Purging & Acquisitions: Releasing with Love

I believe that there are varying levels of emotional value woven into whatever we have and are holding onto. 

1. that pair of boots you wore to the bucket list rock concert,
2. the jeans you wore in high school,
3. the cache of baby clothes and your kids are teens or older,
4. the teapot your grandmother used,
5. the ___(fill in the blank)___.

All the things that we surround ourselves with, hold a link to and tell us a story over and over again.  Having memories and items that help you remember times, people, events, milestones with fondness are off the charts in holding emotional value and are treasures.

However, if you associate the jeans you wore in high school with negative self talk like, "I'm so fat, how did I let my body get like this, I will never be that size again", are they truly valuable? Are they motivational?  If they make you feel like that...let them go 

If your intention is to have them as a reminder of your Rockin' Bod and the good times had while wearing them... that's a different story and it feels different to look at them and when you tell that story.

The house I selling was bursting with emotions.  It wasn't just a property it was:

• the house me and my husband built, 
• on the land that he and I loved, 
• in the community that we helped to create, 
• in association with the business he had dreamed of starting and owning for years,
• the place to host friends, family, Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays, celebrations of all things,
• it was our Family Home that our girls were to grow up in, move out of and come back to.

I wasn't just selling a house, I wasn't simply letting go of a building and some land, this was letting go of what we had known to be our foundation, of what was and what would never be.  

After my husband died, I had started referring to our going forward as "Creating a New Normal".   After physically leaving Canada every moment and experience was not just a New Normal but also one that required translation from either German or Dutch.  From the get go, when asked how we were doing I replied without hesitation that "We were having an exceptional experience!" And we did for just over 2 years!

Six months after I had put the house on the market and subsequently made adjustments to the price and still no action I felt it was time to address the energy around and feelings about actually selling.  

My intention was not to disregard or diminish the importance of what the house was to me, and my girls, but it was to find a way to make peace emotionally in order to let it go.

I believe in listening to your body and I'm an advocate for and practice listening to my "gut" as my intuitive guide.  Three main things came up for me

1. Whenever I thought of the house I felt a clenching in my chest...Not good.  
2. I felt that as much as I wanted to sell it I was clutching it to my chest...Not conducive to manifesting a buyer.  
3. Whenever the girls and I talked about the house it sounded like we were talking about their Dad, not the building...tricky

So I asked myself a couple questions:  

If we weren't in Europe right now would I be selling the house?  

Answer:  Yes

If we were to repatriate to Canada tomorrow, next month, next year would we move back into the house?  Answer: No

So I went back to the basics and created some affirmations that I wanted to attach to the house to help to alleviate and move away from the chest clutching feeling.

Affirmations

The photo on the right is an affirmation I created recently for someone who is selling and not unlike the ones I began to use myself.

Every time I thought of the house I immediately started to affirm letting it go with Love.

Every time we spoke of a family memory I would thank the house and affirm letting it go with Love.

Every opportunity I could change the language in association with the house I did.  And it began to feel better and easier.

Expressing Gratitude

Next thing I did was wrote a letter and got my girls to do the same.  The letter was dual purpose.  First to express our Gratitude to and for the house and land; and secondly as a Welcome to the Most Perfect New Owners.

I started by expressing gratitude to the house for keeping us safe, warm in winter, cool in summer. For being the most perfect place to live, for being such a gracious host to our celebrations with family and friends and for daily living.  I thanked it for being The MOST perfect place for the girls to grow up.  I thanked it for all the attributes that sprung to mind.

I thanked my husband for choosing the location, for creating such an amazing yard, for tending to the land and respecting it.  For all the things he did to make the house our home.

I thanked everyone who ever came through my door and for adding such positive energy to our space.

Welcoming

Next I welcomed the new family.  I told them how they had made the Most Perfect choice to live here.  I excitedly told them about all the wonderful reasons they will LOVE living here.  I told them how the yard and valley craved for kids to run, play and explore.  I told them how breathtaking the valley was in every season and to watch for the ample wildlife.  I told them how strong and secure the house was and that it will love being freshened up to reflect their style.  I affirmed all of their reasons for choosing to make this their home.

After completing the letters we read them out loud, which led us to share stories of this, that and the other thing.  When we spoke about those things it felt good, it didn't feel like loss.  It helped to shift from "clutching onto it" to "releasing with it peacefully".

To finish what now had become quasi ceremonial, we burned our letters and released them...with Love.

Retail Value

Finally, I asked my agent to provide me with a blank copy of the Offer to Purchase.  I filled it in with painstaking detail as if it were the real deal.

For the names of the Purchasers I put: The Most Perfect Family or Better

For the price, I put in my walk away price:  $XXX,XXX.XX or Better

For the date of possession: I put in a date and added or Better

I signed it as the Seller and Signed it for the Purchaser as above.  Then put it away and let the energy flow!

I'd love this sentence to read, "And after I put my pen down my agent called ..." :)

Purging & Acquisitions - Emotional Value

In order to move forward I believe it is necessary to lighten your load, literally and figuratively.

Think about something for a moment:
Of all the things you have in your house that are...

• stored in a box,
• tucked away in a closet,
• shelved in the garage,
• allocated to the basement,
• in a pile to repair, mend or recycle,
• and even rooms or areas that are tasked strictly for storing things that you don't use regularly or even ever. 

Now ask yourself, 

1. If you did not have the physical space to house these items what would you do with them?
2. Would you pay to store them elsewhere? How much would you pay to do so?

What weighed heavily on me, back in September 2010, was the quote from the mover for storing the balance of the possessions left in the house.  

In order to empty the house it would have cost me (in addition to the move to storage) $750.00 per month, times that by the number of months the house would be on the market, (an unknown value) and I quickly calculated that my best decision, at the time, would be to leave the boxes in the house. 

This didn't sit very well with me since how would that look when a potential buyer came through and saw our collection of boxes?  However I needed to make peace with that and we did our best in storing the boxes in such a way not to detract from the house.

Plus our time overseas (initially) was to be for about a year so sending it over was not even on the table.

At that time, I didn't question the contents that my amazing team of friends came and lovingly packed up for me.  Not only did I have a tight time constraint to get this done and back on the airplane, everything that I did not let go of retained a high level of value, especially emotional value.

I had attracted the most perfect people to help me move forward with the above tasks and I also attracted the most perfect people to be caregivers of our property in our absence.  Our bags were tremendously lighter because of that.

Selling property, can be a true test of patience.  And when that property is not selling it can be a pop quiz on one's self worth.

When pricing your property you factor in the physical attributes, location-location-location, current market information, features, upgrades, amenities, etc etc., blended along with the figure of what you value your property at.

Anyone who has ever bought or sold a home knows that you will only get for the property what someone will pay for it.  Both the seller and the buyer want to manifest their best deal.  From a Universal Law perspective you may cancelling each other out to a certain extent.

Even with the intention of selling I/we still had to figure out how do let go of something so big, (literally) the size of a house?

... 

Purging & Acquisitions: Spatial Awareness

No matter where in the world you live nature is shifting gears for the next season. Whether you are entering into Autumn, or here in Brisbane, we are nearly 3 weeks into Spring.  The transition is becoming apparent outside in the gardens and for some this is the unconscious nudge to start purging or storing items no longer suited.  While simultaneously you begin noticing the things you need to acquire.

I know a little bit about purging material possessions.  

When the decision was made to move overseas to Germany/The Netherlands in September 2010 I put the acreage on the market, boxed up the contents, let go of a large amount of stuff by either selling it or gifting it and set off for an International adventure.

Abroad, we were living in a quaint furnished cottage in Germany, and in comparison were living quite simply.  The house I was selling was approximately 316 square meters versus our quaint cottage of about 75 square meters.  I often said that we would be fine with a house half the size, then we moved into a house 25% of what we were accustomed to...Talk about downsizing!

I measure "simply" not only in actual size, but in features.  And the comfort I found in making that change was that we were living with & within what we needed and there was zero unused space.  

As a testament to making it work I was still able to host a Canadian style Thanksgiving for twelve people, feeding them all my standard fare and did so without having things like...

• a double oven,
• a double sink,
• a dishwasher,
• a formal dining room table, 
• a 2.5 m x 1.5m counter for the buffet, 
• various kitchen gadgets & accoutrements etc...

Everyone ate, drank and enjoyed the celebration!  This validated things for me in more ways than one.

For me that shift, not only to another country & culture,  but into another way of living was refreshing, relieving almost like releasing the breath you didn't know you were holding.  

Would I have attempted to make such a drastic change in houses if we'd stayed in Canada?  I doubt it.

Did I miss certain creature comforts? No question.

Am I blessed that my girls adjusted to sharing a bedroom smaller than one of theirs?  Absolutely.

This transition did not come without sacrifices and challenges, whereas before you would have to look for where a person was in the house, now you were acutely aware of everyone's breathing patterns. :) 

Not to mention 1 Bathroom versus 3 girls in the house...

Even though this was a furnished house there were practical things I chose to add.  However when I was bringing something "into" the house, it had to make absolute sense, it had to fit and it usually had to be multi-functional.  I had to be acutely conscious of my acquisitions to insure they were adding value and not just taking up prime real estate space.  And the wardrobe rule of something new coming in, meant something old was going out was strictly enforced, without discussion.

Arriving overseas with just our suitcases and leaving the bulk of our personal items and home contents all packed up in Canada proved to be a great lesson in value...to be continued.

Creativity is...

When I first saw the picture of Creativity is... it was welcome sign I needed.

First of all, in my opinion, it is a compilation of truths and each phrase was a good shot of the vaccine I needed to quell the overwhelming approach of my Monsters.  

"Monsters" is the term I've been akin to using in my coaching to identify fears, and monsters have been known to morph into what can feel like an omnipresent black cloud.  However I feel that when we are able to identify what feeds the monster and what diminishes it we can begin to take our power back.

Thanks to social media we can choose to be inundated with sage words of wisdom & powerful images of inspiration, its the moment we grasp something that we can carry forward into action that makes the substantial difference in our experience. 

For me, the following motivational words is what prompted me today to get creating some action for myself....

I've been Blessed in my life to have been the recipient of and creator of big life changes.  The best of which is that I regret nothing.  Yes N.O.T.H.I.N.G. Sure there could have been a couple do-over's in choices, but in reflection I'm grateful for everything that life has brought me & taught me about myself and others.

The tricky bit is when you are in the midst of transition, trying to find your feet and NOT doing is easier than doing.  And if I'm not doing "Sherry Things" in "Sherry Style" how is that going to serve my No Regrets record?

Today I'm choosing to keep in my present the phrase "The ability to be able to express yourself freely, in whichever way you choose without having your wings clipped".  

This is my go forward intention to create space!