How the Old person became the New

Friday, April 7, 2017



Today I want to tell you a story about an old person and a new person. I want to give you hope for areas of frustration after years of no progress.

When you change, you start to deal with the new person you’ve become.
The new person has developed systems that work if she works it.
The new person decided she does not want to be associated with the old label, so she follows the new system with persistence.
The new person decided she is okay with repetition.

Take me for example. I told you about what my experiment with organizing my home for 2 years. You can read it here.

The old person was exhausted and was bothered with out of control laundry but did little or nothing about it. She did not work the system that would get her out of that laundry mess.
The new person developed a system that works every time. The new person even came up with a cool name for the system: the 45-minute solution to organizing (I think I should write a book about it).
The old person was too tired to practice persistence. Too tired because her plate was full: a precious family, work outside of the home, volunteering, working inside of the home, hobbies, just to name a few. Those things were all good and it all weighed in that plate. Persistence means continued occurrence. The old person somehow decided that while she couldn’t do much about a full plate, she decided that creativity could help her out of her frustration. The 45-minute solution to organization was born out of the need to have a home that was methodically welcoming to everyone, including her. The old person took small steps towards persistence. The new person remembers the awful feelings of being overwhelmed thus she practices her system with persistence for persistence pays.
The old person had no emotional room to add one more thing to her plate. Once the new person took on persistence, she surprisingly discovered that she needs to be friends with repetition.
Kids get their clothes dirty every day. Little by little multiple laundry baskets get filled to the top. Kids grow every day. Little by little those pants get too small and it is time for a whole new wardrobe. If laundry was as the verse of a song, washing it would be the chorus. You sing it over and over again, depending on the song, you sing it again for the joy of it.
I’m aware that every song comes to an end. Each year my children become more empowered to do things for themselves.
If and when they call back and ask me, ‘how did you do it?’ I will gladly tell them about the overwhelmed old person who found that the new person who developed a system that works if she works it. She devoted herself to that system with persistence and she learned to be okay with repetition.

You might be a person who has no problems with household chores but maybe, you need hope in other areas of life such as fitness or an undesirable character trait. Please remember that if you develop a system, it will work if you work it. Pour yourself into that system with persistence and be okay with repetition.