What an Empty Room Can Teach You
Think about the last time you walked into a brand-new home. Walls freshly painted. Rooms completely empty. Nothing in them yet.
Something happens in you in that moment. You start to see things. You move through the rooms, and your mind opens up. This chair would be beautiful here. That painting I bought on vacation would be perfect on that wall. I could make this little corner into something special and mine.
Possibilities appear that did not exist before. And with them comes that feeling of excitement. Because that space is empty, it gives us permission to dream, envision, and see the future possibilities. In a way that we cannot do in our own home when it is full of things.
That is exactly what happens inside us when we create space in our lives. We get that same blank wall, and we can hang whatever we want on it. That picture could be of a new career, a new lifestyle, a new future.
We Don’t Notice What We’ve Lost Until It Comes Back
When life gets overwhelming, and it does so gradually, we rarely notice it happening. Something starts to go numb inside us. Our ability to make decisions gets harder. The simplest choices start to feel like too much.
There is science behind this. Psychologist Roy Baumeister has studied what he calls decision fatigue for decades, and his research shows that our mental capacity for making decisions is a finite resource. When we are managing too many things at once, that resource runs low. The fog sets in. The sense that we are always behind and can never quite catch up.
A University of Connecticut study found that removing or controlling clutter directly reduced stress and made people feel happier, less anxious, and more confident. A review of 23 empirical studies published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found a consistent connection between simplifying life and overall well-being. But most Women I know do not need a study to tell them this. They feel it. They just do not always have words for it.
What we lose first is usually clarity. Then momentum. Then the sense that there is something on the other side of all of this worth moving toward.
And the part that surprises me after years of this work is that most women do not even know those things are gone until they start to come back.
What Comes Back When the Space Opens Up
When a woman starts to create space, in whatever form that takes for her, something changes.
When I work with someone, she will usually describe it in her own words, and those words are always simple. They say they can breathe again. They feel like themselves for the first time in a long time. They did not realize how much they had been holding on to until they put some of it down.
One woman told me it felt like the lights came back on. I equate it to when you have not had a good night’s sleep in a while, and then suddenly one night you do. The next day, the world seems so much different. You can think you are not tired, you feel different, but you really did not realize how bad you felt and how much you were struggling until you were no longer.
That is what I am talking about when I talk about creating space. It is a doorway back to yourself, not just clearing a closet.
This Is Different From Decluttering
There is a lot in the world right now about decluttering and minimalism, and both of those are worthy paths. What I am talking about is different.
Creating space is purposeful. It is clearing for a reason. So that the space serves you. Supports you. Moves you forward. It is as much about the empty hour in your calendar as it is the cleared counter in your kitchen. It is as much about releasing an old story you have been telling yourself as it is letting go of a box of things that belonged to a version of you that no longer fits.
The physical space is the doorway. What walks through it is your clarity.
It Only Takes One Space.
I hear this from women in my workshops, coaching clients, and even friends. They all say the same thing at the beginning. I have so much. I do not even know where to start.
That feeling is actually the answer. When we are living a life that is overflowing in every direction, making even one decision feels like too much. Sometimes we do nothing and call it being stuck or procrastinating. It is the natural result of a mind and a life that have simply run out of room.
It only takes one space. One decision. One small clearing. And from there, something will open. Once that happens, we do not feel as stuck, and we stop putting off all those decisions. Suddenly, we can make decisions again, small ones that build on larger ones. It is very much like there have been weeks and weeks of cloudy days, and all of a sudden, we see the sun shining through the window. That affects our mood. All of a sudden, we are noticing how beautiful it is. It is the same space. It is the same place, but something has opened up when that light comes through the window. It is just like that when we start to clear space, one small space, and all of a sudden, it is like a beam of light showing us the way.
That is the work I love to do. To help you see yourself clearly enough to know the difference between what stays and what it is time to release.
Where We Have Been Together
We have spent these weeks in this Monday with Meryl series talking about the spaces that run our lives. The wall that goes up when life is overflowing. The work of creating space is something deeper than organizing.
This is the thread underneath all of it. Space is the tool. What it gives back to you, when you are ready to use it, is more than a cleaner room or a clearer schedule.
It gives you back yourself.
I am writing a full book on this work, coming this fall. More on that soon. In the meantime, if this is landing for you and you are ready to go deeper, come join us in Clearing for Clarity, my private Monday with Meryl community for women on Facebook. It is where the deeper conversation happens every week. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/clearingforclarity.
Until next Monday,
Meryl
Sources referenced in this article:
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252-1265.Hook, J. N., Hodge, A. S., Zhang, H., Van Tongeren, D. R., & Davis, D. E. (2021). Minimalism, voluntary simplicity, and well-being: A systematic review of the empirical literature. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 18(1), 130-141.
University of Connecticut research on clutter and stress reduction, cited in USU Extension mental health resources (2023).
