10 Common Reasons You Can't Get Organized

I hear it all the time...HELP!  I work and I work and I work and I just cannot get organized. 

I can give you 10 of the most common reasons why you can't get organized. 

1.  You are trying to organize like someone else thinks....not how you think.
2.  You are trying to organize too much at one time.
3.  You are not willing to let go.
4.  You are not staying focused for any length of time.
5.  You are not taking the next step....are you hanging up your robe, are you putting the trash in the trash can, the dirty dish in the dishwasher, are you taking the designated donate items to a donation location, etc.
6.  You do not have a home for everything
7.  You have not scheduled time to organize
8.  You have unreal expectations about how long it will take to undo what has taken years to do.
9.  You want to talk about getting organized more than you really want to exert the effort to change habits and ways of thinking.
10. You have life reasons such as sickness - physical or mental or you have way too many things on your life plate.  

All of the above are legitimate reasons but all can be overcome.  You just have to be honest enough, with yourself, to know the reasons why and see what you can do to combat those obstacles, because you truly can combat them.    I'll tell you a little secret........if you look at the top 9 reasons, just do the opposite of what the sentence says and you can overcome that obstacle.  
For example, #1 - You are trying to organize like someone else thinks....not how you think.
What you say to yourself is - how do I think and what will work for me?

#2 -  You are trying to organize too much at one time
What you say to yourself is - I am going to organize one shelf.....not the whole kitchen. 

See how that works.  The only one that will not work with is reason #10.  There are things in life that are really out of your control but even in those times, you do have more control than you think......sometimes you just have to do things you don't really feel like doing.  

Take a look at the list above, do any of them ring true to you?  
There are other reasons, too, what are some of yours? 

Do You Have A Baseline?

I was in a meeting about Social Media the other day and the speaker was talking about having a baseline, starting that day, I needed to write down and know how many Twitter followers do I have, how many people like my Facebook pages and how many Blog followers do I have. Knowing these numbers today and comparing them to the same time next year allows me to know how much my business and social media presence has grown.  When I was 40, I had to have a mammogram so the radiologist would be able to see if there were changes from one year to the next.  When you are in 3rd grade, you take a test at the beginning of the year and the same test at the end of the year to see what you have learned.  How do you know if you've achieved anything if you don't have a baseline?   

I am constantly reminding my organizing and life coach clients to remember where they came from instead of always looking at how much work, organizing, and changing they need to do.  
Many of them have forgotten the reality of their life circumstances or the reality of what their life used to look like.  When you forget, you end of up not giving yourself any credit for your accomplishments, only grief at not reaching your goals.  

Take a baseline today of where you are in your life.  If need be, write it down, take pictures, whatever you have to do to remind yourself of your starting point.  Then write down where you want to go and you can eventually look back and see how far you've come while at the same time continuing to "have faith in how far you can go!"