Make Space to Create That Life You Want

Maristella Bertram
5 min readAug 13, 2022

Creating The Life You Want

It is possible to create the life you want for yourself. And you might not even imagine how much this has to do with being organized, but let me connect the dots. Keep reading.

We, Organizers, preach how much easier life becomes when we get rid of clutter and get organized. We discuss how organization saves money and gives us more time to relax and enjoy what matters. But those benefits are only achievable if you do your part. They require attention, intention, and slowing down.

Your commitment to learning and practicing new habits and systems until they become second nature to you and all others sharing your home space is fundamental to freeing your brain and soul to find the point of creation within you.

Slow Down to Find That Point

How about you possibly slowing down with everything to do every day? So many things need your attention and intervention. There are so many things you must solve.

Rene Descartes once said: I think, therefore I am. And he was entirely correct. We are co-creators in this universe. Thus, we must be able to create the life we want.

Whether we call it God, the Universe, Vortex, Life Force, or Spirit, there is a place in the human mind where the power to create our reality resides.

We can decide what we want our lives to look, feel, and be like. We can manifest it!

In this high-paced world, most people don’t ever stop to reflect on their high-level ideas. However, people who meditate, for example, can decrease their pace and raise the vibration of their creative energy. That’s when and where the magic happens- they access their point of creation and create the life they want.

But how do we slow down or free up headspace? Breathe. Listen.

That learning curve in the organizing process requires that you stop and understand some essential things:

  • There are habits to eliminate, while there are new ones to adopt
  • You need to understand the systems implemented as your physical space is organized — understand how these systems work to maximize your productivity and efficiency.
  • From this point on, it is essential to become intentional in everything you do.

Like a Well-Oiled Machine

As a Certified Professional Organizer, I am responsible for educating my clients in organizing methodologies and principles, uncovering the root cause of their clutter, designing solutions for them, and showing them strategies and tactics to move forward confidently.

My clients seek results and effectively solve those issues that cause them to live small, disorganized, over-complicated lives.

However, their understanding of the organizing process and their long-term commitment to it are crucial to the long-term success of any organizing project. Without their understanding and commitment to the process, the best systems and most detailed organization efforts will fail.

When your home space is transformed, your old habits and routines won’t support the new way of living anymore. You can’t expect results compatible with your new home environment, acting as you did before.

Also, the brain depends on action repetition for the body to develop that “muscle memory” to adopt a more intuitive way to do things. This is how routines become second nature — when newly created habits flow effortlessly. That’s when you have achieved a home that runs like a well-oiled machine.

Systems to Engage Autopilot

A system is a series of sequential actions to execute any given activity. Simple examples of household systems are how and when someone does the laundry, how they plan meals (or not), and even how they shower.

When we declutter, we remove excess from our home. But when we organize, we sort through things, classify, allocate, and then custom-develop systems for the household and individuals within.

However, the multiple benefits of an organized life depend on that person’s ability to systematize and automate their day-to-day tasks and effectively incorporate those systems and routines into their everyday life.

When daily tasks run “on auto-pilot,” that’s when a person finds the time and headspace to rise to the level of creation in their life.

When New Habits Become Second Nature

When new habits and routines become second nature to you and yours, then you can:

  • Be proactive instead of reactive.
  • Dedicate time to what matters most to you.
  • Spend more time with those you love.
  • Work towards the achievement of your goals.
  • Create your life and circumstances (in every sense of the word).

Voila! Those are the benefits of an organized home and life.

Higher Thoughts Turn Into Goals

Imagine three levels of existence within you. All those menial, mundane tasks should happen at the base (lower level). The mid-level is where you execute most of the time and where your attention should be 85% of the time. That mid-level is where you make things happen, no matter if it is stuff from the basic level or the upper one. Finally, the upper level is for high-level, life-changing thoughts and goals.

When you have lower-level tasks on autopilot, they don’t need much of your attention. On the other hand, upper-level ideas need sufficient attention from you to bring them down to the mid-level. Bringing those thoughts to the mid-level is crucial because it is in the mid-level where you give them shape through concrete planning and execution. This is where goals come from!

Removing Attention From Menial Tasks

The benefits of being organized and having an efficiently managed home do not negate the need to attend to the menial daily chores. However, when we plan, schedule, and streamline everything that should happen in everyday life, we automate all those lower-level tasks.

This requires paying attention to planning and executing the menial stuff before automating these things. But once we do this, we can operate in a more stable environment, thus making it possible to focus on bigger, more important things.

In other words, daily living tasks get streamlined and automated in our schedule so that they don’t require our constant attention. When this happens (and these tasks become second nature), we hardly notice them. As a result, we stop feeling these to-dos bug us. And thanks to greater efficiency, we have more time and headspace for the big picture and higher-level thoughts, which is where the point of creation resides.

Move Forward To Create The Life You Want

And this is how you move forward to create the life you desire. The more streamlined and automated the lower-level tasks and ideas are, the greater the space in your mind to shape, plan, and execute more significant thoughts — our goals and dreams — the point of creation.

Not having the space or capacity to attend to the planning and execution of those ideas means living in the rat race where everything has the same priority and where we continually run around putting off fires.

That is an exhausting, reactive life. This unintentional life does not provide space or energy to think about what we want in life, much less to make it happen.

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Maristella Bertram

Maristella Bertram, MBA, CPO, owner of My Space Reclaimed, LLC, is a Board-Certified Professional Organizer, Redesigner and Stager.