Michelle Johnson
Are you ready to level up? I'm Michelle Johnson, a business coach, business owner, corporate manager, wife, Mum, and a juggler of all the things I would love to help you juggle all the things that are important to you. How do you stay calm in control and achieve your goals? Join me in the mindset corner.
Michelle Johnson
Hello, hello, welcome back to the mindset corner. I have a great guest episode for you today. But before I introduce my guest, I want to let you know that the doors to my eight week course frenzy to focus will be opening in March. To get yourself onto the waiting list, you can go to the mindset corner.com forward slash time tips, download my tips about time and put yourself onto the waiting list so I can let you know when we're open and when you can get in on my awesome program. So today, we're chatting with Bridget Jones. Bridget is a city girl that moved to the country vowing it will just be a two year stint and then she married a farmer. Now she happily lives on a straight A shape and serial farm with her husband and two children on the yoke peninsula of South Australia. For the first 16 years of her career, she worked in state government and regional development roles, supporting economic development, wellbeing, and engagement initiatives in education, workforce and skills development, and export and investment projects. Whoa, busy girl. In 2019, she asked herself a big bold and audacious question. If time and money were no object, what would I do? Bridget said be a professional organizer. So she jumped off the traditional career trajectory and followed her dreams and launched be simply free a professional organizing and declutter coaching business. And she launched in March 2020, just before the pandemic started. They simply free exists to teach women to reduce their mental load by decluttering. Their homes, phones, calendars and minds so they can find more space in their homes and time in their calendars to collect moments, and not things. I hope you enjoy my chat with Bridget. Here it is.
Michelle Johnson
Hey, Bridget, welcome to the mindset corner. Thank you so much for having me. So, so excited to have you here. It's been I had you on a few other podcasts and I was like Bridget is a like minded mom, I definitely need to get her on and see see what tips you've got for me selfishly and also for the people who listen to the podcast. So thank you. No worries, excited to have a chat. And yes, see where the conversation goes. Amazing. So I have already told the listeners a little bit about you and your bio, but maybe just in your own words, can you tell us? What What have you been doing in your business? And how did you have your journey to this point? Yeah, so I'm Bridget Jones, and I'm a mental load coach. So I love helping women to declutter not only their physical spaces, but their phones, calendars and minds as well, because I feel like a lot of people think of decluttering as reducing the stuff in their home. But it's really that mental load that mental clutter, which really plugs us all up and slows down that motivation to do things around the home. So yeah, so that's what I do now. But for the last 16 years, I've worked in state government or regional development roles supporting economic development, workforce roles, exports, and a lot of project management roles. So I'm doing a very different life now than I was back then. But I assumed I'd always be a public servants. My university background is actually Food Science and Technology. And I moved to the country from Adelaide 16 years ago to start my career. And then I met my now husband, who's a farmer, and we have two kids, a 10 year old and an eight year old and we live on a sheep and beef and broad acre cropping farm on the Europa nature of South Australia. So that's how I got to the country. But during my career, I've always worked on one or two year contracts. And in 2019, we were moved into a new department and it just wasn't the right fit for me. And through a few tears and things like that. I asked myself if time and money were no object, what would I actually do? And I've always loved to organize and simplify things in my life. So we've got more time to do fun things as a family. And I've been sharing a little bit of that anonymously on an Instagram account called farmer's wife minimalist life and people are really interested in the little tips that I just did.
Bridget Johns
Every day as a natural way of helping myself out, so I thought, wow, what if I could make that into a job and be a professional organizer. So that's what I started to do while I was working full time in a regional manager role. And then just the Baby Steps took me from May 2020, to, from May 2019, to leaving my government job in July 2020. So, yeah, that was a little bit of a journey there. But I'm so grateful to have stepped away from that security of a government role to starting my own business. That is so cool. I love that question that you asked yourself, what if money was no object? What was the other thing? What if time and money went down? Well, yeah, I think I've asked myself that question so many times over the years working in a corporate role. And even if I have an answer, it's still like, there's still those barriers to actually make that decision to go. Even if you have a good idea. Did you experience any doubts about your decision? Oh, how did you overcome that?
Bridget Johns
Yeah, and I'm a lifelong learner, I have a master's degree, I have bachelor degrees, and I study positive psychology and well being. So I think sometimes society gives us that expectation that you've got all these qualifications, you need to use them in the way they were designed. And professional organizing is not a common thing. And some people don't even know what that is that. So it was a bit about educating other people
Bridget Johns
in my life about what I wanted to do, but yeah, there were there were always doubts along the way, I was on a very good salary. And I was probably at the top of where I could be in countries after Australia in the role I was doing. So probably the first step for us was because we were on yearly contracts, we'd worked on our budget for the last three years. So we were conscious that at any moment, my contract could be gone. So we'd really looked at our expenditure. And as a professional organizer, I see so much stuff in class, which was once money. So I'm very conscious of reminding people to focus on collecting moments, not things. So we'd really worked on that over the last three years. So I was able to reduce the amount of salary I was getting from my own business in that short term. And that wasn't a problem for our budget. So if anyone's considering stepping off, I'd really encourage them to look at their their personal budget and see if it's an option. And maybe it's something down the track. But I was a always researching different ways of what this would look like for me. So we have a professional association called the Institute of professional organizers. So before I jumped away from a secure job, I attended their national conference and met other people doing this role as a professional organizer. So I could see what other people were doing and how they made a business out of it. I worked with a business coach to help me get their foundations white, right and had that accountability. And now, I have still work two days a week in an employee role as a grant writer, so using my organizational skills in another way. But back in July 2020, when I left that role, I left a five day a week role. And I went to a three day a week role. And then in July, June 2021, I stepped away from the three day a week role and dropped down to the two day a week role. So if anyone has is looking at changing their careers, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. And it does put a lot of pressure on you if you're jumping straight out of a secure weekly income into your own business. So that hybrid model of jumping from five days to three days to now two days, in an employee role and three days in my business is what worked for me. And yeah, consider that option to such a good perspective. Because I think people do think like I can either do this or this. And so being able to be creative and think of different solutions and come up with your own path is definitely like allows you to do it. And I still really enjoy. I enjoy my grant writing. And I actually do some consultancy grant writing and my business basically free as well because it is organizing just in a completely different context. Because it does take a lot of assessing all information here writing it down, decluttering it all and putting it into a grant application. So for me, this feels like a good mix. And I think I'll do it for quite a long time. I'm supporting my local communities to get some more money into the into the region. And then I'm also helping people reduce them into load and free up their time. So yeah, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. Yeah, both rewarding ActiveX that's awesome. What What was it like to start something totally new from scratch, like coming from, I guess a government background? I would think that was super structured and there's policies for everything and jumping up there for a really long time and then jumping out into doing your own thing. How did you go with starting? Yeah,
Bridget Johns
with being in government, we get told what the strategic plan is. And it's filtered down to what our specific role is. And it's scary because I feel like sometimes you get institutionalized into larger roles that you just always do things a certain way. But in your own business, it's up to you what you do, you don't have to work nine to five, you don't have to work five days a week. But it's also can be a double edged sword, because I've definitely had times when I've worked seven days a week, and I've gotten up super early and worked on my business from six till 7am, and then gone into other things, and then jumped back on at 730 to 10pm. So it does take a lot of adjusting and being conscious of your own boundaries and what you want to do. So definitely, I noticed when I was doing three days a week in the employee role it, it was getting too much. And I had to make a decision. And I had to put some boundaries around my time. And that's what I said, I wanted to step away one day per week from the employee job because it felt like I was working. Yeah, too many hours. So as I said, Yeah, empowering. But it does require you to work out those new restrictions and guidelines you want to put on your own life. But I try and have Friday afternoons, now in my business as a bit more of a, a learning afternoon or a relax, afternoon as well. So you do have that flexibility to make your life suit. So you and I work school hours. So when the kids get on the bus and off the bus. That's my general work day. Yeah, that sounds great. I think sometimes it forces you to be so much more efficient when you do have other things going on. So I ran a business outside of my corporate role, a couple of businesses. And yeah, definitely, I can do things much faster than probably I would if I had all the time in the world to do them. Because I know I only have one hour until the kids get home or, you know, I have they've gone to bed and I have to do this and then still get myself to bed at a reasonable time. And so it does kind of force me to be much more productive, which is a good thing. Yeah, we can we can stretch tasks to fit the time we have. So if you've got some boundaries in there, or some triggers that remind you to stop and do something else, I've got a bus that I dropped my kids off. And if I'm not there, I'm in trouble. So yeah, I set reminders and alarms to my phone to keep me on track. And to put some of those time boundaries and time blocks in place to keep me focused. Yeah, I used to work quite long hours when I first started in my job. And then after having kids, my boss told me like, Don't worry, you'll get the same amount of work done, you'll just have this boundary in place that says you have to leave at five because you've got to go pick them up or, or whatever. And you'll find that you can actually get the work done in a much smaller amount of time with that pressure. And he was totally right. Yeah. And I was listening to an organizational psychologist speaking about that. And we can get caught up thinking that we're multitasking, we've got our emails opened, we are working on a document, we've got messenger messages going off in our phone. And she was saying we're really only keeping our concentration for about six minutes. But if we mono task and just do one thing at a time, put your phone on Do Not Disturb for, say half an hour while you're working on a document, close that screen where your emails are. And I don't actually have any notifications that go off on my little apps on the bottom of my screen. We can activity 40% more efficient in our time. So if you think of that you post yeah, having your workday if you really just monitor task, and focus on what you're doing. So yeah, that's another tip people can take on board. Yeah, I love productivity tips. My my signature program is an eight week course, which is called frenzy to focus
Michelle Johnson
all about Yeah, how to achieve that productivity in your day and spend your time on what's more important to you, instead of getting sucked into other people's priorities or distractions or you know, notifications and things that are that are taking up your valuable time. So
Michelle Johnson
of course, I'm super interested in those tips.
Bridget Johns
How do you go juggling? Like having a family and starting a new business at the same time? Yes. So I started working on my business. I think my daughter would gone into reception. So in South Australia, that's their first year of school. So five days a week at school to clarify. Yeah, cuz I think we have kindy our kindy is preschool? I think so. So my daughter was started school and my son's two years older. So I had that bit more of a structure that the kids were at school, but in effect, I feel like childcare it's easier to start a business sometimes because you can drop them off between sticks and pick them up to six but school hours knock it down to sort of nine to three, and it's all an evolution and a work in progress. It involves a lot of communication with my husband, my husband's a farm
Bridget Johns
So we have the seeding when we put the crop into the ground and the harvest time when we reap the crop, they're super busy times for him. But the way we manage things is by sort of having a family meeting or just to touch base and have a set me up Sunday routine. And we just both clear about what our priorities are for the week or so who's going to do bus drop off and bus pickup each day, if I've got some master classes I'm running or if I'm launching my course, I'm in a busier time, so he'll pick up more of the, the cooking or cleaning around the home. So it's all about communication. And the kids are now 10, and eight. So kids are quite capable of doing a lot more than we give them credit for. So we try and make it a team effort to get everything done. But it's it's not easy. And it does take some time and adjustment, and you just need to do what works for you. There's no cookie cutter approach, we can't say. This is how you juggle your family. It's about working out what works for you and depends on how many excellent extracurricular activities your kids do, and what your commitment they're really thick. And then really being specific about what you want him to do on each of those days is the best way to make a start and try it adjust and change if you need to. Yeah, amazing. I totally agree with what you're saying about that kids are really capable of doing more than we give them credit for my three year old can pretty much make his own breakfast, like it's really messy. And so I do have to deal with that side of it. But I know that investing that time now and letting him have that independence will mean that he can make his own breakfast pretty quickly. I'd say it a little bit like being a manager in the workplace. Like I've got to empower my people to make their own decisions. And, you know, not have to rely on me for everything. Yeah, and I talked about time. So we've all got 1440 minutes in every day. But if we can teach other people to do some of the things that we feel like we have to do, we're freeing up our own time. And yes, that teaching step does take a little bit longer, and they may only do what up to 80% of our standard. But if you're freeing up that time, can we reduce our expectations and lower standards a little bit to make it a greater option for our family? So everyone does a little bit? Yeah, and we work together to make it happen. And hopefully, we've got more time to collect moments, not things. Yeah, so true. If you end up with a bit of cereal and milk on the floor, you know, it's not the end of the day, it's an investment. Yeah. And then we can teach them how to clean that up as well. Yes, that's the next step.
Michelle Johnson
Well, I think it would be remiss of me not to ask you some more specific tips around decluttering. While we're here, yes. What do you recommend is the first step to decluttering. Your home?
Bridget Johns
Yes, this is a common question. And a lot of people are overwhelmed with where to start. And I encourage my clients to stop focus and noticed. So by that, I mean, stop doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And focus on that problem get really take some time to think about it, write it down, talk to the other people that are causing it, maybe it's the school bags just being dumped on the floor when everyone comes home from school. So your kids may not realize that that's something that really annoys you. So really talk to them and get clear on maybe about why they're dropping it there. And notice the position it's going is there a different way you can adjust the things there. And then notice what your options are for solving it. So it's about getting that big brain dump and list all the options for solving different things. So I get clients yet to stop focus notice on all different areas around their home. And when it comes to starting their decluttering process, I really encourage people to think about clutter as everyday clutter and accumulated clutter. So you think of everyday clutter is the school bags on the floor. It's the lunch boxes, it's the mess that happens when we have breakfast and we're cooking tea, it's the washing. So this is stuff that's going to happen every day. So you tidy it up one day, you'll still need to do it the next day or two. So we need to come up with systems that manage that everyday clutter. So for our family, we like to end the day with a clean kitchen. So after we've had tea as a family most of the time, sometimes I'll do it myself, but most of the time it's involving husband and the kids. We'll just do a race around the kitchen. Make sure everything's in the dishwasher and the kitchen benches clear. And if we've got time we'll do a bit of a race around the house and resets those lounge room and playroom spaces as well. So we're starting each day sort of with a tidy home not I like the word tidy rather than clean. It's it's not about that deep cleaning. It's just sort of having those clear spaces, and then coming up with a routine or plan for the laundry.
Bridget Johns
I was finding I was spending the whole weekend, cleaning sheets and towels and all our clothes. But for me weekends are around relaxing, spending time with family or friends. So I've adjusted our laundry schedule. So we do laundry, Monday to Friday morning, so Friday afternoon, and on the weekend, we're not doing any cleaning or just some quick tidying up, rather than spending the whole weekend cleaning and doing washing so and then clearing off the the spaces. So you think your kitchen table, your island bench, your bed and things like that, that's a good place to start. So making your bed each day is a good strategy for starting your your day with something done taking something off your to do list. And then once you've got those habits in place, then it's looking at the accumulated clutter. So accumulated clutter is those boxes in your shed, that you moved into your house five years ago, and you know that
Bridget Johns
everyone has them or looking at your wardrobe. And there's a whole pile of clothes in there that don't fit and you haven't worn and they've still got dust on top of the hangers and things like that, or the toys in boxes you've never the kids have grown out of and aren't using. So if you are wanting to work on and that's where everyone wants to start, they want to start with those accumulated clutter, but work on everyday clutter first. And then if you move on to the accumulated clutter, start with your own things first, rather than wanting to clear out all your kids stuff, or a common area like a kitchen. So yeah, look after your own decluttering get your family to notice the difference decluttering makes in your life. And then hopefully by osmosis, they start to want to make some changes in their areas of the house too. Yeah, I definitely should have talked to you a few weeks ago, we've been packing up our house at the moment to we're moving into our caravan for a year, some of my listeners already know. And so obviously, we're going from a four bedroom house down to a very small space in the caravan. And it's been like, I guess it's like ultimate decluttering because it's getting down to the wardrobe needs to be you know, 10 days worth of clothes or something rather than having anything for every occasion that might come up. And yeah, it's been very interesting watching the kids go through that process as well, because I've told them, you know, this is your crate. Yeah, great. You can choose your favorite toys and books, but it has to fit in here. And it just really made me reflect on like, how much they have and they don't need.
Bridget Johns
Our society is designed to encourage us to consume. If we think about the life, our grandparents lives, particularly in the Great Depression era, they were keeping drippings from a roast so they could use that factor to make their next meal. And slowly it was probably quite fast, we can get everything we need at a click of a button delivered to our home. Or we can go to Kmart or target and pick up a whole reset new house at within half an hour. So we need to consider why we're purchasing things are we doing it for that dopamine happiness hit and really see if we need all the stuff we're having. So we've recently bought a caravan I never thought I would be a caravan owner, but I'm loving it. But we were quite intentional about trying to fill it with secondhand things first, and I put a call out on my personal Facebook page. And yeah, people had spare donors and sheets that they no longer needed that we were able to set the caravan up with. And I think when people do go on holidays either in a caravan or holiday house, you'll notice it's quite sparse. There might only be for knives or forks or for bowls and things. You can live perfectly fine like that. But when we come back to our own home, we might find we've got 20 plates and bowls. So it's a good time to stop focus. Notice when you're on holidays of how you're feeling and what tweaks you can take from that holiday life back into your everyday life. So there's there's less stuff but more fun and enjoyment for for your family as well. And don't get caught up with keeping up with the Joneses and needing everything that those ads are throwing to us on social media all the time. And yeah, less is more. Yeah, it's almost like because you've got the space to store things like there were things in the back of my cupboards I had totally forgotten that I even owned. And I gave away most of our kitchen stuff to someone who's moving to a new place and has nothing so it was really like rewarding for me to be able to set someone else up but I was like, she's just on her own with our partner. I'm like, here's 20 forks. Like why do we have 20 volts? Yeah, you don't need all of these things. Yeah, so in our kitchen for example, like we love entertaining, so we do have 20 forks, but what we do is in our utensil drawer cutlery drawer, we only actually have eight that we use every day. And then we have another box for when a friend
Bridget Johns
Come and visit, then I've got the spare. So we've got eight bowls, eight forks, eight knives in our everyday kitchen. And then we've got 12 bowls and forks and stuff for when visitors come. So it's not accessible to us every day, which means we have to stay on top of their washing. So we've got knives and forks and bowls and spoons to use. But yeah, it just helps us have less access to stuff means we clean it and put it away quicker. Rather than having a long a sink full of 20 plates than I was surprised how good it made me feel like in the first stage where I just sort of cleared things that we weren't using. I was like, Oh, when I open this cupboard actually feel much more calm. And it doesn't. Yeah, I never noticed that I didn't feel calm. But it was a totally different experience when everything was much more accessible and much more organized in the kitchen. So we'll take care of him. Yeah, feeling of calm, things being accessible and being able to see them clearly a big takeaways from my one on one clients, when I work one on one with people to, to do that decluttering process, you don't even realize until you do it. And then you can see a huge difference. So you don't sort of always know what's contributing to your mental sort of clutter. And then you realize maybe the physical things are contributing. So really interesting. And that's why you need to stop focus. And notice, yeah, I really like that it's very similar to obviously I work with my clients and slightly different things. But a very similar process in sort of becoming aware of what you're doing is such a huge part of that shift in the first place. Just noticing, oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And I didn't realize, and that really allows you to make a change in your life. So yeah, it seems like such a small thing. But we can just go on autopilot through our life without thinking and do all the easy things that we've always done. And until you actually sort of stop and call into question like Oh, hang on, is this actually what I want? Yeah, you just keep doing the same thing. So
Michelle Johnson
yeah, really interesting. I had a note here to talk to you about calendars. Because I'm a massive calendar nerd. I love I have organizes, and I have my online calendar. And I'm always tinkering around and trying different tactics. So I want to know what you think about calendar management, so to speak, and I've heard you talk about decluttering people's calendars. So I'm really interested to hear what that's about. Yeah, because I think people will naturally think decluttering is around the physical stuff. But we need to find the time to do the physical decluttering. And the best way to find the time is to declutter your calendar. And again, to stop focus, notice why you're adding things into your calendar, who decided that this is how you run your life is it because you've just followed on what your mother in law has done or what your family have always done, and really take time to stop focus, notice what's in your calendar. So it's about understanding how you're spending your time. So as I said, 1440 minutes every in every day, and really seeing what you're doing with your time, the screen time feature on iPhones, and I'm sure there's something similar and calendars can be very eye opening to see how often you're picking up your phone and looking on social media. I hear a lot of people say they're too busy or time poor, but have they actually looked at how they're currently spending their time. So how long is on social media? How long is on Instagram, Facebook, tick tock, and all those things can be a good place to start if you're needing to find time. And I talked about 1% of your day being 14.4 minutes. So if you're so busy, that you can't even find 1% of your day. That's where we need to really declutter that calendar and find some more time for you. So it's about understanding your time. And the perfect thing would be to look at a seven day period and really write down everything you're doing. No one's gonna do that. No one's probably got the time to write down but it's about being aware of what you're doing. But I do encourage people to look at pick one day and from the moment you wake up to the moment you either drop the kids at school or start your workday, really map out how long it's taking you to do different things like your baby got some time for exercise in there. Are you making the kids lunches? Are you doing any tidying up in the morning? Are you feeding yourself breakfast? Or is it just a coffee and that is the data that's the real thing of how you're spending your time and then take some time to really focus on what's happening in your day and notice some changes you can make. So with a 10 and an eight year old, my kids now make their own lunches and that frees up probably 1% of every day that I'm not making their lunches each day. It's about looking at our weekends as I said we were spending the whole weekend doing that big cleaning of the house the washing, the the cleaning, the mopping, and the vacuuming. I didn't want that anymore. So now it's broken down into 15 minute blocks in mornings and evenings. That either
Bridget Johns
myself or other people in our house, do the cleaning salt frees up our Friday night to Sunday as our
Bridget Johns
fire time with family, friends, collecting moments, not things. So I really encourage you to look at what your ideal week would look like. For us, we try and limit our kids to one extracurricular sport in a summer and winter. I've got lots of friends that are seven days a week taking their kids to all the different sports that works for their family. That's not how we want to spend our afternoons and evenings. I'm well aware that might change in the future. So all these things are what works for you in this moment. And you can stop focus notice and adjust them going forward. So yeah, I am this Yeah, encourage people to say no to some things as well that yeah, if it's not serving you or doesn't fit your ideal week anymore, look to declutter it from your calendar and your life as well. So I work with clients to actually sit down and had that time so they can actually talk through it with someone to see and ask those questions that help prompt them to decide what's right for them and their family. Yeah, it definitely frees up space, when you don't have to constantly make those decisions on the fly. Like if you thought about, I would like to not spend my weekend cleaning my house, that decision on its own doesn't really set you up for success. Like, if you have a plan and you put things you've already decided how you will actually make that happen, then you're much more likely to like commit to it and see it through. Yeah, so I use a Google Calendar. And most people, if they've got a Gmail account, they've actually got a Google calendar that's automatically linked to their account. So I am someone that is a color coordinated person. So there are quite a few different colors in a Google Calendar. So I can look at a glance and see if my week is a very busy week in my grant writing versus my basically free mental load coaching time. If I've got any one on one time or me time scheduled into my week, if I've done any fitness that's in there as well, if I've got some socializing with friends, and a key hack for your calendar is I use the gray section, the gray color to put things in my calendar, but with free time, so you can either choose busy, which blocks out the time or free, that just shows you something in your calendar. So gray in my calendar shows me things that other people are doing, but I don't need to be involved with. So for example, I used to always take the kids to the dentist and it wasn't too I started my own business and I had to work if I was going to work with the client or take the kids to the dentist that we sat down with my husband and I and we'd look at our ideal week coming up and see who had the flexibility in their their day to take the kids to the dentist. So now my husband does about half if not more of the dentist trips with the kids. But that will be in my calendar to show that they're going to the dentist there. So we're all aware of what needs to happen.
Bridget Johns
In Yeah, in our wake. So it's reminding us that Yeah, we don't have to do it all we can enlist the support of the husband to do some of those. Yeah, visits that we might have just naturally done ourselves. Yeah, you just set same kind of subconscious process where you just Oh, the dentist, that's my job. And it's not till you call that out? Hang on, why is it my job? And someone else could easily help? So yeah, I think we get a bit caught up in that, like, I don't know, sort of superhero complex, where you're like, oh, I have to do all the things. And I am doing all the things Look at me go. And you sort of realize the toll that that may be takes on you by taking all those things on even though on the one hand, maybe you feel like a hero. On the other hand, it's a lot of stress and mental load to take on so. And that's the time that's probably it's probably an hour by the time or for particular people in the country for us to get into town for the dentist, the dentist visit and drive home, it's generally more than an hour. So that's 4% of your day. So look and have that discussion and see if you can spare that time. And yeah, make the the changes and adjustments that suit your family. Yeah, amazing. Do you have a particular mindset hack that you use, that comes up a lot with your clients that would help us
Bridget Johns
mine and I tell myself a lot of the time to is the just start. So just start with five minutes and make a start on something because it can seem overwhelming to do a whole thing. So let's just break it down into bite sized pieces and give it a go because no one has the motivation to do the decluttering and it comes back to that discipline like I do not want to tidy my kitchen at the end of each day. But I just start and sometimes it can be done in five minutes and the more regular you're keeping on top of things, the quicker it will become. So give yourself the goal of just starting and normally once you hit the the five minute mark, you've got some momentum going and you can get
Bridget Johns
Get a bit further into the journey. So break it down into small pieces, just start and celebrate your successes as well. I'm a big believer in that, that maybe not purchasing things. Now, if we're looking at decluttering, our physical spaces that reward yourself with sitting outside in the beautiful sunshine, having a hot coffee, or going for a walk with friends, or going and having a coffee out with friends and collecting some moments with people that are important to you, as well. So just start and celebrate the wins. Like he said, a hot coffee. And that really resonates with me, because there's a difference between running around after everyone and not being able to drink it and getting a cold one and reheating it in the microwave 10 times I don't remember that stage.
Michelle Johnson
I saw new socials that you've been on a bit of a health kick at the moment. I don't know if that's the right language. But I'm also trying to make some changes in my fitness. And I wanted to ask you
Bridget Johns
is is decluttering your body a thing? Yeah, definitely. I definitely support women to declutter their homes by and calendars and minds, and then I get support from other people to declutter my body. So I'm working with brandy Walker, from she moves, and she's helping me to declutter my body and focus on their health. And that's probably another Mindset hack that I'm working on. So I'm 40 in October. And I think I've always in the past work towards a date to do the weight loss journey. So obviously losing weight for the wedding and post baby and things like that. But it's really been a mindset shift for me this year, that while I'm turning 40, in October, I'm hoping to be having another 40 to 60 year life posted post this. So I'm trying to talk to myself about making these lifelong changes to to make healthy and nutritious energizing food a priority for me. Yes, still a work in progress. Yeah, down eight kilos already. But yeah, it's it's a journey. And I really think that, that accountability. So I talked to Brady once a week just to touch base about how I'm feeling and really noticing the decisions I'm making about what food that goes into my mouth. That accountability really helps because otherwise it stays floating around in our mind. And yeah, can that little devil on the shoulder, it can go off to go grab that chocolate or that packet of chips. So and that's why I love working one on one with clients because I give them that accountability in regards to decluttering, the home phone calendar in mind. So yeah, I encourage everyone to get up and get moving. And I'm really focusing on getting more plants on my plate. And doing some daily form of movement I love I do get up early, I am 4:44am riser after being a night owl for 35 years of my life. I give myself me time and space for myself in the morning. So my me time is 444 to 707 when the kids alarms go off. So I almost get two and a half hours for me each day, and obviously go to bed early. But I'd encourage other women to define even 1% of their day, 15 minutes for me time for them or 1% of their day to do some exercise and get some movement. So it is possible. And if you declutter your calendar, you can find some more time for you.
Michelle Johnson
Yeah, yeah, I'm on a very similar journey. I'm doing the 75 hard challenge, which is probably a very extreme kind of changed for me, but I know myself very well. And I know what I need in order to make a change. And this has been positioned as a real, like a mental, yes, mental toughness kind of challenge, which really appeals to my identity as someone who seeks those sort of challenges. So, but I'm really aware that, you know, okay, it's 75 days, and I really need to not consider the end of that as a finish line. Because I need to like really set myself up that I'm making a change for the long term and not that I'll be like day 75 with the chocolate bar. Yeah. Yeah, I think. And I think that's the same with a lot of different like challenge things that you do in your life where you have this intense sort of program or an intense focus on something for a short period. But I think in these situations, having a coach or having somebody support you really helps you to be accountable to those changes for a long time.
Bridget Johns
Yeah. And that's why a lot of professional organizers come into people's homes and declutter together with them for three, four hours and maybe do a couple of sessions with them. I'm based in the country. So my model is to work with people over zoom, but I do it over a 12 week period, because it's really that mindset shift that needs to happen to make long term change to the clutter because if you think you're every time you walk out of your house or even look at your phone, you're encouraged to to purchase new things. So And it happens every Christmas that people declutter, after getting all their Christmas things and then drop everything off of the op shop. And there was just boxes and bags everywhere. But then people repurchase all those new things. So by working with people over 12 weeks, I'm helping them make that mind shift shift to make conscious decisions about what comes back into their home, going forward. So yeah, definitely encourage people if there's a something they're wanting to work on, whether it's health mindset, or decluttering. look and find someone that can be that accountability buddy cheerleader, it can be paid or free throw your friends as well. But yeah, if anyone wants support with decluttering reach out to me. Yeah. So how can people work with you? Yeah, so as I said, we can work one on one via zoom with anywhere in the world. So I've got some international clients as well. So that involves sitting down setting goals to see what you want to do, and what that focus would be if it's around your home, mind calendar, or phone. Or I do have a course called Clear clutter, find time, which starts on the fourth of March, which is a group online program with some a membership site with some videos and an interactive Facebook group to keep the accountability and access to me. So we have live q&a sessions over zoom and a couple of guest speakers with specific areas around health or this round, we're talking around decluttering your kitchen, with their mindset person talking about different food planning. And we've also got a specific photo organized that that's going to talk about how to store all those printed photos, but also your digital photos as well. So they're the two ways you can work with me. And you can find out about that at basically free.com.au or on Instagram, b v dot simply free or Facebook. So I'd love to chat with anyone send me a DM and let me know what your biggest takeaway from this chat was. Yeah, amazing. This has been so interesting and quite wide ranging. Thanks for being so open and generous with your time and your information. I think my listeners will definitely get a lot out of it. And I've certainly got a lot out of it. So thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me and good luck with your caravan adventure. You can follow me on socials. Thanks for joining me today on the mindset corner. If you're enjoying the episodes, please share it with your friends on socials. And if you love today's episode, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you choose to listen. It really helps people find the podcast. If you'd like to learn more, visit the mindset corner.com. There you can check out my current five day course last to mind boss which is always available for you to lift up your mindset to the next level. Okay, see you next time and have a fantastic day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
