Cleaning, Changing, Transforming — It Can Awaken a New Self

When I started my fast spiritual, psychological, and self-development period of my life… well, I was lucky enough to start quite early. But in my mid-20s, while I was studying for my Master's degree in Coaching and Emotional Intelligence in Barcelona, something really began to shift.

That was the beginning of one of the biggest transformations of my life.

I remember one of my spiritual coaches and friends telling me:

And I was like… Yes. Totally. 😂

I wanted less. I wanted to get rid of the old. I wanted to constantly change things. It felt almost instinctive. Like a snake shedding its old skin.

At the time, I understood it spiritually. I felt that when something inside me was changing, I somehow needed the outside world to change with it.

And it wasn't only me. Many of the coaching programs I joined would ask us to do exactly the same thing:

• Clean your house.
• Clear your wardrobe.
• Clean your phone.
• Delete old contacts.
• Remove things you no longer need.
• Make space.

And yes… sometimes even clean up your relationships.

Fast-forward to today, and I recently joined another business coaching program. Guess what was one of the first assignments? Declutter. Clean your environment. Make space. And I thought… Here we go again. 😂

But Why Does This Matter?

Because I am a Kabbalah student, simply being told to do something has never been enough for me. I always want to know WHY.

Why does this matter? What is actually happening? What is the mechanism behind it?

For years, I received all kinds of spiritual explanations.

And honestly, I could see it happening. I even started using this idea with my clients. And I had stories. Real stories. One of them I still remember very clearly.

The Woman Who Wanted to Sell Her House

I was giving a lecture during the month of Cancer and talking about the importance of keeping our home clean and learning to let go of things.

One of the women at the seminar suddenly opened up. She said: “I am trying to sell my house after my divorce, but I can't. People come, they look at it, and nobody buys it. I used to live there with my ex-husband. Now I live there with my new boyfriend, and somehow I feel guilty. What should I do?”

My answer was: “Okay. Maybe you can't sell the whole house yet. But start selling it in pieces.”

She looked at me. I continued.

• Sell the table.
• Sell the TV.
• Replace something.
• Remove the pictures.
• Take down the paintings.
• Get rid of the things that belong to the previous chapter of your life.
• Slowly change the environment.

A Few Months Later…

A few months later, she called me. She was incredibly excited. “I have something amazing to tell you,” she said. “But I can't tell you now. I want to invite you and your husband to dinner at my house. I want to prepare something special for you.”

So, of course, I went. I brought her flowers. And when I arrived… I thought I had walked into a five-star restaurant.

Beautiful decoration. Beautiful plates. Everything perfectly prepared. There were even little name tags showing us where to sit. Course after course of delicious food.

And I finally asked: “Okay… WHAT happened?”

She looked at me and said: “I won a cooking competition on TV.” And they would transmit it that very day. She had to keep the secret that she won until it was released on TV. She had prepared for us the exact same courses she prepared on the show — and we watched it together. Wow. 😂

I reminded her about our conversation. “Remember when you told me to start removing things from my house?” “Yes.” “Well, I started with the table and chairs in the living room.”

And then everything started happening.

Shortly after removing them, she was invited to participate in a television cooking competition. The format was basically that the contestants cooked in their own homes while the other participants evaluated them. And she won. She won €3,000.

So her mother brought hers. They fixed everything. The cameras arrived. The entire production team arrived. The contestants arrived. And suddenly this woman, who had just started physically removing pieces of her old life from her home, was hosting a national television cooking competition in that very same house.

The timing was almost ridiculous. Was it synchronicity? Was it “energy”? Was it coincidence? Was it simply that one change triggered another?

I Had More Stories Like This

Clients who threw things away and suddenly felt lighter. I remember my own mother once throwing away boxes and boxes of old clothes she used to keep — and 6 months later she lost about 10/15 kg of her body weight. She felt like a new person. And yes, she had to buy new clothes a few sizes smaller. And yes, she was very happy about it!

• Clients who changed their homes and started behaving differently. Some cultures say: “new home, new destiny, new you.”
• Clients who changed their appearance and suddenly started making different choices. I think Coco Chanel had a famous quote about women who cut their hair. 🙂
• Clients who removed people from their lives and discovered completely different social circles. Or you block your ex and suddenly new guys start seeing you and texting you — and you're no longer invisible.

For years, I knew something was happening. I just didn't have the scientific language for it. Until I started digging deeper into neuroscience.

Your Environment Is Constantly Reminding Your Brain Who You Are

Here's the part I find fascinating. Your brain doesn't experience your environment as neutral decoration. Your surroundings contain cues.

• Your clothes.
• Your bedroom.
• Your furniture.
• Your phone.
• Your social media feed.
• The people around you.
• The places you go.
• The music you listen to.
• The routines you repeat.
• Even the way your day is structured.

All of these things can become associated with particular memories, emotions, behaviors, expectations and identities. In psychology, we know that context can influence behavior. Your brain learns associations. A particular environment can become connected with a particular way of behaving.

That's why you can be a completely different version of yourself in different places. It is called ANCHORING — things can anchor how you behave.

Nothing magical happened. Your brain recognized the context. The environment helped activate the pattern. And this is where the idea of an “identity anchor” becomes so interesting.

An identity anchor is basically something in your environment that repeatedly reminds you of a particular version of yourself.

• That old jacket.
• That relationship.
• That neighborhood.
• That group chat.
• That Instagram account.
• That playlist.
• That sofa where you always lay down and scroll for three hours.
• That box of photographs.
• That phone full of conversations from a chapter you're supposedly finished with.

Your brain doesn't need you to consciously say: “Today I will activate my old identity.” The cue can do some of the work for you.

Your Brain Loves Familiar

And this is where changing yourself gets tricky. You can consciously decide: “I'm becoming a woman who respects herself, follows through, protects her energy, takes her work seriously, and stops abandoning herself.” Beautiful.

But then you wake up in the same room. Put on the same clothes. Open the same apps. Talk to the same people. Repeat the same morning routine. Consume the same content. Go to the same places. And perform the same behaviors.

Then you wonder: “Why do I keep becoming the old me?”

Because you're trying to build a new pattern while surrounding yourself with cues that keep making the old pattern easy and familiar.

So… Should You Throw Away Everything You Own?

No. Please don't read this article and immediately throw your entire apartment into the street. 😂

The point isn't that your old sofa is secretly sabotaging your destiny. And we're not going to blame the chair. The point is much more interesting: Your environment participates in your behavior.

So if you want to change your behavior, it makes sense to look at the environment in which that behavior keeps happening.

• Sometimes changing the environment makes the desired behavior easier.
• Sometimes removing a cue makes an old behavior less automatic.
• Sometimes a physical change becomes a psychological signal: “Something is different now.”

And that signal matters.

Cleaning Your Environment Can Become an Identity Intervention

This is how I now understand what I had been practicing intuitively for years.

• When you clean your wardrobe, you're not magically changing your personality. You're changing the cues surrounding you.
• When you delete an old contact, you're not erasing your past. You're reducing one pathway back into an old relational pattern.
• When you change your morning routine, you're not “manifesting” a new identity out of thin air. You're giving your brain a different sequence to learn.
• When you remove objects that constantly pull you emotionally into an old chapter, you're not pretending the chapter never happened. You're saying: “That chapter happened. But I don't need to keep rehearsing it every day.”

And that distinction is huge. You are not deleting the old you. You are stopping the constant reinforcement of it.

Spring Cleaning for Your Identity

Think of it as spring cleaning… but for your identity. Walk around your life and look at the cues. What keeps reinforcing the version of you that you're trying to outgrow?

• Maybe it's your wardrobe.
• Maybe it's your phone.
• Maybe it's your social media feed.
• Maybe it's your bedroom.
• Maybe it's your calendar.
• Maybe it's a relationship.
• Maybe it's a group of people who only know the old version of you.
• Maybe it's a habit that keeps pulling you into the same emotional state.
• Maybe it's the content you consume every morning before you've even had your coffee.

And ask yourself: “What version of me does this environment keep inviting me to become?”

And Here Is the Really Good News

You don't have to wait until you feel like the new person. You can start creating the conditions that allow the new behavior to happen. Because the brain changes through experience.

You give it a new experience. Then another. Then another. And eventually, what once felt unfamiliar can start becoming familiar. This is where neuroplasticity becomes relevant.

So your new identity isn't created by saying: “I am a completely different person now.” It's created through evidence.

• You behave differently.
• You make a different choice.
• You set a different boundary.
• You respond differently to the same trigger.
• You go somewhere you've never gone before.
• You wear something that actually feels like you now.
• You delete the app.
• You make the call.
• You say no.
• You say yes.
• You stop explaining yourself.
• You start showing up.

And your brain gets a new piece of evidence: “Oh. We do things differently now.” That's how the new version starts becoming real.

You Don't Have to Fight Every Old Thought

And one more thing. When an old thought appears, don't panic. You don't need to declare war on your own brain. Your brain will sometimes produce old thoughts simply because they're familiar.

That doesn't mean you've gone backwards. That doesn't mean you've failed. And it certainly doesn't mean: “Oh no! The old me is back!”

You can simply notice: “That's an old pattern.” And then choose what you do next. Because the transformation isn't necessarily in stopping the thought. It's in changing what happens after the thought.

That's learning. That's practice. That's how you teach your brain something new.

So Maybe the Spiritual Practice Was Right… Just Incomplete

For years, I called this changing the energy. And today I wouldn't necessarily throw that idea away. I would simply make it bigger.

Because perhaps what we experience as an energetic shift can sometimes have very practical psychological and neurological components.

• You change the room.
• You change the cues.
• The cues influence the behavior.
• The behavior creates new experiences.
• The experiences create new learning.
• The learning strengthens new patterns.

And gradually… you begin to experience yourself differently.

Maybe that's why cleaning your house can feel strangely emotional. Maybe that's why changing your wardrobe can feel like shedding a skin. Maybe that's why deleting old messages can make you breathe differently. Maybe that's why moving to a new city can make you discover parts of yourself you couldn't access before.

And maybe that's why sometimes you don't need another affirmation. You need to stop rehearsing the old identity.