By Marlyse Bergstra, MSW RSW
“Does this spark joy?” This simple question is Marie Kondo’s widely-recognized contribution to the world of tidying, self-improvement, and to some extent, minimalism. You might be wondering how someone could build a multi-million dollar tidying empire based on such a fluffy rule. If so, go and try it. Start with clothing, as she says, and pick up each specific article of clothing. Touch it, weigh it in your hands, and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?”.
If you can go through each item in your home, tune in to yourself, and identify if it does or does not spark joy, I would guess you are catching a glimpse of what it’s like to access DBT’s “wise mind”. For those of you not currently in DBT, wise mind is the state of mind where we can access both “logic mind” and “emotion mind”. In wise mind, we may also feel connected to others, the universe, a higher power, and ourselves.
Similarly, when we weigh an item in our hands, we feel connected to the item. When we ask ourselves, “Does this spark joy?”, we tune into our emotional reaction to the item. When we look at the item, we can’t help but think logically about whether or not the item is useful.
In an eerie echo of Linehan’s emotion mind/logic mind distinction, Kondo writes, “Human judgment can be divided into two broad types: intuitive and rational. When it comes to selecting what to discard, it is actually our rational judgment that causes trouble” (Kondo, 2014). Here is an idea that is at odds with Western culture! In DBT and our society, we often focus so much on managing emotion mind that we forget how important it is to be able to access our emotional intuition. It is easy to get sucked into a tendency to praise logic, science, and rational thinking above all else.
When decluttering, emotional intuition is of paramount importance. Why have clothing in your closet that you dislike, when you could have clothing that gives a thrill of joy? I think there may be other situations in life when accessing emotional intuition is a priority. You can put a lot of time into a hobby and feel proud about your accomplishment, or tell yourself “I’m not a professional, so why bother?”. You can choose a career that makes you happy or one that makes you a lot of money. You can eat pizza two days in a row and decorate your house the way you like it.
Consider making a choice this week based on what sparks joy. Marie Kondo would be proud.
Kondo, M. (2014). The life-changing magic of tidying up: The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing.Ten Speed Press.
Hanaoka, P. (2019). no title [Photograph]. Unplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/4nabmlliGdU
Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash