A Lighter View
Commentary From the Editor:

The 100 Thing Challenge or Feng Shui for Your Brain

With worries about the declining economy and soaring gas prices (add your own worry list here), it is no wonder that more and more people are feeling overburdened, unfocused and sometimes almost paralyzed from stress. Our brains are cluttered with way too many things. Not a good state for anyone, and potentially harmful for emergency medical personnel who need to think fast and act quickly. After all, that is what emergency care is all about.

Sound familiar? The complexities of living are getting, well, way too complex, and the ever-ramping up of activity in your brain may cause it to go into overdrive—just as the ED becomes crowded again and your emergency nurse sensibilities go into high gear. Your professional training allows you to maintain amazingly high levels of functionality in the ED, but, if only to enhance your general well-being, you may be interested in what some people are doing to organize, simplify and de-clutter their lives and their minds. After all, external forces can impact our internal courses.

David Bruno believes that belongings weigh us down, both literally and figuratively. He is the creator of “The 100 Thing Challenge, a grassroots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items” (See “The 100 Thing Challenge,” Time, June 16, 2008, by Lisa McLaughlin, or go to www.guynameddave.com). In reducing his personal inventory, Bruno even eats with a spork (combination of fork and spoon). Okaaaaaay.

Professional organizer and New York Times bestsellng author, Julie Morgenstern, wrote When Organizing Isn’t Enough: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life, which “can help you get unstuck from the defunct, obsolete objects and obligations preventing you from living a richer, more meaningful life,” (Amazon.com). Ommmmmm.

Karen Kingston, author of Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui, breaks down clutter into four categories: things you do not use or love, things that are untidy or disorganized, too many things in too small a place (like your brain?) and anything unfinished. Many claim that feng shui is the practice of arranging objects (such as furniture) to help people achieve their goals. Others claim that feng shui has an affect on health, wealth and personal relationships. Double ommmmmm.

Simplify, de-clutter, organize seem to be watchwords for our times, and maybe for our minds as well. Why not a little mindful feng shui for the brain?