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Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
Episode #202: The New Year Reset: Decluttering Your Space, Your Mind, and Your Goals
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If you're craving clarity, calm, and a clean slate as we move into the new year, I want you to know this. That desire is coming from your nervous system, not from your to do list. Your brain loves resets. It loves simplification. It loves order because order creates regulation. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is with me, Dr. Trish Leigh, your hostess with the mostess. And today we are talking about why decluttering your environment, physical and mental, actually rewires your brain and how to set goals that your nervous system can actually follow through on. So, welcome back. I am excited to dig in today. I was thinking about the popular book at this time of year, the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up by Marie Kondo. And there's a line in it, and she says this, and I love this. Are you ready for it? The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life. And this is so true from a neuroscience perspective. And I have taught myself to think this before any purchase, and I've made some major purchases lately that I will share with you in a minute, but it's always about what I want to create. When you clear space in your home and in your mind, you get the clarity back in your brain. When you simplify your environment, your nervous system calms down. That's why when we're talking about decluttering, we're not talking about stuff, we're talking about your identity and your regulation. Okay, so let's dive into the hijack that happens in your brain when you live in a cluttered environment. Mental and physical clutter is not neutral. It is neurological. Every single item in your environment competes for your attention resources. It competes for your brain performance. Your prefrontal cortex becomes overstimulated when it has too much going on in the physical and mental environment. And you know what this leads to. All of the things you're trying to avoid. First, let's list them. Then I'm going to give you some examples from my life. So when your prefrontal cortex becomes overstimulated, it actually begins to shut down. That gives you mental fatigue, decision overwhelm, what my younger sister calls dysauphobia. It gives you irritability and anger. It gives you a short leash. It gives you procrastination. You don't know where to start. You don't know how to follow through, and it gives you loss of motivation. This loss of motivation is because your brain can't start, nor can it follow through. When your mental and physical Environments are chaotic. Your brain shifts into a low level threat response. Your brain cannot thrive in visual and mental noise. Now, in my home, you can imagine that sometimes there can be some chaos. But here's something that I learned about myself, and I'm sure some of it resonates for you too, is that I realized that I thought my life was chaotic. And you know how I am about language. I think language is so important, so you can't tell yourself you live a chaotic life or you get a chaotic life. So a long time ago, I started calling it a full life. And it was full and it was engaged, but it was overly full. If we're being honest with myself now, which I am, and I almost did it again. I'm going to tell you the story, but this is what I realized. Let's just. We'll give the example. I moved where I live now 13 years ago. When I moved here, I had to move five children, plus my bonus child, who now is an adult. But he was a young man at that point. So six kids, two dogs, two cats. Like woman. What are you doing? Why do you need all of this overstimulation all of the time? We had to sell my husband's practice, buy another practice. I left my job at the university and had to find the new thing that I was going to do, which I did, by the way. The thing in my heart, thankfully. But I look back at that version of myself who kept getting more and more and more chaos. And honestly, it is still my propensity. Because I grew up in a family of six people, we were never allowed to have pets. We did have this cat once we named a pretty cat. We could never figure out if it was a boy or a girl. Pretty cat indeed. But I grew up in a home with a lot of working parts. It always felt chaotic. So I learned basically to reinforce that and recreate it. And I apparently got it at the highest of levels, which means there's something in me too. So I have to recognize that and then make sure I don't fall back into the pattern of creating the chaos. Because then chaos then disintegrates. My highest level self, that is regulated, meaning that your chaotic environment creates dysregulation. Now I start thinking and behaving differently. Namely, I'm more stressed out, I'm more exhausted. I have that mental fatigue. I. I can't make the decisions. My. My purpose and my passion start to flail. So I almost did it again because I have wanted the cutest little Bernie Doodles in the world. So if you've ever heard me talk, the only thing I get sucked onto into online Poshmark and puppies and actually, I haven't been on Poshmark in months. I've gave, I gave that up, I guess. But I have been looking at the most adorable bernadoodles and my kids have almost convinced me, even though they're young adults who will be moving back into their apartments after the holidays, to get the most adorable bernadoodle. Then I realized I hardly walk. Chewbacca, my, you know, almost 13 year old dog, this man hardly gets walks. So I said to myself, we are not getting a puppy and creating all types of chaos right now for me, because a puppy would then I've had two dogs before we, it's, it's not double the work, it's exponential. So I have committed to taking Chewy for nice walks every single day. It's been lovely and relaxing and every time I think I want to get that puppy and ramp up my CAS again, I don't. I stay decluttered and I enjoy the man that I have. Chewbacca. Okay, so this is what we're talking about. You may have that propensity, you may feel that desire to keep chaotic levels high. At New Year's, this is our time to we can cut the fat. And again, it's identity. You know, who, who do I want to be? What do I want my home to feel like? With two dogs, it is a lot. They run around, they create lots of noise, there's lots of barking. All of that with one dog, one old dog, especially that man, just chills. It's very calm. And I thought to myself, I want calm. And even when I get the puppy, I can enjoy the puppy because I will be getting it. You'll be hearing about him someday. That I can enjoy him and not be competing, trying to, you know, train a little puppy while I deal with an older dog. I'm just going to enjoy that man. This is the time when you can make those identity decisions and create the life that you want. So that's the hijack. The hijack is the mental and the physical clutter. So Marie Kondo, she thinks of it as cleaning out your house. And this is very important. But I think about it as not only making sure your physical space is decluttered, but your mental space too. And we're going to talk about it now. The reason it's important is because if your brain is hijacked by clutter, the mental clutter forms and your New Year's goals fail. You can't create what you want when your mind is a mess. Most people do not fail at the New Year's goals that they make because of willpower. What happens is they fail at their New Year's goals because their brains are miswired. And it's very important to me that you understand this miswiring. It basically comes in three main shapes and sizes. For most of the people that I work with, there's strained brain. Strained brain's a brain that's running too fast and too slow. There's too much input. Puppy and old dog, right? Racing thoughts, chaotic planning. You lay down and the thoughts ramp up. They don't slow down. That's strained brain. A wired and a tired brain. You feel exhausted, but you also feel stressed or ramped up. You might feel stressed and depressed. You might have lack of energy and brain fog. It might be difficult to focus. You might feel unmotivated but stressed out at the same time. That's strained brain. Now, drained brain is different. Strained brain is a brain that's running too fast and too slow, and it doesn't have enough speed in the middle. Basically, strained brain is a brain that's using excessive acceleration and excessive braking. Not enough neutral. Now, if you keep your brain in that mode for too long, what happens is it tips into drain brain, and it is different. Drain brain is kind of like a burnout pattern. That fast and slow speed that will come down, and the speed in the middle actually ramps up. Too much neutral, and along with too much neutral means you can't go. You feel exhausted, you feel depressed. It might also include the mood piece of depression. It includes the numbness. Now, when it comes to dopamine dependency, especially from explicit matter, that's where that numbness comes in. It's desensitization of the dopamine receptors. Those dopamine receptors are very important for healthy pleasure, engagement, and joy. Now, especially coming off the holidays as we move into the new year, it's important to keep pleasure at healthy levels. If you're consuming explicit matter, that's artificially high pleasure from artificial sources, that desensitizes your brain. We know it's damaging your brain, and so many people tell me they know it's not leading them to the life that they want, but they can't stop. Porn consumption is an addiction, a word I don't love to use because I know it's maybe difficult to identify with or overly identifiable, but it is a compulsion. You're compelled to go back. It's not a habit it's controlling you. You're not controlling it. Even though it's giving you the illusion of that it leads to drain brain. Drain brain. Too much neutral dopamine desensitization leads to sexual arousal dysfunction, ed, Namely, a little something I call sad. Sexual arousal dysfunction makes us very sad. I have talked to tens of thousands of people who struggle with porn induced ed, and they are sad, they are freaking out, but they're also super stressed out, and they are very frustrated. If you're in that position, it doesn't have to be that way. Drain brain is keeping you there, and drained brain can be reversed. We'll talk about that in just a minute. There's a third pattern, the fragmented brain. That's the milkshake. Multitasking brain trying to do way too many things. I thought this to myself because as I came up here to my office to make this video, admittedly, my closet's a mess. So I was thinking to myself, I do have to clean it. I'll tell you why it's a mess. It's gotten a mess because it's Christmas time, and I get to put Christmas on for my big, huge, beautiful family, plus my friends and all my extended family and all of that. I know many of you are in the same position. So the gifts have started to pile up in my closet, and then you get a pile. And I threw this wrap shirt I was wearing yesterday on the pile. It was late at night, because now I was. This is the thing I was actually thinking when I was looking at the mess in the closet, which, by the way, it won't take me long to tidy, and I will go do it after this. The thought was, my life is jam packed in the first place. You add a thing like Christmas on top of it, and that can be a critical mass for many people. If I wasn't planning well, I am working a little more to get ahead of the curve. If I wasn't doing that, I'd hit a critical mass. So if you're feeling that way, that's the fragmented brain. That's the brain that's doing much too much all at once. Then what happens is your priorities become unclear, you know, And I tried to explain this to Declan. I'm like, dude, I can't clean my closet right now. I've got to go get this work done. Then I can clean my closet. So you can't set goals on top of cognitive clutter. Your brain won't follow through. It doesn't know how to prioritize it. It. The prefrontal cortex is dragging, not allowing you to have the executive function skills to plan it and then follow through. That is what I can see on people's brain maps. And this time of year is so powerful to get your brain mapped. If you've been thinking about it, I highly encourage you to do it. And I'll tell you why. I usually map my brain twice a year at New Year's because I'm always stoked for the new year. I've been excited for New Year's right now, as we move into it, for, like, two months. I've been on my end of the year grind arc. You know, it's a. Grind's a wrong word because I'm so excited about it. I will map my brain in the next couple days, and then I always have a stamp of what my brain's doing at each, you know, each turn of the year. And it's a really cool record for me to have. You don't need that because in the program that I offer, we measure your brain functioning with every single session. Of course, I do that too. But it's a really important thing to do to be able to look. Do you have strained brain? Do you have drained brain? Do you have fragmented brain? Are you close to the optimized brain? I work with peak performers who. They're pretty close, but they have some dysregulation in there that is preventing them from their full potential. So as you move into the new year, if you feel like you're being held back from your full potential by your brain, you're not imagining that that's real. And we can see it in a brain map. It shows you exactly how your brain is functioning. So you don't have to guess, you don't have to think how it's functioning. People tell me all the time. I have been struggling with explicit matter. I've have anxiety, I have sad, I have ed. I feel depressed, I lack motivation. I'm doing fine, but I know I could be doing better. And we see why in your brain map. So I want you to know it's visualizable, and I walk you through it. So in strained brain, it means you need simplification. So we're going to do this test right now. If you feel wired and tired, stressed and tired, you need to simplify it. Is your brain screaming at you to do so? If you feel like you just need restoration time, that's drain brain. Give yourself that time. It's important to do if you're feeling pretty good and you're Feeling aligned with your highest self and the high performing behavior that you want to have. You're close to the green zone and that is what I want for you. This map that I do with people, it reveals what your brain is asking for at this time of year for your reset. So use those markers to try to figure it out or schedule a brain map and I can show you. Okay, so let's talk about the rewire. How do you create a brain aligned reset? Let's break it into a few simple categories. So I already told you my closet needs to be decluttered. We are talking about a micro zone. And thankfully, my closet's pretty big. It's not that micro, but it could be a drawer, it could be a counter. It could be a pile of something. It could be your desktop. I have taught myself to clean my desk desktop up every night before I leave my desk. It's kind of my wind down ritual. It usually doesn't get too jacked up. It's not too bad right now. I did open some mail, so I got a little pile of mail right there that I will take care of. But this is a micro zone. Start there. If you, if your desk is cluttered, I highly recommend you start by tidying up your desk. Then you work better. Your brain will be freed up from all the things it has to contend with while you're trying to work. Pick a micro zone. Start there. If you can't even imagine doing it, pick the smallest micro zone that you can wrap your mind around. Then do some micro cleaning. Because micro cleaning equals micro regulation. We can baby step this thing. Take the baby steps and start moving in the right direction. Break the downward spiral. Start the upward spiral. Okay. Secondarily reduce visual stimuli like I already told you. Clear off the surfaces around you. Simplify the colors. We had to move out of my home during Moldageddon when I had mold poisoning. And our house was painted in the colors that it was when we moved in. And we painted over a couple of them. Like, we had a very bright red dining room. We did paint over that. But now our home is agreeable gray. My friends are all in the realty space. They love the color agreeable gray. And the Hubs and I are like, are we going to paint our house agreeable gray? It's beautiful. It's perfect. We have all of these kind of like blue glass tones. It's such a comfortable space. When we move back in, all the kids are like, this color scheme just makes me feel better. Remove all of that visual noise and Give your brain the open space that it wants to be able to come down. It's really going to help. So if you're inspired to tune up a room with paint, you can go that far. But if not, just try to bring the visual noise down. Okay, number three, let's talk about how to set your goals. Now, first of all, it's very important to set identity based goals. Now, we already said we're decluttering here to create the life that you want. We're not going to purchase things that don't equal the life that you want, right? So we were talking about purchasing at the beginning. Instead, we want to think, what is the life? So I've told you before how my beautiful daughter Saoirse rides horses. And I'm like, I'm going to invest in a horse. But then it's just that it's not the horse. This is the real question. I'm going to invest in Saoirse. That makes it easy, right? The identity is, I'm gonna be a horse mom. I already am. We already leased this horse, but we're gonna have to buy, you know, I'm a horse mom. I love it. I think it's great. I'm a mom who is supporting her children in their passion and purpose. You know, the horse is just the largest example. But it's even about, I made this whole plan for the kids to be able to go to college for me to support them a little, for them to support themselves and to teach them financial literacy. You know why that's important? That's an identity based goal. I want to be the mom who taught their kids financial literacy, financial peace. So it's not just about purchasing and it's not just about, you know, what you want to achieve for yourself. It's who you want to be and how you're going to get there. Those are the goals. So, so many people say, I'm going to lose weight. That will actually focus you on losing weight, which will focus you on food. But instead, if you turn it into, you're going to be someone who appreciates and takes care of your body, your temple. That's how I think of it. I have to move my body every day. It's my tool. It's the thing that I'm moving through this world and. And I have to keep my tool strong, right? And I have to rest. That's what gets me in bed every single night early, because my tool needs to be in good shape. That's the identity. Someone who cares for her body, someone who is taking care of the temple. So instead of saying, I'm gonna make more money this year, you can be a person who creates more value this year. And you create the value that you get paid for. Right? Money is just the byproduct. The value that you create either if in your own business, if you have it, or as an employee. I have one of my clients that I've had for a really long time. I'm always telling him to make sure he is a highly valuable employee he'll never be let go of. There's no company that's going to let go of a highly valuable employee. That's what you do. And you get paid for it. You get rewarded for it. Okay? Number four is create one anchor ritual so that it anchors you into your day and your life. This anchor ritual is designed to help engage the Default Mode network. So I'll give you a couple of mine. I always start my morning with the exact same routine. It involves movement. I usually do a type of movement called the Five Tibetan Rights that I'm putting together to share in my newest book that I'm working on. I. It's kind of like yoga, but very specific positions. That's how I move my body in the morning. I always work out. Later in the day. I always drink a green drink, this vegetable drink. And I always drink electrolytes to get the cells fired up. It's the first thing that I do. I always tell people, you can drink lemon water. If you don't do that, then I always have stillness. And I always read. And I start with a more spiritual practice, but it's designed to regulate me. Then I work in my journal. I always have a journal or a napkin sometimes sitting next to me. And if I have a thought, I put it down, decreasing my mental clutter. I always work in lots of journals. I have a couple of them right here that I've been working in today. At the end of the day, I always have the same routine of cleaning up my desk after I write down all the notes of the things that I need to work on tomorrow. The ritual stabilizes the nervous system. It allows for regulation. Give it a whirl. Okay. Number five. It's almost essential. It's absolutely imperative to remove the friction. You remove the friction from the healthy choices. And you make the choices for overstimulation harder. In the beginning, you absolutely need guardrails because your brain is going to follow the path of least resistance. I know that. Right. That's why when you have these rituals and these routines, my Brain literally has to go to work after my morning routine. Like, it's. It's pretty cool because, like, my brain doesn't want to work out of the gates in the morning. It used to. Like, I'd be raring, I'm sure, like, you probably are. You like, you know, I'd get my phone and I'd just be, boom, go. Now I'm not. I ease into my day. I use lighting to do it. But my brain wants to do my morning routine. It loves it. It doesn't ever want to skip it because of the ritual. But then when it's time to work, I'm. Even though I work from home, I naturally just go do work, and I would never do anything else. Sometimes, to my husband's dismay, when he's looking at me like, are you gonna clean the pan from last night? I'm like, no, bro, it's work time. I'm gonna get that later on when it's home time. Which he does not like. But that's life. Because my brain's conditioned then, which is great. Path of least resistance. I have my yoga mat and my weights are by the front door because now I've been working out in the afternoons mostly lately, and I want to be out in the sun. So if they're down in the gym that we have, I won't go outside. They're directly next to the front door. And that's also the time that I take Chewy outside with me and then we go for a walk. I was skipping the walks, but now the walks are back on, so the routine is there. This way I work out at the same time and all my stuff's there. And then the days when I'm extra busy, which I'm not doing today, thankfully, I will just be wearing workout pants. And then I'm ready to go, and I'll just work out in those pants. I'm sure you've seen people do that before, but that's a hack. I put them on in the morning, knowing I'm going to have to squeeze this stuff in. Yesterday was so busy, I left the yoga mat out in the living room, and I would just do some push ups and some vinyasas. When I walked past, it was those kind. That kind of day, just squeezing it in. But movement happened, a little workout happened. That's what we're talking about. Okay? So the path of least resistance. Don't make it easy to go on your phone. Do make it easy to get all the things done that you want to. Okay. And now your Brain hack strategy for the day. It is the 1 minute reset. Set a timer, set it for 60 seconds, then go, go clear one thing out. This is your micro regulation. Organize your forks and knives if you want to. Like Declan leaving his rice bowl in the sink at 1am he said to soak these kids in there. Let's let things soak stuff. And these kids are adult children, you know, Clean out a corner, send that email that you've thought about. Do one thing only 60 seconds and then give yourself a high five. You have to celebrate the small wins that you did that thing. A tiny win like that flips dopamine into motivation, into your real world, real life mode. That's how it works. And if you do enough of them, you're going to get this internal momentum going. You can create the life that you want. That's why I am going to go clean my closet. I actually bought, honestly, it's probably like two months ago, a shoe rack. I got to get that thing out and put it together and put my shoes on it too. Okay. If your mind feels cluttered or scattered or stuck as you enter the new year, I want you to know you do not have to stay that way. Technology exists and thankfully I am blessed to to be one of the top tier providers using technology that can identify if your brain is strained, drained, if it's fragmented, or if it's ready for rapid rewiring. So please reach out, book your brain map so you and I can spend time together privately. I can pick up the breadcrumbs that you don't even know are there and show you how to get regulated, focused and aligned with your goals this year. This year can be different than last year. I want you to know that. But you have to do new things. That's how it goes. Okay? So reach out. Dr. Trishleigh.com it would be my honor to help you. Stay tuned because next week on the episode of the Dr. Trish Lee podcast, we are going to talk about why New Year's goals fell and how you can become super normal. Instead, we're going to dive into the book Atomic habits and how it gets it right and what your nervous system needs first so you can succeed in 2026. That's my goal for you. So I hope you have a beautiful New Year's Eve filled with joy and laughter and real world dopamine, Slow dopamine at healthy levels. And I can't wait to see you back here. I've been working so hard on putting together content that provides value for you in a different format. I'm so psyched to share it with you. So come back next year in 2026 and remember, as we move into the New Year, that I am here for you, my friend. You are not alone. You've got me on your team. Remember that. And always remember that you must control your brain or it will, in fact, control you. I can't wait to see in the New year. I'll see you next time.