213. Why and How a Love Tour Helps You Get Organized

It's so easy to focus on what is not right, what's not working, or what bothers us, on the mess and chaos that we forget to allow ourselves to honour and value what we do have and what does work. 

With a Love tours we are showing appreciation and gratitude to the things we have and we show ourselves where we are succeeding, where we are organized, where it is working. As a result it's also a way of becoming aware how we can apply that knowledge to the chaos and the messy areas to transform them with these insights. 

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Transcript

Conny Graf: 0:01

Welcome to the Chaos to Peace with Conny podcast. I am Conny Graf, your host. I am here to explore with you how a few minutes a day can keep the chaos away, and with chaos I'm talking about the physical, digital, social, financial, mental, emotional and spiritual clutter that can accumulate in our life and business and our finances. Clutter is so much more than you think. I created this podcast to inspire you to do something about it. It's my deep desire to help you understand that you, too, can create and maintain an organized and supportive environment spending only a few minutes a day. Thanks for being here and enjoy the episode. Well, hello, my friend, welcome to the podcast, and thank you so much for allowing me back into your ears.

Conny Graf: 0:57

Have you ever sat in your office after a stressful period and realized it was a mess, but you didn't know where to start with cleaning it up, decluttering and how to get organized? If yes, then this episode is for you. I call it the love tour. I'm often asked where do I even start, Conny? And so back in 2018, when I did the clutter clearing challenge with Vicki McLeod, she said oh, what you're saying is we start with a love tour, and so that name stayed. But you might still wonder what the heck is a love tour, Conny? Well, in this episode I will walk you through what I call the love tour and how this process highlights and helps you determine where to start your clearing and organizing process, and you can use that in any area of your life and business. So the love tour has three parts to it and will help you figure out where you want and need to start getting organized. Part one of the love tour is showing appreciation and gratitude for what we have. Part two of the love tour makes us aware where we are already at peace, where we might be already organized in our life, business and finances. And part three of the love tour highlights and helps us determine where we need to start cleaning up the chaos and how we can get organized. Okay, so let's dive into each of these three parts a bit deeper. So, again, part one of the love tour is showing appreciation and gratitude for what we have.

Conny Graf: 2:40

It is so easy to take everything for granted. It is so easy these days to focus on what's not right, what's not working, on what's bothering us, what's stressing us out, what is overwhelming, that we forget to allow ourselves to honor and value what we do have and what does work for us. Do have and what does work for us. This is true of the office space we're in the papers we have to deal with on a daily basis, the digital devices that stress us out at times but that also make our lives so much easier these days. It also applies to our calendar, our clients, our suppliers, partners and other relationships. It applies to our finances, like the bills to pay, the taxes to file. We can be really grateful for those too. They indicate we have a business and, most of all, remember we are practicing self-love. We don't just get organized to be organized. We get organized to have a supportive environment, because it's an act of self-care and self-love to set ourselves up with a workspace for success.

Conny Graf: 3:55

The love tour is a way of becoming aware what we do have in our life already, how much we have in our life and in our business. Again, it's so easy to take things for granted, so we take a moment and we look around and take a tour, look at it all with fresh eyes. We're trying to really noticing all the beauty around us. What is it that you truly love about your home and office? Maybe how the morning sun makes patterns on your wall, or the view of the window when you're sitting at your desk, or maybe you have a beautiful piece of art on the wall. When have you really looked at these things last? Look around and appreciate everything in your environment your computer, your desk, the art on the wall. That's all yours. This all belongs to you. If you want, you can say quietly to yourself I appreciate all this. To reinforce the effect, you could also take a few minutes and make a list on a piece of paper or in your journal on what it is that you love about your environment and be grateful for all the things the physical things that you do have in your life.

Conny Graf: 5:11

Now we move to part two of the love tour, where we pivot a bit on how we look at things. We move from a feeling of gratitude for what we have to asking ourselves where in all this are we already organized? Where are things working out already? Where are we at peace already? Where we are successful already and where do we have wins? Where can we celebrate Again? Often we're so quick to only see all the negative, all that is not working. And don't worry, we get to that. But first I want to encourage you to focus on the positive, on what's working already, where it's working already, where things are working out already, and why. Write those down, or at least really notice these areas. They help you on your journey. They teach you something about yourself and how to move forward.

Conny Graf: 6:13

In this part two of the love tour, we want to see if we can figure out what these organized areas have in common. Why are these areas organized while other areas are in chaos? What is different here? Really, pay attention, think of your processes and habits when it comes to these areas of your life and business. What is different? What are you doing different? Or what are you not doing? What are you not doing in the areas that are chaotic compared to those areas here that we notice that are already organized?

Conny Graf: 6:50

It doesn't hurt to write these things down too. Sometimes it's so much easier when we can write things down, even if it's just on a regular piece of paper, because we get it out of our head and we get some more clarity around it. If we write it down, it doesn't have to look pretty. Just write it down somehow, because if you're like me, you're always trying to make it look pretty, but it doesn't help sometimes to make it look pretty. You just need to get it out of your head and writing it down on paper and all of a sudden you may find the missing links. What are the missing links between the areas you are already organized and the areas where there is chaos that stresses you out?

Conny Graf: 7:32

Once we got some clarity around this, we are ready to move on to part three of the love tour, where we start focusing on what we want to change. That's where most people jump to right away, but I really feel like the first two steps are very important if we want to get to lasting success in getting organized. We felt gratitude for what we have and we paid attention to what's already organized, and now we can pay attention what's not working. We can pay attention to cluttered zones that overshadow the beautiful areas that you just discovered and appreciated. We can see where there are hot spots of random stuff that doesn't belong or is just a mix and mash of things that are not put away, or it's just a mix and mash of things that are not put away. Where are there things laying around that don't belong at all into this area or into your office? Pay attention where you drop things, where you procrastinate, where you don't follow through.

Conny Graf: 8:34

Maybe you want to continue writing down what you learn, also in this third part of the love tour, but also maybe you want to write down what you want to change. Make a list of what areas you want to change, whether they're in your office or whether they're around physical papers, digital files, or in your finances or in your calendar, and ideally, you have an insight from part two on what habits you want and need to change to make it easier to get organized in these areas. Think and envision how you would want these areas to be, to look like and to function. Maybe create a vision in your head, or maybe you want to write it down on a piece of paper or in a digital note. Just get clear around. How would you ideally want these areas to be? The areas that are now still in chaos. As you can see, part three does not just highlight and help us determine where we need to start cleaning up the chaos to get organized. It also gives us a clue on how to approach it. It reveals your own wisdom to you, because you did identify already areas where you are organized. If you can figure out why you're organized there. You can take that wisdom and apply it to the areas where you're not organized and take the steps to get organized there too.

Conny Graf: 10:03

The first time you do this love tour, it might take a bit longer, but you don't need to make a big to-do about it. Take it lightly. Look with gentle eyes that's important too. Look around you with the intention to learn, with the intention to learn what you're doing right already and how you can apply that to the areas that stress you out. Once you've done the love tour, all three parts of the love tour then you're ready to start with this first small area and maybe you want to look at it as it were, an experiment. You want to clear the chaos for a few minutes, to change the area for the better, to move it from chaos to peace, and then the rest of the week, or maybe longer, you pay attention like a hawk so that you can maintain the progress you're making in this area. Now that you know a bit better why and how it got into chaos in the first place, you can catch yourself every time. You start to slip back into your old habit, and then you stop and you go back to your insights of part two and three of the love tour and you tweak your approach a bit if necessary, and then you keep going. A few minutes a day keeps the chaos away. Remember, and only when you see that you successfully applied your own wisdom of how to be organized in this area to this area, you go and you do another love tour, or you review your notes from your first love tour and you pick another small area and start the process all over again.

Conny Graf: 11:45

This is how you do a love tour. This is how this process highlights and helps you determine where and how to get more organized, using gratitude and your own wisdom. As a quick recap, part one of the love tour is showing appreciation and gratitude for what we do have. It's so easy to take everything for granted. And then, in part two of the love tour, this makes us aware where we are already at peace, where we might be already organized in our life, business and finances. And then, and only then, in part three of the love tour, we determine where we need to start cleaning up the chaos and get organized. This step helps us determine the where and also the difference between the organized areas and the unorganized areas. And again, the goal is not to get organized, to be more productive, to push ourselves more. The goal is to create a supportive environment, because clearing the chaos that stresses us out is an act of self-love and self-care.

Conny Graf: 12:58

And if even this lovely love tour sounds daunting to you, if you want help with your chaos, you can bring.

Conny Graf: 13:07

If you want help with your mess, you can bring your chaos to me. Use the link in the show notes and sign up for a complimentary 30-minute chaos to peace jumpstart call where we can address your most pressing pain point around your chaos and how to solve it in a few minutes a day. Okay, my friend, that's it for today. Thank you for joining me on the podcast and listening all the way to the end. Have a beautiful and amazing week. See you next time. Take good care and be safe. You can bring your chaos to me. Use the link in the show notes and sign up for a complimentary 30-minute Chaos to Peace jumpstart call where we will address your most pressing pain point around clutter and chaos and how to solve it in a few minutes a day. And, if you're ready, we can also discuss options for moving forward together and how I can help you out with on your journey from chaos to peace. You'll find the links to sign up in the show notes.