Spring Cleaning Your Mind

Each spring, people attack their homes with a kind of focused energy that the rest of the year never quite produces. Windows get cleaned. Closets get emptied. Drawers get sorted. The clutter that’s been sitting in the corner of the garage since 2019 finally gets its day. There’s something deeply satisfying and cleansing about the whole exercise - not just the result, but the decisions. This stays. This goes. This no longer belongs here.

We do this in our homes as the days get longer, brighter and fresher, but suppose we used the change in seasons as an opportunity to tidy our minds as well?

I’m not talking about meditation retreats or journaling prompts, though you can do those, too. I’m talking about something more practical that you can do right now: a deliberate inventory of what you’re carrying around in your mind that is costing you more than it’s worth, and the discipline to start putting some of it down.

Suffice it to say, I’ve had more than a few occasions to take stock of what I was carrying — mentally, emotionally, operationally. And what I’ve found, every single time, is the same thing: I was holding onto more than I needed to.

Old decisions I was still second-guessing.

Grievances that had long since stopped being useful.

Assumptions about people and situations that hadn’t been updated in years.

Mental habits that made sense once and had quietly become obstacles.

None of it was particularly dramatic and that’s actually the point. The clutter in your mind rarely announces itself. It quietly accumulates the same way that pile of shit in the garage does — one thing at a time, each item with a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it’s still there.

So here’s a quick framework for taking stock. Four questions. Same logic as you’d use to Kondo your closets or that messy garage.

What are you still carrying that no longer belongs to you?

Guilt about a decision you made with the information you had at the time. A version of a relationship that no longer exists. An identity — the person who couldn’t, the person who failed, the person who wasn’t ready — that stopped being accurate a long time ago but never got officially retired. These are the boxes in the back of the mental closet that you move around every time you reorganize but never actually open. Open them. Most of what’s inside stopped belonging to you years ago.

What are you tolerating that is quietly costing you?

This is the category people resist the most because it requires honesty about things they’ve decided to accept. The dynamic at work that drains more energy than it produces. The habit that you’ve reframed as a reward but functions as an avoidance (think booze). The relationship you’ve stopped investing in but haven’t officially released. These things occupy mental real estate, consume your attention, and generate a background noise of low-grade stress that you’ve simply stopped noticing because it’s always there. Name them. All of them. You can’t decide what to do with something you won’t look at directly.

What assumptions are you operating from that haven’t been updated?

The brain is efficient. It builds models of the world — of people, of organizations, of your own capabilities — and then runs on those models rather than having to continuously re-evaluate. That’s useful until it’s not. What do you believe about yourself that was formed in a different chapter? What do you believe about the people around you based on who they were rather than who they are? What do you believe is possible — or impossible — that deserves a fresh look?

What are you not saying that needs to be said?

Unexpressed things seldom disappear. They become dead weight. The conversation you’ve been avoiding. The feedback you’ve been sitting on. The boundary you’ve been meaning to set. The truth you’ve been softening into something more comfortable. Mental clutter is often nothing more than things we haven’t said yet, accumulating interest.

You already know what you're carrying that doesn't belong there anymore. You've known for a while. The season changed and that's your invitation.