Everywhere I look, there’s stuff. Books on cupboards, shelves overbrimming with plates, paper everywhere.
Untidy house, untidy mind.
I was talking with an older sort the other day about books. She was adamant that heaving shelves were a positive attribute; there was no way on God’s earth she would consider having books on an electronic device.
The ignition failed on a cooker; dad’s excuse for stagnating on a plea to have the parts replaced was ‘we didn’t use to have an ignition on a cooker.’
Among many of the mature set there’s a profound unwillingness to adapt to, address and grab wilfully, modern life. It’s not because it’s worse, or seen as a bad thing to do, but rather, it’s because ‘we always did things that way.’
But it’s not just old folk. There’s a malignant inability to grasp change in every walk of life.
- Why? We didn’t used to have it…
- It didn’t used to be like that…
How can we become great if we don’t even become?
The answer is to reverse-habitualise.
If you have the power to habitualise hoarding, you have the power of habitualisation.
So you find a sweet spot, the common plateau of conviction. It’s your subconscious driving habitualisation so you have to understand what the trigger is for doing things again, and again, and again.
Because it is repetition that makes us all so good at what we do, best. In the case of old people, it’s quite often picking a spot of floor where there isn’t junk, and filling it.
When you’re a champion athlete, it’s finding a way of running that four-minute mile. And nailing it.
When you’re a nun, it’s a lifetime devotion to the Father, Son and Holy Blah. And committing to it.
Doesn’t matter how hard the draw, it’s the habitualising that’ll bring the goal to your door.
So we need to reverse engineer. Take steps back to figure how the unwitting action was committed to your psyche.
In the case of old people I suspect hoarding is the result of having very little as a child.
In the case of the athlete, sometimes it’s pure adrenaline and desire; often, and this is fact backed by research, it’s the need to run away from something. Seriously.
In the case of the nun, it’s safety and security.
So if we can just work on the groundwork, we can reach for the stars.
With the old people, it’s reassurance that we’re in times of plenty. Assuaged by plenty, the geriatric will eventually be mollified, reassured, and the habitualisation, reversed.
It takes gentle coaxing, over a period time. The same commitment to habitualisation of hoarding is required to undo it.
I’ll get the eReader into their lives. I’ll get the ignition sorted. But to make more meaningful an impact than the band aid approach is to spend time fixing the wound.