarity in my mind.

House clean= mind clear.

Mind blown.

And welcome to the world of how Marie Kondo has made billions especially since COVID. Kross calls this “perceptions of control,” the belief that we possess the ability to impact our world and control our fate.

Feeling out of control means our internal chatter increases which therefore means we strive to rein in the chaos by controlling our physical environments in some way. In what ways have you needed to control your environment when your mind feels out of control?

If you need help controlling your monkey mind and getting a grip on anxiety, depression, pain, grief or more contact me!