What keeps you from clearing out the garbage as you go along through the day is your self image. As long as you feel that you have to keep defending your precious ego, you will use some or all of the above garbage mechanisms. If you can develop a better perspective on yourself, then you can do the 

work that is necessary to become ‘garbage free’.Let’s have a look at the signs that indicate that you may be up to your knees in ‘garbage’
 
1. Hanging on to the ‘victim’ trip
2. Not giving yourself permission
3. Clinging onto old hurts and resentments
4. Seeing yourself at the ‘rejected one’
5. Being too hard on yourself
6. Not being tolerant of others
7. Losing your sense of humor
8. Being selfish
9. Obsessing
10. Forgetting about the big picture
1. Hanging onto the ‘victim’ trip. The first thing to be aware of is that you are
experiencing exactly what you need to progress on your path. No two people
have the same lessons to learn. So don’t look at other peoples’ lives and bemoan
the fact that you don’t have they same things they have. This is jealousy, the
foundation of the ‘victim’ trip. You can’t possibly have the same things happen
to you because you don’t have the same things to work through. As you develop
patience and contentment, you will realize that the events you experience are
perfect for you. “This should have never happened to me” or “Why does it have
to be this way?” are part of the ‘victim’ trip. Stay out of it.
2. Not giving yourself permission. You need to allow yourself to live in a way that
will benefit both you and those who come in contact with you. You are the only
one who can give yourself that permission. If you are always looking to others,
you will be constantly frustrated and unhappy. Stop playing the ‘lame one’,
seeking approval. You can do this if you stop acting out old childhood patterns
of looking for approval and rewards from the ‘grownup’. Since you are the one
who is defining who the ‘grownups’ are, you might as well include yourself.
3. Clinging onto old hurts and resentments. A real killer because there is an endless
amount, and you can constantly find more to add to the list. This is a dead end.
If you remember how many times you have hurt people, you have been
inconsiderate, and you have been a jerk in general, you will be more honest with
yourself and knock off the self-righteousness. The problem with resentment and
feeling hurt is that both deep you in the past and you wind up missing all the
lessons of the present. Besides, feeling hurt and resentful produces more hurt
and resentfulness. In fact, it keeps you bound to the very people and events that
you want to forget or go beyond. Remember, your job is to work on yourself. It
is the job of the job of other people to work on themselves, if they get around to
it.
4. Seeing yourself as the rejected one. So what else is new? Is there anyone around
who has not suffered rejection? Don’t become attached to an experience that
your mind tells you is a rejection. If you hang onto the experience with that
attitude, you wind up acting in such a downcast way that you actually bring
more rejection onto yourself. Snubs and humiliations—imagined or real, are no
fun. But your job is to learn from the situation and then let it go. The event
becomes part of the past. The lesson is for you, but you’ll fail to learn it if you
are paying too much attention to what everybody else thinks about you.
5. Being too hard on yourself. This kind of thinking produces another form of
disastrous self-fulfilling prophecy. When you think ill of yourself, do you know
what happens? Guess what! You don’t do well in whatever you try, because
you’re judging yourself according to old notions about who you ought to be. If
you stop beating yourself long enough to see that you are actually capable of
doing thing quite well, this self-defeating approach will begin to disintegrate.
You are capable of effort, success, and health that you never dreamed possible, if
you only loosen up expectations of yourself and stop trying to be so perfect.
6. Not being tolerant of others. If you are hard on yourself, you are going to just as
hard on others. How can you give anyone else a break if you not willing to give
yourself a break? At the root of this intolerance is impatience. Work on being
patient, and tolerance will soon follow. You might even relax and enjoy yourself
and those around you. There’s a good chance that others will like being in your
company too.
7. Losing your sense of humor. This is another disaster, since no one wants to be
around you when you have a ‘sour puss’. Lighten up, and everyone will benefit.
Besides, it will be easier for you to deal with everything because you wont be so
uptight, trying to control everything and everybody around you. Don’t be too
embarrassed to look at your own shortcomings. In fact, there’s always more
margin for error than we think. The world really is quite a ludicrous place if you
look carefully.
8. Being selfish. A real secret is that when you get your mind off your own needs
and start responding to the needs of other people, you begin to feel better. It’s a
real paradox: The more you do for others in an unselfish way, not expecting
anything in return—even praise or thanks—the better you will feel about yourself.
But the minute you try to help others so that you can feel good about yourself,
you’ve totally lost the point. The good feeling is only happening because you are
experiencing the underlying unity that exists amongst us all. Then everyone
benefits.
9. Obsessing. Somehow people believe that if they worry enough about a situation
it will either cause something to happen, change it, or even make it go away.
Wrong on all counts. At some point you have to have the courage to move on.
Give up the idea of controlling or wanting to change everything. Accept what has
happened to this point, stop worrying, and leave the rest to God. Some people
might even consider this prayer. It often happens that things work out in ways
better than we can imagine when we let ourselves feel things and stop trying to
fix everything.
10. Forgetting about the big picture. At best you are seeing just a small fragment of
what is actually happening at any given moment. You are just experience your
own perception. But when you realize that everyone else is also experiencing
their own perceptions, equally true for them, then common points of love and
unity among us all begin to emerge. Preserving our own self image is no longer the
main focus. ‘Letting go’ is going beyond our own individual egos to discover a
deeper aspect of life.
Once you see the big picture, your efforts shift toward learning and
understanding more about yourself and the world around you, instead of rummaging
around in the garbage. You will begin to realize that whatever you see and experience on
the ‘outside’ is actually a reflection of what it taking place within you. You have that
potential to know and understand, by direct experience. When you realize this, you will
‘throw out the garbage’ in earnest.
Hang on!