Your stuff can tell a story about you- who you are, where you’ve been, even who you want to be. What do you think about the story your stuff is telling? What if you thought about it in a different way? Watch this video to hear a story of mine that may help you do just that.
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdstory.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and I was talking to my brother a couple of days ago, and it made me realize that I’ve never shared with you the story behind the tagline that I say here after every YouTube video, which is, “May you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.” So there is a story to share and I want to tell you that today. It has everything to do with my brother.
About 10 years ago my brother had joined the Army in his 30’s. He had been inspired by 9/11 and wanted to find a way to serve. He was looking at the Peace Corps. He looked at other organizations, and what he found was this branch of the Army that most people don’t know about called Civil Affairs who go into war-torn areas and they help these villages to rebuild. They assess their needs: “Do you need wells? Do you need schools? Do you need bridges, medical care?” Whatever that is, and they help facilitate that. So, this was very appealing to him and he left a high-paying job as a programmer and an established career to go and serve and join as an enlisted person, not an officer, and he just did it and he was so happy. So in 2005, he was deployed to Afghanistan, and we had a very long two-hour Skype call from Austin to Afghanistan where we talked about what he was doing and how happy and fulfilled he was contributing in this way.
One of the things he had asked my family to do was to send over some basic medical supplies, some soap, some toys and candy and little four-packs of crayons and coloring books and things like that because he was explaining that he and his colleagues would roll up in the Army vehicles into these villages and the children were fascinated with the soldiers. They would flock around just anxious to interact with our soldiers, and he wanted to have some stuff in their pockets for him and his friends to share with these kids. So he was explaining how happy these children were to receive these little gifts and they have nothing; they had no shoes in a lot of cases, they didn’t have very good clothing, they certainly didn’t have good medical care, and he said they would treasure one piece of candy, one little box of crayons. It was all they had and it was so priceless to see how valuable that was to them.
So it really gave me pause and I said, God, it’s such a contrast, you know, because here I am in North America, and I have a team of employees in Austin and San Antonio, and we go into people’s homes and businesses and organize their stuff, and we’re organizing things like playrooms full of toys, where the children do not appreciate what they have. They’ve neglected the toys, some of them are broken, they don’t even know what they have anymore. It’s so compelling and really embarrassing that we have experts like me here to sort out the abundance that we have in this country.
My brother agreed with me, and he paused, and he said, “You know, Lorie, I see you on stage talking about this some day.” And I said, “Yeah, you know what, I think you’re right.” I really felt moved at that moment to share that message. So, at the time I had my regional service business doing organizing for people here in Texas, but I had no idea that just a few years later I would hatch the idea for clutterdiet.com and have a Membership Program that would serve thousands of people in 18 countries around the world and that I would end up being a non-profit partner to Goodwill and be able to reach literally millions of people with a message like this in one day.
So, this is where it all started 10 years ago and what I really want to share with the world is that this problem that you’ve come to my YouTube channel to get help with, this problem of managing your clutter, is really a privilege to be grateful for. We have so much abundance, and I feel like if you’re grateful, you feel more abundant in your life, and if you feel more abundant in your life, you feel more like giving to other people. I think that my job is to activate people’s gratitude so that people will feel more abundant and be more giving with each other and to appreciate what they have.
So that’s why I’m so proud to partner with Goodwill as I’ve been doing for the last five years. I get to spread this message about gratitude and abundance, and so it makes so much sense because I’m telling you to take that abundance and all of that extra stuff that’s more than enough and donate that to help people in your local community. You can take your clothing and your household items, and you can make a really big difference right in your own back yard, and you can activate that gratitude. So this is my pleasure, this is my message, and I’m really pleased to share it with you. If it resonates with you, I would love for you to share it with others. I’d love for you to subscribe to our channel. If you want to share this video, share our channel, share any of our videos with your friends and family here, on Facebook, wherever you can share them, I would really appreciate it.
So thank you so much, and once again, may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been searching for how to find gratitude when nothing goes right.
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