Our hearts broke right open, and we sent love to Boston and Venezuela and all the parts of the world where people are in agony.

So this might seem trivial.

And yet as my friend Sarah Seidelman so wisely wrote, “What can we do in the face of unspeakable tragedy?  We can cultivate love in every single action we take… right now.”

The beautiful women in my Queen Sweep course are doing that very thing: they are steadily cleaning out rooms, closets, their calendars and wallets, and as they clear away clutter they are deliberately choosing beauty and love.

These small actions reverberate out.  They matter.  They set the course for the kinds of people we become.

So this week I want to help you Queen Sweep a part of your world that very much shapes who you are:  your bookshelf.

Like you, I love books.  And my bookshelf shows it.  This is a good thing, but every now and then I notice that my shelves are groaning not just with tomes that bring me joy, but with a nice heavy heaping of guilt, obligation, and muddy thinking.

So I challenge you to go through your shelves and pull out any volume that makes you feel any of the following:

 

• guilty 
• squirrelly 
• guilty
• dumber than you are 
• guilty
• smarter than you are 
• guilty
• embarrassed 
• guilty
• heavy 
• guilty
• like you’re behind 
• guilty
• bored 
• guilty 

Oh, do you have books that make you feel guilty too?  Hunh.  How bout that.

Cookbooks with recipes that give me a headache.  Parenting books so idealistic I want to call Supernanny.  Investigative journalism that examines horror but offers no solution.

These things don’t help.  They just make me feel guilty, a vague uneasy sense that I am not measuring up.  They pop up little red flags of shame and censure every time I walk past them.  According to my bookshelf I should:

Work out more.
Eat raw.
Learn more history.
Worry about retirement.
Suck in every horrible thing that has ever happened in the world.

But these little jolts of inadequacy do not, oddly enough, make me want to do any of those things.  No, they make me want to watch America’s Next Top Model and snork down a whole pizza.

So off they go.

I believe the physical objects of our lives both reflect and shape who are becoming.  Clearing out physical clutter is a powerful way to give yourself more clarity, room, and a sense of possibility.

So yes, I do mean that if you never finished reading the complete works of Dostoevsky, even though you always meant to because you are an intelligent deep fearless reader who distressingly sinks into a dark depression at the very thought of those angst-filled tomes– then let them go.

And that Very Smart Book by the So Intelligent Author that bores you to tears even though your Wittiest Friends rave about how Insightful It Was– gone.  Out the door.

And the volume that your great aunt Mabel sent you all the way from Austria, that you’ve kept for twenty years because you couldn’t possibly throw it away even though the antiquated thoughts expressed within make you want to howl in fury– kiss it, and chuck it in a box.

Does this seem wasteful?  Do I perhaps hate the environment and poison trees for fun?

Nope.  I do hate waste though.

And here is the thing:

Your attention, your joy, your time– in other words, YOUR ENERGY– is the most precious resource you have. 

Every time you keep books you don’t particularly want to read because you think you SHOULD is a waste of your potent energies.

Every time you force yourself through something boring, because you believe you are flawed and need to be fixed, you are wasting not only your time but your most beautiful gifts.

And every time you let your physical space get clogged up with items that make you feel inferior, obligated, overwhelmed, and guilty, you block up space where something new and delightful and sizzling could take up residence.

Let your bookshelf hold a tribe of beloved friends: stories that comfort and soothe, wisdom that grounds and inspires, words that tickle your truest self into stepping forward.

And let the rest go.

You can donate, share, give away, or recycle.  You can even start your own neighborhood lending library.  (See that pic above?  That’s on my block!)

~  Incidentally, you could do the same for your electronic media too– cull your Facebook stream, Twitter feed, and email inbox of the crud– and watch your energy bloom.

But that’s another email.  ~

Start with some books, and tell me how that feels.