One thing I find really important when working with clients is using before-and-after photos.
I really really advocate doing this.
If you have got a space that you’re not very happy with, take a picture of it as it is now. Look at that picture. Sometimes it’s easier to go into a different room and then look at that picture and see what it looks like.
You can get sometimes a bit more reality by distancing yourself from the actual space. It’s very difficult because we live in these homes, we have all these things around us, it’s our normal, you know.
To actually look at it in different eyes, sometimes, when you look at it through the lens of a camera or even download that onto your computer or something and look at it on a screen, you can see it differently.
I’ve shown people pictures of things before and they’ve gone “that’s not what it looks like” and actually it is.
So before pictures are really really useful. They’re also great for when you have then decluttered because once you’ve done the actual job, you can then see the difference.
I think because we’re doing it, and while we’re doing it, it’s a gradual change, and you kind of go “oh yeah that is a bit different”. But when you actually look at how it was, you can see a real stark change.
Even if that’s in a drawer that was a bit disorganised, it can be massive to show you where you’ve come from and where you’re going to.
I was listening to a guy the other day (I can’t remember who it was) but he was talking about goals and he was talking about
“It’s as important to know what you coming away from, as it is to what you’re going to.”
There was a study done, and it was with mice. What they did was they measured mice and their fear while running away from a cat, but they also measured their draw going towards some cheese. So it was measuring both coming away from something it didn’t like and going towards something else it did like.
The study found that the draw for each was equal, it was 50/50. So exactly the same amount.
There’s not more pull going towards something you want and less coming away from something you don’t, (which I thought actually) but it is exactly the same amount. I’m not saying we’re mice but we have a similar way of thinking.
So if we know equally what we want to head towards. as much as what we want to come away from, I think that’s really important.
One of the things I encourage people to do is put those before and after photos up.
Imagine you’ve just cleared your kitchen, on the inside of your kitchen doors just put that picture of what it was like and what it is like now. That will help you know what your coming away from, so what you don’t want it to get back to. But it will also show you what you’ve got it to, in its pristine state, the ideal, and that’s what you need to be heading towards all the time, because it’s easy for things to get mucked up again.
So use before-and-after pictures.
They are a fantastic way of keeping you inspired, helping you know what you’re coming away from, and helping you keep that focus on what you’re heading towards and how you really want it to be.