Rearrange Your Shelves

Beans need shelves to stay ready to use when in our kitchen. So do canned fruits, baking essentials, and snacks. We humans need organization too for our overly complex set of ingredients that are stored in the mind. The many juxtaposing beans, bread, syrup, and Captain Crunch we carry around in our brian are so vast, so fractured, and so damn complicated that it is hard to keep our thought kitchen in order. Hence, preparing for whatever cuisine is getting served up in the moment, the same goes the having the right ingredients within reach.

Meaning: humans have way too many thoughts and feelings to deal with; a veritable cornucopia of shifting cascades into the mind like Niagara Falls. The occasional influx of overwhelming volume of those thoughts and feelings requires us to develop some kind of efficient management of that information flow. Just like a kitchen needs a roomy pantry, we need an internal reservoir system to prioritize all the meshugas that invade our daily lives.

Humans have evolved way beyond the call of duty from all other species on this planet. You will never see a lion acting like he is disappointed in himself, or a squirrel feeling ashamed, and never an elephant pissed off that she forgot her kiddo’s birthday. Animals keepin’ it simple, yo. Bears play in the water, cats purr on your lap, and dogs wag their tails. But we, however, spend way too time percolating thoughts of embarrassment, guilt, self-doubt, remorse, perceived fear with no real threat in view, and a spate of general insecurities in between.

I am included in this category; I feel the feels that weigh heavy sometimes, when I could easily change my focus to something more like a bear cub, or whale calf, or a snuggling kitty that found a warm lap. The easy part is to recognize whence it came, the hard part is to practice changing the focus.

Here’s my thoughts on how this dynamic works, and how to fend off the torrents of feelings overloaded and piling up in your kitchen. Here’s some strategies to keep a KonMari style of tidying up your precious counter space.

I, too, often feel insecure when writing insights here on substack, facing my own feelings of imposter syndrome by sharing my thoughts like these. Who am I to tell others how to be happy? What gives me authority to guide others? What makes me any kind of role model? By writing, I am learning to learn from my own advice. I wonder what someone might have said to me when I was younger about how to craft my own moments of happiness, if I had such a person in my life. Since I had such an arduous and lonely childhood, it has taken me many years of overthinking and observing others’ behavior to sort out these thoughts of how to best elevate my own self first. I am definitely a work in progress, and these posts are a cathartic exercise to hone them into cogent and sharable posts.

I do not have all the answers, but I do love to help others and I welcome your feedback on any of my views, writing style, or your own tactics for helping us get clarity on the bothersome moments when priorities require a deep breath.

So, we can keep in mind that just like a lion that makes time to laze in the sun, awaiting his wife to bring back the kids, we human beans also have the capacity to shed the tornado of negativity for a moment. By saying to yourself, in your inner silent thoughts that only you can hear, what is the top shelf in my kitchen missing? Are you going to take your canned peaches and put them up on the highest shelf? Or keep canned goods on the bottom, leaving room for your top shelf to store the comfort foods? Where do you put the popcorn packets for those well deserved leisurely restful moments that go so much better with a smooth beverage and a bucket of popcorn?

I guess that first off you have to imagine your inner pantry set up with your own vision of how you want to build it. AA members have a similar task of taking inventory in step 4, and also use the reference of cleaning house to see clearly where you are going in your journey to betterment. Summoning the smallest room in the house for this, you can imagine a safe room with only your own tools to rely on when you need a break from the external chaos. For example, when I feel stressed to the max from someone else’s bitching and moaning about some petty superficial issue, I think about what do I have on my second shelf down to chill and recoup. My own sensitivity from hearing an ‘all about me’ rant triggers feelings of knowing how it feels for my friend or family member to get value from someone lending a caring ear. Therefore, interrupting or mansplaining how to resolve their issue is not what I want within reach in my pantry of responses. My source of PTSD comes from lacking that kind of support. Hence, how to shift my focus through that - I just go to my happy place and remain present and listen. By donating my time to hear them out, I know where to keep a can of welcomed sound boarding nearby. I serve up that same comfort food of providing the moments for them to vent to me. I can help them with my warm homemade chicken soup for their soul. By the way, if I am ever in your house and I need some support snack, my fav is yogurt covered raisins. They are always waiting for me within reach in my cupboard.

A metaphor goes a long way to soothe the urgency and drama of what stresses us out. These thoughts that keep me thinking cool, calming, positive thoughts help me sleep better, lower my blood pressure for a minute and gets me some self-gratification that I have elevated by choice.

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