I'm not sure if it works the same way for everyone else, but for me I'll think about doing something for ages but nothing will actually make it happen. Or have a particular mindset about something, and it doesn't even occur to me to change it.
And then, suddenly, with no obvious trigger, it will change.
My willpower to eat better and actually lose weight instead of just knowing I should will just exist and it's not even hard. Where before it was impossible.
I'll, without any active consideration, suddenly have no trouble getting up at 6am every morning and going into work. Where before I spent months hitting 'sleep' for another hour or hour and a half no matter how much easier work would be if I got in early.
A switch in my brain just gets flipped. Don't know how, or why, and usually it's long overdue, but it just happens and I'm so much in a new mindset that I don't even contemplate why I was in the previous one.
This week's switch flipping is in relation to my wardrobe.
It's vast. As you would have seen around here before.
I like to shop, I like to buy clothes, and previously I have liked to accumulate. The first two aren't going to change - I don't want them to - but on the accumulation point something seems to have fundamentally altered.
I had figured out some time ago that I keep buying new clothes both because I enjoy it, but also, fundamentally, because I get bored easily. Hang on, I feel like I wear that dress every other day, I need something different. Let's buy that and that. Move on to the next thing. Get bored again. All of that and the high Aussie $ equals 60 dresses very quickly.
Every couple of years I'll do a closet clean-out and send a bunch of things to the op shop and a bunch to the bin, but I'll also keep many things that I virtually never wear. Because they're good quality. And it's always handy to have another option. Etc etc.
Since I lost some of that weight, basically everything in my wardrobe fits, or is too big (though this isn't about getting rid of things that are too big just because they're too big; I very much need a larger sized wardrobe for when that 'eating well' switch flips back off). That's meant looking at large tracts of my wardrobe that have been off limits for the last two (or three) years. Which has been great; ooh, I can wear that jacket/skirt/dress/jeans/jeans/jeans again!
It has also been a revelation of other sorts though. The oh, turns out I really never wore that dress not because it didn't fit me, but because I don't really like it. There are a few things that are three or four years old and still have tags on them. Bought when I was bored, or delusional, or denying for a moment the fundamentals I know about what styles suit me.
The accumulation factor at work.
Sometime over the weekend, what with the weight loss and the next overseas shopping opportunity work trip looming, my mind started turning to a big closet clean-out.
And then moved on from the usual case of op shop plus bin, and to hang on, I could fund part of the upcoming Parisian shopping expedition by actually selling some of these unworn or barely worn garments.
Suddenly the desire to hold on to things faded even further. What about those shoes that rubbed my feet so I never wore them again. Or the ones that really aren't the right size no matter how much I want them to be? I could sell them and make some room to buy more than are the right size.
The mental pile of clothes and shoes to clear out started to get much bigger and much more ruthless.
I still have some great pieces that I don't wear but that I intend to keep and archive. And I definitely wear (or will, given that it now all fits) probably 2/3 of the wardrobe so I'm hardly going to be narrowing things down substantially. I also have a number of things that will be going to the op shop and a number to the bin.
But a whole lot of others are going into an Ebay auction over the next few weeks, and off to new homes where they'll actually be appreciated.
And any cash that I make? That's getting spent on shoes. Obviously.
Then it will be time for another brain switch to flip. Wonder if the 'I'm going to relearn French before I go to France' switch could manage to flip from 'staring at the pile of French books sitting gathering dust on the ottoman' to 'actually relearning French' before I go away?
Comments