Yes! I’ve been writing about this exact thing for quite a while under the umbrella of the holiday I invented: Discardia. It’s all about letting go of stuff that is no longer beautiful or useful. You can find out more by visiting discardia.com or the Discardia Facebook group. I’m also finishing up a book on the topic about which more later.

Linda, don’t weigh yourself down with “guess I better…” looming to-do’s; think of it instead as making room for more awesomeness. Discardia isn’t just chucking the crud, it’s welcoming in the things that improve your life.

That helped a lot to free me up to just write down things, and I thought of a lot of things that I wouldn’t have if I’d started writing a list of “Things to let go of”.

Then, seeing it on the list, I can let the idea of letting go of it seep slowly into my brain, avoiding the clutching response of “BUT BUT, IT WAS A GOOD IDEA!” panic. I managed to move a few things to the intangible trash that way.

I have come to the conclusion lately that I keep these dead projects around sort of as energetic anchors. I get comfy with their weight, and then I am not sure I will be OK if they are gone.

I recognize the pattern from my parents, they both are very creative and always had half-finished projects laying around. I could see them routinely struggle with whether to finish them or move on. And I seem to do the same thing (sigh).

I think at the heart of it there is a fear of the unknown, of change. What if the change is bad? What if I never have another good idea? WHAT IF???

(taking a breathe)
.-= Emma McCreary´s last blog ..Back to Basics: Feel Your Feelings =-.

I still have some leftover college papers; I’ll throw those out.
.-= John´s last blog ..How to Kiss Your Boredom Goodbye =-.

The very thing that makes creative people thrive – idea generation – is what creates so much of the cognitive noise that accompanies dead stuff, and it’s hard for us to realize that all ideas are not equal and some just need to be let go. We end up keeping so many ideas running through our heads that it’s hard to separate the best from the rest.

This is one of the reasons I ended up starting That Idea Blueprint Girl — because I felt that the unused ideas were weighing me down. While they were great ideas, I wasn’t going to do them — I KNEW I wasn’t going to do them. And it was BECAUSE they were such great ideas that I was unwilling to let them go. That Idea Blueprint Girl let me have a place to put them where I could add to them as thoughts came up and they could benefit other people, but I no longer had some self-created responsibility to pay attention to them instead of doing the Good Work I wanted to be doing. It was really sort of a relief to launch, for lots of other reasons, but also very much for this reason.
.-= Megan M.´s last blog ..Idea Free-For-All #1 (Happy Tuesday!) =-.