Herein lies a singular challenge to unlocking our potential within. We must first uncover the individual hiding under all the demands of life and work. Everything accumulates. The childhood, the relationships and the hurts. The good and the bad. The complicated and the beautiful. It piles and piles. Tucks away and perseveres. Buries and moves on. Life moves forward whether ready or not. All of which stunts our personal potential. I love imagery and connection. I think about the personification of all this stuff. What would it look like if we could 3D print our emotions' Look. Examine. Hold. Then recycle when necessary. Scope, dissect then toss. Wouldn't that be fantastic' The nature of our multifaceted lives reminds me of one of my favorite and most disgusting childhood poems, Sarah Silvia Cynthia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out, written by Shel Silverstein. She simply would not take the garbage out. And so it piled up to the ceilings: Coffee grounds, potato peelings, Brown bananas, rotten peas, Chunks of sour cottage cheese. It filled the can, it covered the floor, It cracked the window and blocked the door At last the garbage reached so high That it finally touched the sky. And all the neighbors moved away, And none of her friends would come to play. And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said, "OK, I'll take the garbage out!" But then, of course, it was too late. . . The garbage reached across the state, From New York to the Golden Gate. And there, in the garbage she did hate, It grew and grew. The garbage took over the kitchen, the house, it oozed out of windows and pored out the door. Lastly it overtook Ms. Stout herself. The lesson learned from Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout: take the garbage out! If you don't take out the trash it accumulates in piles and piles and piles of garbage. All our personal garbage, quite literally, suffocates the person within. In life, love and work we've got to take out our trash or risk feeling like a giant compost bin. So much personal garbage fermenting, rotting, smelling, molding. Rancid in the soul. Survive the teens, graduate from college, begin a job, major heartbreak and life keeps moving. Simple enough. Here a little there a little. More and more. All tucked away in the active compost of memory and heartache. The years and years of composted memory create heat and activity. A veritable hotbed. Bubbling. Ripe. Like the fetid garbage bin in the summer sun so our souls writhe and wrench with human emotional backup. Hurt, disappointment, fear and pain mask true potential and happiness. Emotions tucked away and locked up in personal dump zones get messy. Acrid. Jack Donahue, of Thirty Rock knew just what to do, he crushed his feelings with his "giant man vice." We should post a warning, beware toxic dump area. Please excuse, "I haven't taken the garbage out for years."With out maintenance the chambers of the heart and the corridors of the mind suffocate from all the fumes. Instead of living, loving and leading we are full time waste management workers. Gross. And a total waste of time, heart and energy. Take out the damn trash. Sort and recycle. Our potential is buried and our dreams dampened. In this overrun state our body and mind grow out of sync. We become emotionally, spiritually and physically bereft--a perpetual, lowgrade state of grief. Mourning what could have been' Who could have been'If only I could hold an hourglass in my hands and slow time. To catch a breath, process and heal. Personally, I have never been one of those people who can tap my belly and pat my head at the same time, a contradiction in motion. The slow of thinking and healing and the speed of living. Our day can move from one challenge to the next and onto another all before breakfast, while hurts and disapoinments stagnate and aggregate. Heartache. Sickness. Death. Mortgage. Job. Personal paralysis. Living and working well beneath potential and dreams. Pile and pile. More and more. Sometimes all we can do is keep up with the task directly in front of us. A hamster on a wheel. If only time could stand still so one could learn how to live. Breathe. Feel. Discover. Perhaps a little spring cleaning. After fudging my way through my twenties and treading water in my thirties, I decided to take stalk. To deal, heal and recover. All of my earlier hopes, dreams and identity were festering in the overripe compost of my soul. I decided it was definitely time to clean house. Take out the trash. Dust off my dreams. And move forward. My solution: Schedule time to think. Journal. Physically make time slow down.Make changes and do differently. Deploy a deliberate search and rescue for strengths, passions and dreams. Face fears fearlessly (or try). I wish I could tell you that my efforts to clean up were an immediate success. They were not. Like Silvia, "in the garbage I did hate." Picking myself up out of my self-created waste-zone has taken time. Uncovering the me in me: painstaking. In the process, I have learned a lot. Cleanup doesn't happen overnight. However, I absolutely believe that potential will resonate when there is harmony between head and heart. Between dreams and reality. It is paramount to sort, uncover and recover. The process can unearth potential and reveal a best version of ourselves. About Maran Whiting Hanley: As a writer life is my artist muse. I love to watch and apply. I believe a writer's job is to tell a story. To fit disparate and incongruent pieces into one great whole. I am an enthusiast of health and wellness. I am passionate about self-care, whole foods and movement. I love to travel. I am an artist. A collector. A lover of art. Above all I am human--by trial and error trying to learn how to live and love. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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