I Feel So Guilty That I Bought That!

If you are anything like me, you have bought something that just wasn’t a good fit for your life.

The pair of jeans that looked really good on someone ELSE.

The shirt that was on sale.

The makeup system that was going to teach me to contour.

It starts with big plans, a future of unlimited possibilities and the thrill of a purchase.

And then it hangs in your closet with the tags on mocking you for days, weeks, months…years.

It produces feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt.

Over the days, weeks, months…years, it gets pushed further back into the closet.

New items go in front.  Some of those new items enter the cycle of shame.

They take up physical space.  They take up mental space.

They weigh down your heart.

It is hard to get rid of them because they never served their purpose.  The plan failed.  The dreams fell apart.

I was thinking about this today after binge-watching the entire new Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.  Her solution for this is brilliant and something I had learned in other places of my life, but never applied to this.

She believes that everything you own should spark joy.  If you hold it and it doesn’t spark joy, it needs to go.  For those items that you let go, you thank them for their use.

You thank them for the lesson that they brought into your life.

What a freeing thought.

What if that pair of jeans was really in your life to teach you a lesson about what cuts look better on you?

What if that shirt that was on sale was there to give you wisdom about value?

What if that makeup system taught you that beauty isn’t just about shading?

A dear friend and mentor, Laurie Turk once told me that a lesson would keep presenting itself until you learned it.  It was a conversation about business and how when we don’t learn from our mistakes we keep repeating them.

In my business, I have embraced the failures, the mis-steps and the false starts because I can look back and see how each presents knowledge that has allowed me to grow.

Often failing was the quickest way to learn something!

But it never occurred to me that this could extend to the blackhole that has become my closet with pockets of shame.

And the sooner I learn the lesson, the sooner I can get out of the pattern of repeating the same mistakes.

And the sooner I can thank those pieces for teaching me something, the sooner there is space for the satisfaction of a lesson well-learned.

It really is a cheap education…unless we don’t learn and keep re-enrolling!

Can you think of an item that has been trying to teach you something?

 

 

 

 

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