Are you hiding under all that clutter?

What decluttering is, and how it can work for you. Also, the dingo's ate my website. What a week!

Hey there!

Last Friday was slightly more exciting than anticipated. Not ‘exciting’ exciting, but more ‘may you live in interesting times’ exciting.

It was a standard afternoon, I’d written Saturday's newsletter to you and then gone across to my website to upload it as a blog. A click here, an update of info there, and Zuuup!...my website was gone.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Oooops.

So initially I assumed that it was due to me being a Klutz and hitting some big ol’ DELETE ME button instead of a SAVE button (I wouldn’t put it past me…).

Didn’t take long for the notifications to come through that I’d been hacked. Dag Nab it!

Remarkably, I was unphased. I even chuckled as I set about changing a million passwords and firing up the McAfee virus munching software to check that my laptop hadn’t been compromised too.

For many businesses a hacked website is a nightmare. Websites aren’t cheap. Even if you build them yourself, as I do, there’s a time investment. But there was a kid to pick up from school and the usual family stuff to see to, before I could focus on what my next step could be.

By the time I sat down to investigate the damage and assess the situation it was 9:30pm. As I checked through the new notifications I could see that reams and reams of malware plugins had been uploaded to my site and that I was unable to get control of the back end (fnar fnar).

Friends, my website was well and truly compromised. It was late Friday evening. The security team wasn't calling me back, and even if I did know how to clean up all those files, I couldn’t log in anyways. Luckily, there was beer in the fridge.

So. What to do?

Really there was only one clear answer. And dammit, it felt exciting.

I hit delete.

Four years of blog posts disappeared just like that.

And with it flooded an expansive sense of relief. Deleting that site was a huge permission slip to start over. To get clearer. To be more me.

Because if my passion is helping you to be more you, I could hardly let the opportunity for me to be more me slip by now could I?

I consider Decluttering to be a Wellbeing Anchor. Whether that’s removing clutter from your physical space, your internal environment or your digital space it’s all for the good.

And the Hackers made it very easy for me to perform a huge Digital declutter!

It’ll take a little while for me to build a new website, which is great because it gives me space to think and I get to enjoy the process of defining what I love to do and how I can serve you best. In the meanwhile, I’ll keep popping into your inbox here, and you can find out about the courses I run here.

But in the meanwhile, here are my questions for you to muse on:

When you think about your home, does it feel clear and calm, or does it feel cluttered? If the answer is cluttered, what could you do right now to make it feel less so? What about your wardrobe, are there hand-me-downs or clothes that don’t fit right or are taking up space that you could let go of?

When you look at your digital life, what feelings come up? Anyone else get cold sweats with the number of emails sitting in their inbox right now?!? Are there newsletters (yep, this one included) that you could unsubscribe from? Or people who leave you feeling uncomfortable that you could unfollow or mute on social media? Do you need to switch off notifications for Whatsapp or facebook if it’s constantly pinging at you?

Finally, let’s look at your internal environment. Are there beliefs you hold that no longer serve you, or stories you tell yourself that are holding you back from being more of who you wish to be? Do you rely on soothing habits that could do with a bit of an upgrade?

Grab a pen and a scrap of paper and maybe have a little journal about these questions, get curious about which ones feel particularly gunky, and also see if you can identify a few easy wins - it’s always a great way to get you motivated to take on the stickier decluttering projects.

I’d love to hear how you get on.

That’s it from me for the week.

Big love,

Carrie

Categories: : Wellbeing Anchors