I employ a cleaner; and, before I loose you, that (nor my embarrassment at owning up to this…why do I always feel so cringy at admitting to needing this help) is not what this post is about. My point here, using the example, is that when she comes around once a fortnight to blast through my bathrooms and kitchen, reach places I can’t reach and vacuum my entire house, I spend around two hours, sometimes more, preparing for her visit. My husband used to laugh: “Why clean for the cleaner” and no, its nothing to do with fearing she might think of me and mine as a family of slobs (she assures me she’s seen far worse than our family pit). The reality is, when I tidy up, put things away, make space, think about how best she can help me before she gets here, I get so much more out of her visit. Sometimes, I end up shifting things around her, mucking in as a second pair of hands whilst she’s working, in the way of “two pairs hands better than one”, and we chat away amicably all the time (having become “Medical Medium” buddies since she first saw his book on my coffee table and started following the diet plan). We swop recipes and compare notes, in fact I suspect the reason she often comes early is to fit in the inevitable long chat, but the point is that more than twice as much gets done because I meet her half way. Which, in case you haven’t guessed, is the real message of this post.

If you don’t believe me, then I will take you back two years, to the days before we had a cleaner, when I was unable to do very much at all and the house was a perpetual mess. I mean, I haven’t been able to lug a heavy vacuum cleaner around successfully for years…the trade off of several days of enhanced pain, even when I can lift it, isn’t worth the clean house and now the electrical vibration triggers neuralgia that is even worse than the body aches. Even “eco products” sprayed too liberally near me can affect me very badly and the stretch and exertion that it takes to clean tiles and floors is way too exhausting when my tank is sometimes emptied out from doing the smallest domestic tasks. So, back then, I would sit in my dirty house…the place where I spend almost all of my time…and feel just so daunted, and depressed, and hopeless, at all the things that weren’t getting done, not even knowing how or where to start. Added to that, I would feel burdened with guilt and remorse when my overworked husband would have to vacuum and clean up at the weekends as well as doing tons of laundry (which he still does), which would make me try all the harder to, somehow, do it myself when he wasn’t there. Some days, I would hardly have the stamina to get myself in the shower let alone clean it after the family school-days bathing frenzy had done its worse so I would just have to walk away from the mess I couldn’t deal with. Then, when I was feeling a little better, I would feel guilty and remorseful if I managed to do something a little more demanding “for pleasure”, as though my first priority should aways be to “sort out the house” first. It felt like a downward spiral and ended up getting us all down about the way things were at home.

Now I have an extra set of hands, I feel I can rise up to my half of the deal, can do the things that I am more than capable of doing; things I am really good at, like strategising how best to use her couple of hours and keeping on top of things better to the rhythm of her visits. My confidence is “up”, along with my morale and everyone’s quality of life. And I quite enjoy my fortnightly house-blast, when I run around shouting at everyone to sort out their stuff while multi-tasking everything into all the right spaces before the cleaner arrives. It gets my blood up and is a work-out that feels satisfying to me because I am able to complete my side of the bargain; all the more so when she comes to do her part of it and the house is returned to a good state of order again, which allows me to return to my creative work with an easy conscience and tidy mind. The time straight after she has been is potent “me” time in which to luxuriate in some semblance of order, to arrange flowers in a vase and curl up on a tidy sofa, before life’s inevitable chaos creeps back in. When I have a surplus of energy, I’m able to spend it doing things that I really want to do, as a result of which my business has grown, I’ve developed a passion for preparing healthy food and all my activities are more diverse than when I sat here staring at a messy house that daunted me. Part of its gift is knowing that I really helped to make this happen and that it wasn’t hard to make it so; we spend less on her wages than we used to spend on the wine we no longer consume.

Helping others to help yourself is something you learn, over and over again, when you have a long-term health condition or disability; there is absolutely no point, only stagnation to be found, in a place where you “lie prostrate”, as it were, waiting for somebody to rescue you. And meeting anything that comes to help you; be that a person, a situation or a healing modality, is more of the same. We can’t just “wishfully think” our way to the outcome we want; as anyone who has ever worked with the law of attraction will have, no doubt, learned through trial and error. Squeezing your eyes tight, crossing fingers and toes and hoping beyond hope won’t get you to where setting a clear affirmation…and then taking whatever steps allow that outcome to fall easily into place, acting “as if” it has already happened…will get you. Taking the supplement, following the health regime, making the positive choices, contributing even the baby steps that you can offer up to a circumstance as “your part of it” is a signal that you are willing to make a difference and will tell the universe that you are ready for the outcome that you are summoning. It’s a learned thing; a positive habit to form, one which can be replicated in all kinds of circumstance yet with the remarkably consistent outcome of “good stuff” coming from it.

In this case, now that I always act as though my house will get magically cleaned by a willing angel with a hoover and a long-handled duster (something I only ever used to dream about…), trusting it is so, it somehow stays that way much more of the time, and the smaller and perhaps more mundane tasks (which I might once have put off as “pointless” since what difference do they make…) get done often,  easily and optimistically, even when she’s not due for a visit. My mindset has altered completely from those days of feeling hopeless and without help; and my own ability to tackle domestic tasks…hell, to even enjoy such tasks…has dramatically increased. Its taught me that, even without the cleaner’s help, I’m capable of doing far more than I knew and that, somehow, things will always orchestrate to solve my problems if I show willing with my part of the deal. I’ve discovered, the more I help her (and I mean that at so many levels since I have now helped her so much as a friend and confident, not just an employer), the more she helps me…and isn’t that the most beautifully simple yet core equation at the very centre of life? You know this is just a metaphor for a zillion other things that the same mindset could apply to, don’t you; and its up to all of us to work like this in any of the areas where we feel stuck…meeting the solution we would love to imagine “showing up” half way (and having faith that it will) so that, when it does, the sum of contributory parts adds up to an outcome that is more than we ever dreamed was possible to achieve.