Ep. 203: Why You Keep Quitting Decluttering (And How to Finally Break the Pattern)

If you've ever pushed through clutter until your system crashes or paused for a day and then spiraled into shame, his episode is for you. We’re talking about the exact moment momentum breaks for most women... and how to build a new relationship with stopping, pausing, and coming back that actually keeps you in the game.

You’ll learn:

• The difference between quitting and a clean stop
  
  
• What your body is trying to tell you before overwhelm hits
  
  
• Why returning is the real consistency (not perfection)
  
  
• The one sentence that can change how you see every restart
  
  

You don’t need to do more. You need a better way to stay in motion…and that starts right here.

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

January Clutter Sprint

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Transcript

Well, so today when it comes to clutter, we're going to talk about something that most women have never been taught how to do. And that is how to stop, not quit, not give up, not walk away in shame, but to stop on purpose in a way that actually keeps momentum alive. Because for most women, especially when it comes to clutter, the quitting pattern doesn't happen because you don't ever start. And it happens because

You start, but you don't know how to stop safely. You don't know how to walk away in the middle. And here's what usually happens as a result. You finally get a burst of energy, your motivation, and so you start. You start working on the clutter and you make some forward progress. And you push longer than you probably should. And then you make more decisions than your systems can actually handle. And so what happens then is because you've pushed longer than your system could handle,

Now your nervous system has hit its limit and gone beyond that. And when that happens, your nervous system is not going to gently suggest a break. It essentially slams on the brakes. And suddenly you feel irritable or emotionally flooded, exhausted, resentful, defeated. And because the stop wasn't an intentional one, your brain labels the fact that you stopped at all as a failure. And so the story or the narrative that keeps

playing around in your head is that it's things like I quit or I couldn't follow through or I overestimated myself or C, I knew I couldn't stick with it or C, I knew it wouldn't work. And that story, that narrative is what keeps women stuck in general, but especially when it comes to clutter. It's not about the clutter itself. It's about that narrative. And so today we're gonna change this pattern at the most critical point, at the stopping point.

because stopping is not the problem. Stopping without a plan is the problem. So here's the truth I want you to hear clearly. You do not quit because you stop. You quit because you stop after you've already gone too far. And so the skill we're building today is learning how to stop before the overwhelm sets in, before your nervous system gets escalated past the point of no return.

And this is what sustainable progress actually looks like. So before the strategy we're gonna be talking about today, your clutter cycle probably looked like you start and then you push and you push beyond. Then there's a crash, then you avoid it altogether, and then you just give up and quit. That's what your typical clutter cycle, what I call the quitting cycle, has probably looked like. But what we're gonna be building is something different.

we're gonna be starting with start, then we're gonna stop, then we're gonna move to notice. So we're gonna start to notice when we start getting cues that it's time to stop. And we'll talk about those in a minute. But the cycle says stop, notice, stop intentionally, and then return. So start, notice, stop intentionally, and then return back. And so the returning then becomes the skill.

stopping well is what makes returning possible. So let me say it again because this is probably the most important point. If you want to stop quitting, you have to learn how to stop earlier. So now let's talk about what this looks like in real life. Your body is giving you warning signals before the overwhelm hits. They're subtle at first and most women have just been taught to ignore them. There are things like your shoulders tightening or your

breath becoming more shallow or your thoughts speeding up or racing away or feeling impatient and frustrated with yourself, starting to rush decisions thinking, I just need to finish this one last thing. Those are not signals to push harder. Those are actually signals to pause sooner. So here's a rule that I want you to practice when we are working through this sprint together. The moment you feel the urge to push through,

That is your cue to stop. And you're not stopping for forever. You're not even necessarily gonna be stopping for the day. You're gonna be stopping just long enough to preserve some sanity and to preserve some safety without pushing yourself beyond. Because pushing through is what trains your nervous system to associate clutter with a threat. In your brain, clutter equals a threat.

and your brain takes threats very seriously. Stopping early, if that's what we're going to be doing, and it is, when you're able to stop earlier, it retrains your brain to associate clutter as something you can control. Now when was the last time you felt like your clutter was something you can control? It's probably quite the opposite, right? So we're rebuilding new pathways, we're rebuilding new ways of looking at things here.

And this is really where most women get scared because when they think about stopping, they think, but if I stop now, I'll never come back. I'll never start again. They think if I don't finish, it doesn't actually count. And they think if I leave this undone, well, then I'm going to lose my momentum. And those kinds of beliefs, those kinds of beliefs are exactly what keeps that quitting pattern, that quitting cycle alive. And so we need to replace that thought with a new rule.

So here's the new rule. You are allowed to stop while things are still going well. We're not waiting for everything to fall off the deep end. We're not waiting for things to start on a downward spiral. We want to stop while things are still going well because that is actually the goal. Stopping while you are still regulated is what makes it possible to return without resistance. So now I wanna give you a simple structure to use when you stop.

because stopping without closure can still feel a little bit unsettling. We don't like that. And so this is gonna create what I call a clean stop. So when you decide to stop, you're gonna do these three things. Number one, name where you are. You're gonna say, this is where I'm stopping. I'm stopping in the middle of this box. I'm stopping at this time on the clock, whatever it is. I'm stopping at this point. This is my stopping point. You name where it is that you are stopping. Second,

You're gonna name what comes next. And so you're gonna say, when I get back to this, this is gonna be where I start. And you're gonna say what that is. The third step is to close the loop by reassuring yourself. And so you're gonna say, I'm stopping on purpose. I'm not quitting. Because your brain needs to know that those are two very important things because they are. But right now, your brain doesn't get that. And that, really is as simple as those.

three steps. First, you name where you're at. Second, you name where you're gonna, what you're gonna be doing when you pick up where you left off. And third, you're going to remind yourself, this isn't quitting. This is a choice. I'm choosing to stop. This is a stopping point. And that's it. There's no guilt here. There's no need to give yourself a lecture. There's no pressure to come back at a specific time. You are choosing your stopping point and you're leaving yourself a doorway back in. And that doorway matters more

than trying to finish. Because here's what most women don't realize. Your brain doesn't trust big promises. It trusts evidence. It trusts, in this case, evidence that you will in fact return. And so every time you stop intentionally and come back, even just for a brief moment, you are creating those new pathways in your brain. You're teaching your system, you know what, I can pick back up where I left off. You know what, I can do this.

You're teaching yourself, I'm pacing myself. I'm keeping myself from burning out. I'm not avoiding it. I'm just choosing to protect myself. I'm choosing the slow and steady path. This is how that quitting pattern or that quitting cycle is gonna break. It's not by never stopping, but by stopping without self betrayal in the process. So,

Now let's talk about those days when you're not gonna touch the clutter at all because those days will happen, probably plenty of them. And they'll happen for a variety of reasons. They'll need to happen for a variety of reasons. Things like life will demand more of you. Your other life outside of the clutter, it's gonna have demands that you have to meet. Or it could be that your energy will dip. You'll have low energy days where it's just not, you're just not gonna white knuckle through. It could also be that your capacity will change.

When any of these things happen, it doesn't mean anything about you and it certainly doesn't mean that you have failed. Those are what I call capacity days. And on capacity days, your job is not to continue pushing just in the name of making progress. Your job on those capacity days is to give yourself permission, permission to stop, permission to leave it. And so here is the sentence that I want you to use on those.

not on those capacity days. Today, I'm choosing not to engage with the clutter and that choice is keeping me in the game. Today, I'm choosing to not engage with the clutter and that choice is keeping me in the game. That one sentence is preventing the spiral that leads to the quitting and to the quitting pattern because it now turns avoidance into a decision.

and decisions are yours and decisions create power. Decisions keep you in the driver's seat. That's how I talk about women making intentional choices. It keeps you in the driver's seat rather than just along for the ride. So decisions keep you in the driver's seat. Quitting happens when we feel out of control. Quitting happens when we think, well, this is just the way it is. Choice restores control.

So let's anchor this with a few statements that, again, I want you to practice. Remembering that, practicing the things that we know are true or that we know we need to adopt as our own ways of thinking and doing things. Practicing means we don't necessarily have to believe them. We don't have to have any buy-in, and we probably won't in the beginning. But the more we practice these thoughts, the more we remind ourselves of these things, the more these can start to become things that actually feel believable in time.

So here are four things that I want you to remember. Number one, stopping early protects my momentum. Here are some statements that you need to practice so that you can be reminded of these truths when you know that you need to stop. Okay? Stopping early protects my momentum. Number two, I don't need to finish to stay consistent. Finishing has nothing to do with consistency. I don't need to finish to stay consistent. Number three, returning

Getting back to this clutter means more than pushing through. And remember, you've left that doorway open now so that you can return. Number four, I'm learning how to pause without quitting. I'm learning how to pause without quitting. This is what sustainable progress looks like. This is what actually works for women who have been stuck for years, decades, maybe more. So,

What we're gonna talk about next is how to return, to walk through that doorway after you've had a pause without shame, without pressure, or without telling yourself that you're starting over. So for today, for this, for what we're talking about right here, right now, your only job is this. Notice when you are in the middle of working on clutter and your body just wants to keep pushing through. And then practice stopping sooner.

and then leave yourself that doorway, that clear pathway back in so that you can return. And remind yourself, this doesn't mean that you are weak or incapable or uncommitted or anything or failing. It just means the the skill, the skill of walking away and leaving yourself the doorway in, this is actually a master level skill. This is what you're going to be stepping into when you practice this skill.

And this skill, the stopping before the overwhelm and the leaving the pathway or doorway back into it open, this is exactly how that quitting pattern or how that quitting cycle becomes broken. It's all about practicing this thought that I gave you right here. So until we talk again, happy practicing.

Okay, well, for right now, we're gonna talk about the moment that actually breaks momentum for more women than anything else does. It's not starting, it's not motivation, and it's actually not time that keeps them stuck in clutter. It's this whole idea of returning, specifically returning, getting back to the clutter after a pause, because here's what usually happens. A woman starts strong.

She does a little work. She makes some progress. But then life happens. Maybe it was a long day. Maybe it was a hard conversation that drained you. Maybe it's just lower energy. Maybe there's a ton of outside commitments for a day, a week, or longer. Maybe there's some sort of shift in your schedule. And so there's a pause. It can be short, it can be long, but there's a pause. But then in the midst of that pause, when you look back at that clutter, even if it's only been a day or two, a familiar thought

starts popping up. I've already messed this up. I've already broken my strain. I've lost my momentum. I might as well wait and start fresh later. And just like that, the quitting pattern takes over. That quitting cycle is now in full swing. And it's not because you paused, it's because you misinterpreted what stopping actually means. And so now we're gonna be

correcting one of the most damaging beliefs that women carry about progress, especially when it comes to clutter, and here it is. A pause does not reset your progress. Only quitting does. And pausing is not the same as quitting. Pausing is part of staying. Pausing is part of the process because you don't live your life in a bubble where you can just focus on your clutter until it's done.

It just doesn't happen that way. Pausing is part of staying, and the problem is that many women were taught a very specific and very unforgiving definition of consistency. They were taught that consistency means daily effort, unbroken streaks, constant repeated output, or never falling off. And that definition does not work in real life for anyone.

especially not for women with fluctuating energy, who are carrying a lot of invisible labor, pouring out of a lot of emotions, managing a lot of emotions, who are maybe in caregiving roles or carrying full mental loads. And so we're gonna replace that definition today. Here's the new one. Consistency means returning without self-punishment. Consistency means returning without self-punishment. It's not returning perfectly.

It's not even necessarily getting back to it quickly, just getting back to it without shame. So now I want to explain why getting back to it feels so hard because it's not about laziness. That's probably been your assumption, that you're too lazy to get started again. When you return after a pause, your brain immediately scans for evidence of failure. Your brain is always looking for evidence of whatever it is that you believe to be true.

And so if you are looking at yourself and wearing that label of I failed, I've lost my momentum, I've already screwed this up, it's gonna notice all of these times that you have done that. And it's gonna notice what's still undone with the clutter. It's gonna notice what didn't get finished. It's gonna notice what looks the same. And it then jumps to some conclusions. Conclusions like see, nothing really changed, or I didn't do enough, or this proves that I can't follow through. And that moment,

It feels emotionally heavy for anyone. And your nervous system physiologically wants to avoid things that cause these heavy feelings. And so because your brain wants, your nervous system wants to avoid that, it offers you an out. And so the out that it offers you is, I'll come back later when I can do it better. But later is where momentum goes to die.

So we're gonna learn how to return without triggering that spiral. And here's the rule that I want you to practice. Again, we're practicing. When you return or get back to it, you do not evaluate. You're just gonna jump right back in and get started. You resume. There is no evaluating that happens when you start again. There's no assessment, there's no measuring, there's no mental inventory of what you should have done or how much there is left. There's no measuring.

because evaluation creates pressure. Resuming, just getting in there, just rolling up your sleeves and starting again, that is what creates movement, and movement is what you need to make progress. So when you come back to the clutter, your only question should be this. What is the smallest step that I can start again with? What is the smallest step that I can start again with? It's not how far did I get, or what didn't I do, or what does this say about me?

Those questions are gonna be the ones that pull you backward. But resuming and just getting in there and starting again, that is what pulls you forward. And so here's something important to understand. Momentum is not built by intensity. It's built by reentry. Every time you return or get back to it, especially after a pause, you are breaking that quitting pattern. Because quitting says, if I can't do this perfectly, I won't do it at all.

But returning, getting back to it says, I don't just disappear because I paused. That's a powerful identity shift. You're still here. You're still willing. You just needed a pause because life or emotions or health or whatever those interruptions are that we all experience. So now I want to give you what I'm calling a practical reentry script. This is something that you can literally say out loud when you start again. Here it is. I'm not starting over.

I'm just continuing from where I am. I'm not starting over, I'm just continuing from where I am. That sentence is so powerful. Because starting over, it implies failure. It implies a complete do-over. Continuing implies stability. It implies moving the needle forward. It implies forward. You don't lose progress because life interrupted you. You only lose progress

when you abandon yourself. And you're not gonna do that anymore. So let's also talk about one more thing that is subtle but important. And that is that some women don't quit outright. They hover. They think about returning and they plan to return. They wait to feel ready to return. That hovering kind of in that I'm not making a decision to not keep going but I'm not making a decision to keep going. I'm just kind of waiting, right? That hovering.

That is still avoidance. And so here's another rule to essentially borrow. Return before you feel ready. Readiness follows action, not the other way around. You don't need confidence to return. You don't need motivation to return. You don't need a plan to return. You just need permission to pick up and start again. And that's exactly what I am doing here. I am giving you permission to return right now.

Returning can look as simple as clearing one item or touching one surface or spending three minutes or two minutes or one. It can look like standing in the space and just taking some deep breaths that will equip you to then move forward. All of those things, they count because again, the goal is not completion. The goal is continuity. The goal is to continue. So now,

Let's anchor all of this with a couple of replacement thoughts again. Number one, pausing does not erase my progress. That is one that you need to put on a sticky note and put in a thousand different places because if your life is anything like mine, it's probably a lot of stopping and starting and stopping and starting on the things you're working on. But so often we feel like when life pulls us away or even when we make the choice to pause.

It's so discouraging for us to get in there and start again because we feel like we're starting over. That's what we calculate. We calculate for some reason that our progress is erased and that's just not true. But usually we're so stuck up in the middle of all of the negativity that we can't see that. So I'm giving that to you here in this truth. Pausing does not erase my progress. Number two, returning, getting back to it is all the proof I need that I didn't quit, that I'm not a quitter.

Number three, I resume without judgment. Again, you're not judging yourself about what you should have done or how you should have done it or how long the pause should have been or not been or what you're doing now or what you didn't do then, none of that. I resume without judgment. And finally, I continue from where I am, not where I wish I was, not where I should have been, but where I am right now. I continue from where I am. That is how momentum becomes resilient instead of fragile.

So next we're gonna talk about how to rebuild that trust in yourself and it doesn't come through big wins but through evidence that actually sticks. So for today, let's remind ourselves of this. No matter how long this clutter has been waiting for you, you're not behind and you didn't lose anything and you're not starting over. You're learning how to stay in the game and remembering that, focusing on that is what helps you create progress.

It is what is going to stop that quitting cycle, that quitting pattern from spinning and spinning and spinning, no matter how long it's been spinning before. And so, until we talk again, happy practicing.