Are you a Hoarder? I am...

I attended my 6th NAPO Organizing Conference in May 2016.. It was held close to home this year in Atlanta. I attended several educational seminars and I will share great tips with my readers throughout the year. The Opening Keynote speaker, Scott Greenberg, explained “Don’t spend your life proving yourself spend it improving yourself.” I love that. The title of Greenberg’s presentation was The Third Factor: The Mindset for High Performance Leadership, it was very inspirational. Greenberg, shared his definition of  Leadership and Mindset.
Why do some people succeed while others struggle? Most of the time it boils down to three factors: The first is the “External.” This factor includes all of the outside issues that directly impact our endeavors. The economy, the competition, the weather, government regulation – all of these issues affect us, and they’re all out of our control (which makes them tempting to blame). Most people focus on the second factor, which is our work. That’s our operations, our strategy and that long list of things we do every day. It’s all the stuff that keeps us busy. It’s probably what you’ll be discussing most at your meeting. The belief is that if we work hard enough with the right blueprints for action, we’ll be successful. But plenty of people work hard and have little to show for it. Turns out there’s a third factor that’s less tangible, but the most important. It’s what really distinguishes high performers from everyone else. It’s the one thing that the best leaders, the best salespeople, the best athletes and all the most effective people have in common. That factor is mindset. Nothing determines how successful you’ll be more than the way you manage your thoughts and emotions. Skill is important, but ultimately mindset eclipses skill set. When you’re armed with both, the possibilities are limitless.
Greenberg, went on to tell us that most of us in the room, if not all of us, are Hoarders. What!!!! We are all Professional Organizers in the room. Head Trash defined as Cognitive Distortion all the awful things we tell ourselves about ourselves, that have very little merit. For example: I’m not worthy of a Promotion, I’m not as good as my Colleague, I don’t have enough Education or the right Education…(fill in the blank).  Our Mental Heckler hoarding our brains with clutter. We all need to declutter our brains of the negative Head Trash we tell ourselves.
Lastly, Greenberg told us his personal story which touched all of us. He had a college scholarship to NYU and was an aspiring Film Director. He had everything, or so he thought, going for him until he was diagnosed with cancer and had to drop out of NYU. He discovered through his tragedy a different line of work, Motivational Speaking, and he would not change a thing. He told us to have Gratitude for everything because “who knows what’s good or bad.”

Adele Gross
​Simple Solution Organizing