Meet Stacy Gooding

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stacy Gooding a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Stacy, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?
I have to confess that the words “self-care” have always made me cringe a little, mostly because of the skewed cultural adaptation of them. However, the essence of the words are really a core part of how I approach my own personal life and the primary principles of my business, a boutique organizing company. From a very early age, my life was chaotic and so, order has always been a comfort to me. Creating order in my life, whether it is in my closet or in the approach of my day-to-day behaviors, having order and structure has always served me well. Order clears the white noise of daily life so I can focus on my family, friends and building my business.

Learning to use order as a form of self-care has taught me to cultivate habits that help me to fill my own cup first, by spending time with my dogs, getting my hair and nails done, and making time to spend with girlfriends. As an extension of those self-care habits, I keep an orderly house by decanting pantry items so they look pleasing when I prepare meals and by having a place for everything so when I spend time in my home, it feels like a respite from the outside world. I’m unapologetically committed to creating these self-care habits because without them, we start to lose pieces of ourselves, which risks minimizing the importance of our own wellbeing.

All the order I bring to my life through various forms of self-care make me far more effective in my personal and professional life. I tell all my clients that taking care of themselves, means their space too and I make that mantra the primary foundation in my own life.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My name is Stacy Gooding and I own a boutique brand organizing company called Good Order Professional Organizing. I offer decluttering, responsible recycling, organizing and move management for clients in my suburban Boston community known as the North Shore and Cape Ann. As the owner of Good Order, I am the brand. My morals, my values and my approach to order is what my clients are seeking when they hire me. I take that very seriously and no detail is too small when working with my clients. Being invited into a person’s home and being trusted with the personal details of their lives requires empathy, discretion, and accountability without judgment.

I love the moment when clients can finally see the potential I see in terms of bringing order to their homes and lives. The process of cultivating a client’s joy, relief and optimism about a challenge in their homes is like getting a homerun at Fenway for me. I know the value of an organized life, not a perfect one, an organized one. Having a home that doesn’t create stress for my clients and clears the way for actual living, is priceless.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Looking back, what I have come to learn at nearly 50 is that none of us start our lives with all the answers, but we all do start our lives with goodness and dreams and I personally talked myself out of the more simple things by falling into the following pitfalls.

I was always a self-imposed perfectionist and as a result, so hard on myself when I didn’t succeed at something. I now know that showing myself grace during struggles or challenging times, helps to build my confidence and to set the right tone. I had zero tolerance for imperfection. I have come to learn that the missteps, the imperfections, those are the things I learned the most from, the things I laughed the hardest at and the things I value the most once I do achieve or succeed at something.

Previously, I was so worried about other people’s expectations of me and what I thought I should have been doing, instead of pursuing the things that would have made me happy and fulfilled. I had a personal moment of clarity during the COVID pandemic and shifted gears so I could do something professionally that mattered to me personally. It seems like a very simple concept, but the commonality among us is that we all want to please to some degree. Dismissing my desire to please others was real revelation and quite frankly, completely changed the quality of my life. I am far happier now that my focus is not on what other people expect and instead, what I expect of myself.

The final quality that have worked tirelessly on in the last few years is to recognize that spending all my time pushing myself so much to succeed, caused me to lose sight of how equally important it is to be happy every day. In an effort to drink in more joy, I have learned when and how to ask for help. It turns out that lots of things can be done by others and I will be equally happy, so I now delegate more, accept help when offered and find some time for myself every day, eve if just 10 minutes to watch the ocean or savor a cup of coffee.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read it in junior high and have read it every year of my life as an adult. Every time I read it, the story resonates in a small and different way based on what is happening in the world around me. Our values in life stay fairly consistent, but our beliefs and our perceptions change as we live and grow. The themes of this story include racism, rape, gender inequality and morality and fairness, to name a few.

The component of this story that has always been so meaningful to me was Atticus Finch’s sense of morality and fairness. Atticus was a flawed man to be sure, we all are, but his sense of fairness was so strong and unflinching that it always stuck with me. It is easy to say what your values are, but not as easy to also demonstrate what those values are, day in and day out through our actions. Atticus’ conviction and dedication to his values were always admirable in a way that made us all want to be better. I have often thought of Atticus’ application of his values as a measuring stick for the rest of us to raise our own standards.

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