The Menopause Method

How Clutter Zaps Your Energy (and How to Get It Back) | Dr. Christine Li & Cam Allen

• Episode 45

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Feeling drained, stuck, or overwhelmed by clutter? In this episode of The Menopause Method Podcast, Cam Allen sits down with Dr. Christine Li — clinical psychologist, productivity expert, and the Procrastination Coach — to explore the surprising ways clutter robs your energy in midlife.

We dive into:

  • Why clutter holds energetic weight (and what it’s costing you).
  • How clearing just one drawer or corner can free up mental and physical energy.
  • The emotional connection between procrastination, self-talk, and clutter.
  • Simple, doable steps to start creating space for the life you want now.

Christine also shares details about her Free 5-Day Decluttering Challenge (starting Sept 8th) — designed especially for midlife women ready to let go of overwhelm and create more flow, lightness, and joy.

✨ Links mentioned:

Chapters:
00:00 Clutter-Busting Challenge Success
04:06 Energetic Empowerment and Self-Love
07:51 Private Facebook Group Decluttering Challenge
10:36 Sustained Empowerment Through Decluttering
14:47 Unconscious Mind and Brain Work
16:24 Rediscover Yourself in Midlife

🎙️ Subscribe to The Menopause Method Podcast for more conversations about thriving in midlife through strength, mindset, and holistic living.

Welcome back to the Menopause Method. I am so excited. This is the first guest of this brand new podcast and it is Dr. Christine Lee. She is a clinical psychologist from New York and she is my dear friend. We have been friends for years. She is known as the procrastination coach. And today we're going to talk about the procrastination in the form of clutter and how clutter actually opens the doorway to all this magical stuff in your midlife. So, so tell us more. Well, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Cam, for having me on your rebranded show. I'm so happy for you. You're doing so well. I have learned so much from Cam over the years. I just want to let everybody know that I'm a real devotee of everything she has to teach. And in terms of what I've been doing, I have been really helping people to face their clutter more recently. I just told Cam a few minutes ago that my clients seemingly in a clump, kind of asked me, in a clutter clump, in a clutter clump over the years, could you just create something to help us with our clutter? And I kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, you have the wrong woman because I have clutter as well. And there was one year, it was a few years back now, where I just said, okay, let me try. And I built a five day challenge. And magically and miraculously, I did not screw up because of self doubt. I actually gave people the simplest methods to start, and that is my specialty. So that I know backwards and forwards, how to get over yourself, how to design a new habit when you've been stuck with the old habit for years, and how to think, oh, let's think towards success rather than failure. And that first challenge has now blossomed into many more challenges. And I've helped basically hundreds, if not thousands of women and some men to finally touch the clutter that they've been thinking about, distracted by hating on for years. And in the last couple of challenges, people have tossed clutter from 40 and 30 years back. And think about the impact of that. Think about the refreshing air that must be in those homes, right, to get the stuff that's 40 years old. That's old. But this goes way beyond physical clutter. This weekend we reorganized the unfinished side of our basement, which is where the laundry room lives. So here I am trying to clean our clothes in this, like, environment. And I walked down there today and it feels, feels amazing. The energy feels amazing. There's room, there's physical room. There's visual room, but there's also energetic room. So let's talk about the energy that clutter holds in not a good way. Yes, thank you for saying the question in the way that you did. Because I recently. I've been putting out a lot more social media posts recently, and the one that got the most negative comments, they happen to be from men, but they were really mean, really mean, cruel type comments, really extreme. And those were. That was from the post that said that clutter has energy. That what is their clutter energy trying to tell you? And they were calling me names and things like that. I don't want to go into that. But I, I do appreciate that you also understand that clutter itself has its energy because when you look at it, everything is comprised of energy. Even if it seems inanimate, it is made up of energy. We, ourselves. I just looked it up with ChatGPT yesterday. We are a hundred percent energy because the fat, the skin, the bones, they are all comprised of energy. And when we think of energy, we think about in midlife. How do we want our energy to flow? We. We want it to be in flow. We don't want to feel stagnant, we don't want to feel stuck. We don't want to feel like we don't know where we're going. Although of course, we all get in those phases sometimes. But I want to pin this idea that you are made of energy. You are very powerful as a result, because, as you know, energy fuels all sorts of things and we have fuel that we need to manage within our bodies. Cam helps you with your physical body, your spiritual and energetic body, and I will help you with your clutter and your mindset as well. I really have such a love for helping people to see what they're made of, to see where they can change, to see where they can love themselves again. So I work with people who have been yelling at themselves for many, many years and who have piles of clutter to look at too. Yeah. And isn't that true what we say to ourselves? We are so mean to ourselves. And if we could just stop that a little bit. Yeah. And I want to go back to, like, the area of the house. So I bet we all have a. Drawer, the junk drawer in the kitchen, or maybe it's a closet. And every single time you open that drawer or your closet, you feel like, zapped and you're like. And you just want to close it. Yeah. Or you just feel like, ugh, there it is again. Right. And. And both of those reactions are less than what we are capable of. Right. Less than what we can have. And that is why when we clear up a corner of the laundry room, all of a sudden we're changed. It's not this giant effort or we don't have to go to school for this. And yet somehow we leave. The. The word came to mind. Toxic. The toxic clutter in that space. Even though it would take five or 10 minutes and maybe a couple trips to the other room to get that cleared out. It's amazing to me that we all, mostly all of us do this. There are some lucky people who really insist on a clutter free space, but we all get it that we do better when we have physical space. We do better when there's room to maneuver. We do better when we're not distracted. And these are very basic things that we all know. But. But Cam and I are here today to just remind you that there might be some spaces that require some of your attention right now in order for you to go do the workouts, in order for you to have the energy to make the healthy meal instead of going out and grabbing the junk food or the fast food. Because these small changes are what life is made of and what progress is. Is made of. I just had this visual of, like, the energy returning to our physical body because it's not stuck in the corner of the laundry room or in the junk drawer. Like, it was just this amazing. And then we're reclaiming our personal power and we can actually do the things we want to do with our life instead of let our body get robbed from the energy. Yes. Yes. We want lightness. That's actually something that people who go through the decluttering challenge oftentimes say they feel lighter. And it's interesting because, like, we're the same physical weight, but we also have an energetic body. So that's what Cam is mentioning. And when we're lightening our load by getting rid of the clutter, by sharing our goods with people who need them more than we do, we feel lighter. We can feel proud of ourselves, actually. And I just am always amazed that we aren't all obsessively decluttering all the time. Yeah. In fact, September 8th, you're starting this challenge again. It's a five day challenge. You run it on Facebook, is that correct? I do run it on Facebook. It is a private group, so you'll be able to find it, but nobody will be able to see what you're doing. And there is a very specific reason why I created it that way, because the power of this challenge, the reason why people really get a lot out of it and feel lighter is because I have people post before and after photos, and you can just imagine what that looks like. Some of it, it's imperceptible, maybe, but the energy is somehow different. And then others change their space from cluttered to looking like they could be in a magazine. It's crazy. It's crazy to me, but it's so much fun for me as a host to scroll through the Facebook group and see people supporting each other, people finding valuable stuff that they've been missing, finding cash, find their garages. Again, it's all available for you when you decide. I have the time. I am the person, and this is important to me. These are the things that are the components. You don't need anything else. You don't need a degree. You don't need somebody's approval. You just need the time, the identity, and let's go touch that clutter. That is amazing. So this begins on September 8th. It's a free Facebook group. And do you have the link for that? Where can we sign up? I do. I do. It is procrastination coach dot com. Hey, Cam. So again, that's procrastinationcoach dot com hey, Cam. So that's H e y c a M Because Cam has very kindly agreed to help support me in this particular version of the challenge. There are friends in there of mine who sometimes high school friends kind of reappear in my life inside the challenge. We're all friends there. I really want to just encourage you if you've been ashamed or overwhelmed or just, like, in total denial about your clutter. I really want to have you consider joining me in this round because there's no time like now to start opening those doors to a better future. Yeah, I'm joining because over here, you can't see it. There's this chest of drawers that has my kids old high school award stuff. And I know there's a missing earring in there. I know it. And I'm gonna find it on September 8th. And so, please, this is your 10th round. That is just so fascinating how many people you've been able to help through this challenge. So beyond the physical clutter, like, what are some of the wins that you've noticed in your group? Okay, so, you know, the physical, you've seen, the before and afters. Are there like, any even, like, larger wins that you can share with us? The first one that comes to mind was one that was shared with me recently, and that is people continue the decluttering pat long after the challenge is over. Of course, some people drop off and they go, you know, they just get the benefit of the five days and then they stop. But it is thrilling to me that people are on their own motor that they are saying, this really just helped me and I'm no longer going to go backwards. So that really is the marker of a change habit that, you know, you know what? I'm empowered. And I think that's really the framework from which I teach, that we are responsible for nurturing our own sense of our own power. And it's immense. And I think sometimes that's the weird part that we shy away from how amazing we actually are. And I know I did that for a good half of my life, the good first part of my life where I struggle. There's a reason why I'm a procrastination coach, because I was drowning in negativity, negative self beliefs, limiting beliefs, really bad, unhealthy behaviors, maybe not the worst that you can imagine, but things like not sleeping ever really. Not fueling the body with good food, not knowing that there were options for me for better health and wellness and sanity. I was late with all sorts of things, and now I know that there's a choice in every situation. If you consider yourself having a problem of some kind, Cam and my coach will tell you, and we've learned from him, that the reason you're calling it a problem is because there's a solution. So that is just like door opener again. Like, you have options. You have a brain, you have support, like me and Kim. You have podcasts galore that you can listen to. There is some way that we can help you out of this problematic state so that you can feel like yourself again. So that you can feel like you're a flowy, empowered, amazing woman. That's what I want. Like floaty light. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And can you imagine how much more energy you'll have when you're not being consumed by the physical clutter in the corner? Like, what else are you going to do with your life? Yeah. And I always say as a. This is about as mean as I get about it. The clutter is not going anywhere by itself. No. We. We really to do the intervention and it's with ourselves. Forget the clutter. The clutter is just stuff, right? And if you leave it there, you know what? It's not going to kill anybody. But if you touch it and you deal with it. You're going to enliven yourself. So that's a big calling sign. It's a signal for you to get on it. I can't wait. I can't wait for that drawer over there to be all new drawer. And I know the earrings in there somewhere. Yeah, Yeah. I. Yeah. I love this conversation. And I just want to reflect, like, you are the most positive person. So it's really hard for me to understand the story that you told of yourself, of the past, that you were negative. And then that's because that is not who I know. She's the most amazing reframer. We have a little support group of online entrepreneurs, and we meet, you know, every other week. And she's always the first one to reframe things. Like, no, see it this way. So that's interesting that you say thank you. Thank you for the kind words. I think I'm actually a naturally optimistic person. Person. And that natural optimism got completely squashed and stomped on by all the negativity that I picked up and I felt. And I learned over the years. And because I wasn't naturally organized, I had a lot of. You know, it's tough not to be organized sometimes. Right. Time gets away from you. You. You have high ambitions, but you have no time to fulfill those dreams. And. And so once I figured out that there are lots of little mini equations that I can figure out for myself and stumble through until I get better at them, my life just became wide open. Optimism. Like, there's nothing but optimism in me now. So thanks for recognizing that. Yeah. And I think working with the brain, we both work with the brain. Like, why are we getting stuck here? What's the way out? Because in my world, I believe that the unconscious, Your body is the unconscious mind. If your unconscious mind knows your perfect blueprint of health and you don't like what you're seeing, then working with the brain makes logical sense. Because your unconscious mind wants you to have perfect health. And I feel like it's the same thing with clutter or whatever habit you're working on. Yeah, yeah. Always go with future self, higher self, the other self. We're all created of multiple identities, so love the part of you that created the clutter. Right. Honor the fact that you used to love that scarf or sweater. It's fine. It's fine. What is not fine is beating yourself up and thinking that you're going to get somewhere with that. That just does not work. No, no. It just might get piled on more. Go buy another sweater. Right like, yeah, we don't need to do that, man. You might find things that you, like, really adore that you've forgotten about. So. Is there anything else in closing you would like to share with us about your work in the world? I'm just happy to do it. I'm really grateful. I am going to keep moving forward and keep trying to invite people into this space where really, the future is all yours to take. Right. And we want to design it in a way that we want to run towards it. Right. We want to be healthy. We want to be happy. We want to have space. We really want to have space internally and externally. So thank you, Cam, for allowing me to do that kind of work here with you today. I love it. And midlife is the perfect time to return to yourself, return all that goodness that you've been putting in the corner back to yourself, and go live your beautiful, flowy, light life. All the links to reach Christine will be in the show notes. So please join the challenge September eigth. I'm going to do it because I want my earring back, so look forward. To having you all in. Anybody who wants to join, you're all welcome, and I'll see you soon. Kim, thank you.

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