Emotional waste rattling in your brain robs you of creative energy. Grievance collection destroys ideas. Running audio and video loops in your head of past events which you cannot change prevents you from living in the present and planning for the future. To take back your life and live in the present requires you to find ways to remove the trash that is poisoning your mind, body, and spirit.

Several simple practices will help you clean house. First, create a series of imaginary items in your head. Among these are a waste basket, manila folders, a file cabinet, a paper shredder that can also shred CDs, a video/audio tape recorder, and a tablet or a stack of index cards. For a period of 21 days, you are to identify anything that passes through your head that you believe interferes with the life you really want to have.

For those experiences that you know you cannot change and you believe you no longer need to have in your mind's scrapbook, remove them one at a time mentally. Bring them to the front of your consciousness. Assess their current status. Decide what you have learned from having the experiences. If you are ready to release them, choose the appropriate destruction device. In your mind, see the device destroying the experience — Shredding the pictures. Erasing the video tape. Dumping stories in the wastebasket.

However, if you are not quite ready to release these poisoning experiences, create a "Review Later" folder. Write and date a description of the experience on a sheet of paper or an index card and put the description in your review folder. Put the folder in your real filing cabinet or some safe place known only to you. Continue documenting review-later experiences until you believe your brain is totally empty.

You are free to review the folder at any time. Experiment with turning the cards or papers upside down so you cannot identify any of the experiences. Then, pull one from the stack. Reflect on the content of your choice. If you are not yet ready to let go of the experience, return the item to your "Review Later" folder. Now, you can select a new card or paper. Continue selecting until you find one that you believe you are ready to release. Then, choose the appropriate destruction device. See the experience disintegrating.

You are also free to destroy any items in the folder if your feelings about them have changed. If you have really learned the lessons presented to you by your experiences, you will not need to revisit the experiences again unless you need to reconfirm your learning. What remains after the cleaning are memories of those experiences. What also remains are those experience from which you still have things to learn and experiences that lift your emotions and your spirit.