For those who don’t know, Feng Sui is an ancient Chinese art and science that deals with the balance of energies in any given space. Good feng shui contributes to good health. In modern times the practice that has evolved has less to do with orienting the life force, or Ch’i, but more of a table of rules that prescribe colors, shapes and relationship of objects to create an environmentally pleasing balance. A highly controversial topic, the feng shui practitioners have been highly paid for their advice by some and called scam artists by others. Whether or not we believe this to be a science or not, there are some truths that shine through. According to feng shui, clutter in our lives can drain us of our positive energy in such a way that we actually feel it and perhaps don’t even know why.
In her book Clutter Clearing Choices: Clear Clutter, Organize Your Home, & Reclaim Your Life author Barbara Tako defines clutter as anything in your life that isn’t helpful. Clutter can be objects, emotions and even personal relationships. “Clutter is stuff in my life that needs to be resolved or to go away.†In defining her clutter epiphany, she described looking into her underwear drawer and noticing that it looked like someone had stirred it with a spoon. Not only was there disorganization, she saw reminders of the past (frilly), another life stage (maternity), guilt (smaller items that no longer fit), and the stuff your mom would tell you not to wear in case you were in an accident. Becoming known as “The Underwear Drawer Lady†she had uncovered, in a non-scientific and slightly humorous treatment of the topic, a common sense understanding of a complex psychological problem.
Clutter in our lives causes added stress. Human Resources is the crossroads of everybody else’s stress. Adding more of our own doesn’t help the situation, but instead taxes our coping mechanisms to their limits. We are very good as keeping emotions beneath the surface…or at least we should be…but there is a breaking point for every person. We need to not only recognize problems of stress in others through the telltale signs they show, but we also need to understand ourselves.
Clutter and depression go hand in hand. It is not clear in some cases whether the stress of clutter causes the depression or whether the depression causes the clutter. It is probably a little bit of both. An email inbox with bold-type new entries is supposed to guide our focus to the latest items on the assumption that we may want to deal with something right away. Uncontrolled, this tool designed for efficiency can contribute to the frustration of losing or forgetting something important because it is no longer bolded but now buried beneath less important urgently-screaming-bold-faced newcomers. Curses on the programmer that gave us the feature of marking an item “unread!†This only further confuses the situation with unwritten self imposed made-up rules about what should be bolded. A cluttered inbox is nonproductive and stressful. We can see our own email trails, but we often miss clues about others who have organizational and perhaps deeper personal problems. We are not allowed to look in someone else’s underwear drawer.
There is actually scientific proof that clutter can cause weight problems. Aside from the fact that clinical depression can result in self-destructive behaviors, simple clutter in our lives can be bad for us. Disorganization in our physical surroundings, our thoughts and personal relationships cause added stress. Stress leads to an increase in cortisol, which increases blood sugar and triggers an increase in insulin in the body. The end result is that the stress induced body chemistry makes you hungrier and more likely to choose the wrong foods. Another vicious chicken-and-egg circle (we are talking about food) begins when the guilt of overeating adds to the already destructive stress that is present.
Chronic disorganization leads to hoarding. Just as we use the term “depression†to mean both a feeling and a clinical diagnosis, hoarding can be our tendency to “pack rat†things or pathological hoarding, disposophobia, which is the continuous acquisition of things without the emotional mechanism to discard anything. Self analysis is not as easy as it seems, but when we take a box of pens from the supply cabinet when we are only going to use one is an early symptom. It may not particularly unhealthy…just uneconomic but problematic just the same. When we look around the office and see mini-hoarders with clutter all over their desks we have to wonder if this is affecting productivity. An office desk drawer can be just as revealing of levels of stress as an underwear drawer.
With most problems, the first step toward solution is recognizing that there is a problem. Personally most of us do not have the training or experience to diagnose or treat friends, associates and family members, but we do it anyway. At the very minimum we can make sure we are not adding to the problem by heating up their stress-burners to high. Professionally in HR we have no choice other than to sometimes play the role of amateur shrink, but rather than prescribing treatment we have to observe the symptoms and be extremely knowledgeable about the resources available to provide real assistance. If your company does not have an employee assistance program already, make it happen!
Finally, we must all know that planting bamboo in our underwear drawer where it will not grow is not going to give us good feng shui.