79. Let Go with Gratitude: How to Apply the KonMari Method to Your Relationships with Mim Jenkinson
Reconsidering Relationships
So often, when we think about visibility, we think about brand deals and marketing. Visibility is so much more than that.
Visibility includes those that deal with us and navigate our daily lives with us and their impact on our visibility and how we show up in the world, and how we show up for ourselves. And it’s okay and sometimes necessary to let go of relationships that no longer spark joy, with gratitude for what they brought us at the time.
Mim Jenkinson joins India for a conversation about applying the KonMari Method to more than just the physical objects in your life, how major health crises have shaped their values and their relationships, and how to be an ally when someone in your life is experiencing a crisis.
Content Note: Discussion of cancer, miscarriage
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How a medical crisis caused India to reprioritize her values and relationships
Why it’s important to amplify the people behind the businesses and brand
How Mim’s applied the KonMari Method to her relationships in the wake of her cancer diagnosis
How to be a good ally to someone experiencing a medical crisis
Planning and Accountability
Mim Jenkinson (she/her) is a British/Australian mother, a digital product creator, online business coach, creator of the Paper Planner Club app and host of the Planner Podcast.
Mim also hosts "Create + Co-Work Club": a planning and accountability club for online business owners who want to swap procrastination for profit, month after month.
The Human Experiences Behind the Brands
On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, India Jackson (she/her) says that as she took a pause from creating content for Flaunt Your Fire so that she could be present and visible for her family, she also began to reevaluate how her values show up on the show and what is important for her to convey through the show.
One of the things that came up for her was that visibility is so much more than marketing, and that the humans behind the brands are so much more than the brand itself. “And I never want that to be lost here as you take in the content that we provide.”
She recalls an experience with a medical crisis in 2014 that had a profound impact on how she prioritizes her values and the way that she lives and loves today.
“I don’t know if I would be the same person had that crisis not happened. But also, I don’t know if I would have the same people around me and move through the world in the same ways.”
In 2014, India went to the emergency room thinking she had a bad bout of food poisoning, only to discover that she was having an ectopic miscarriage, “that took my life and I had to be brought back and get multiple blood transfusions.”
That experience “left me in a place where I reevaluated life in itself and how precious it is and what is so important to me to make sure that I am carrying through in my day-to-day life.”
She reconsidered who she was spending time with, the work she was putting into the world, and what kind of legacy and impact she wanted to create.
“This is something that I experienced and I navigated that shaped who I am today in some of the most beautiful ways.”
A Different Angle on Minimalism
India says that as she was digging into content created by members of The Pause on the Play® Community to get to know them better, she came across a post about applying Marie Kondo’s KonMari Method to people and relationships in your life.
Given her prior exposure to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and her interest in minimalism, coming across Mim Jenkinson’s article How to use the KonMari Method on your Friends piqued her interest.
It also made her realize that even though she was in community with Mim through Pause on the Play®, there was so much about her that she didn’t know.
India wanted to get more of Mim’s perspective on applying the KonMari Method to your relationships, learn how she arrived at that process, and knew that a discussion between the two of them wasn’t enough. She wanted to amplify Mim’s work on the subject through a conversation on the podcast.
“Amplification doesn’t always have to be about business and what we sell. Sometimes it’s just about connecting and remembering that there are real humans, having real lived experiences behind these businesses.”
What Flaunting Your Fire Means for Mim
Mim says that “Flaunting My Fire to me means, at the grand age of 43, I feel like I’m finally becoming, or even rebecoming, who I am supposed to be.”
She says she’s more vocal about her opinions now, with what she wants and doesn’t want, and what she will and won’t tolerate.
“It really does feel like I’m sinking more comfortably into my own skin in so many different ways.”
She says she’s reclaiming confidence she had as a kid that diminished somewhat in her adulthood after going through her breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.
“I think I’ve healed more than just physical parts of myself, and I’m now becoming much more who I always felt like I was as a child. Someone who wasn’t afraid to show who I really am deep down, even if that means repelling some people who it doesn’t vibe with. Because I feel like I’m a magnet then for the people who I am a really good fit for.”
Prioritizing Relationships
India says she relates to the experience of having a major health crisis causing a major shift in perspective.
She says her experience “really began to cause me to reconsider my normal and the way that I viewed life, relationships, so many other things in so many areas.”
India asks Mim to share how her experience with breast cancer caused her to reconsider and reevaluate the normals in her life.
Mim says her experience, rather than causing a complete change or transformation, caused her to ask herself what parts of the “old me” she wanted to keep hold of and bring into the future, as well as reconsidering and reprioritizing in her life.
She says while she was in treatment, she read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and discovered that it was not only a helpful philosophy for physical decluttering, but that the principles could apply to everything in our lives.
“For me, it was relationships.”
She says that after she shared her diagnosis, some people in her life disappeared. “I was either ghosted altogether or…people who I thought would step up actually stepped away.”
She came to understand that a lot of that has to do with people not knowing what to do or say, but that not saying anything at all, “is never the right answer.”
Through the experience of having some relationships fade out, and being surprised by some of the people who were deeply supportive, “I realized that it’s okay to declutter our friendships and our relationships too.”
She continues, “It’s okay to still let someone go and to release them or to have them release me and to still be able to hold onto the really amazing memories and the things that we’ve created together, and to still have joy spark from those things, but not have to feel bad about not taking those relationships forward.”
She says it was, of course, hurtful at the time, and that she did feel anger at the people who dropped out of her life, but it also allowed her to quickly prioritize the friendships and relationships that were deeply meaningful in that moment.
“I’ve reprioritized my time, absolutely, since. Whether it’s the people I’m spending time with or just the things I’m spending time with doing, trying to do, trying to have, thinking about…It’s a big wakeup call.”
Making quick decisions about what’s worth her time, effort, and energy is a skill she’s carried forward in the years since her diagnosis.
“It just frees up so much time and space to really worship the relationships I do have, to give everything to the people and to the things that are really meaningful.”
Being an Ally to Someone in Crisis
India recalls that during her own medical crisis, one of the most profound things that happened was having Erica Courdae simply say, “tell me what you need.” Erica didn’t react or respond or put her own thoughts and emotions on India, nor did she ask a lot of questions, she just said, “tell me what you need.”
And even though in that moment, India really didn’t know what she needed because she was still in the hospital, and “in this liminal space of having not having quite processed what has happened in my life just yet and what that meant for me going forward,” to be able to say I don’t know without getting a lot of feedback and opinions was so helpful.
It allowed India the space to figure out what she really did need and be able to relay that to Erica, knowing Erica would be there for her.
She asks Mim how she evaluated what she needed and what would bring some joy even in such a difficult time, and what advice Mim has for people who want to support and be an ally to someone in crisis but don’t know what to do or say.
Mim says that when she was diagnosed, all she could think about was surviving and getting to the appointments and treatments and surgery.
“But what went beyond that was I needed space. I needed support. I needed to know that even friends who didn’t know what to say were still there for me if I just needed somebody to sit with me or listen with me, or to do nothing.”
And it goes beyond making the first ask of what do you need when someone is in an ongoing medical crisis, a good ally needs to show up more than once and check in. She said when she was undergoing treatment, it was helpful to ask not just, “how are you,” but “how are you today,” because it was difficult to think too far into the future.
She also says that people need support even after they’re given the all-clear. For a lot of people in her life, when she entered remission, “they were delighted that things were well and they could move on. But of course, I couldn’t move on. I was stuck in grief even at that stage.”
She says what brought her joy during that time was realizing how many friends and allies she did have, and getting into a new creative hobby, which has since become her business.
“I think that having a space for creativity is just so joy sparking. It’s something that I would love everyone to dive into, and it’s something that now I get to do every single day and help other people to, as well.”
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