Have you ever set a goal and after a few months, weeks or even days lost sight of what you were wanting to achieve? I know I have.

You might be surprised to know that I haven’t always organised as I am now. I used to have a lot of stuff and there was a lot of not knowing what to do with all of it. I was getting so frustrated and tired with dealing with it and I thought to myself there had to be a better way.

So, I started setting myself goals of trying to declutter and trying to get more organised. But motivation slipped away almost as quickly as it appeared. What I have discovered is that I was constantly setting myself up to fail. Because I hadn’t asked myself this important question: what is my why?

Why did I want to achieve my goal to declutter and to be more organised? I had never actually sat down and looked at my reasoning. So, me being me, I started writing my list of whys.
It looked something like the below list.

I wanted to be:

• Less stressed (clutter is a massive cause of stress for most people)
• Less tired (I got to the point where sleep was hard because of the stress)
• Less anxious, less embarrassed (I was always worried about the state of my home and especially worried about unexpected visitors!)
• Less of a housemaid (less stuff = less cleaning)

I wanted:

• More time (if I wasn’t wasting time on cleaning, sorting, worrying about the mess, wasting time searching for things, I’d actually have more time)
• More energy (to spend with loved ones)
• More love (if my cup was empty, there wasn’t much left of me to give to others)
• More freedom (I didn’t want my stuff to control me anymore. I also wanted to break the belief that I had to keep up with what everyone else was doing)
• More joy (by being surround by things that I really love and enjoy using)
• More money (when I really took a good look at what I already had I started to realise I didn’t need to waste money on stuff to be happy)

After I had finished I stuck a copy of it to my bathroom mirror, so that I would see it every day.

This one small thing of asking myself ‘what is my why’ made a huge difference. When the motivation started to lag, all I had to do was look at my list. It was enough to remind myself why I was doing what I was doing.

So, whatever your goal is; get fit, save money, learn to meditate, declutter – make sure you start by asking ‘what is my why.’ Once you know your reasons, you will be in a much better place to achieve what you set out to.