How to declutter your mind
There’s a lot of talk about decluttering your home,
How do you declutter your mind?
The first step to effectively declutter your mind.
Sort out the soup to see what you’re dealing with, just like taking everything out of the cupboard to separate the junk from things you want to keep.
The trouble is, it’s not so easy to see what’s there because you’re so used to all that rubbish swimming around in your head.
That’s where mindfulness practice comes in. That means taking a moment at regular intervals to notice what you’re thinking. It helps to write down your thoughts because it allows you to identify negative thinking or repeated thoughts that have become habits.
When you’re practising mindfulness, you don’t try to change the thought or get rid of it. You accept that it’s there and you let it be. Acceptance is what helps you be at peace with negative thoughts. The point of mindfulness is to notice. That’s all, just notice.
If you do this at regular intervals for just one minute, you’ll develop your awareness and it becomes automatic. One minute at a time is no big deal. Reminding yourself to do it several times a day is the big deal.
The second step involves sorting out which thoughts are worries about pressing problems, which might need to be dealt with first, which ones are defeatist, self-critical thoughts and which ones are old hurts you can’t let go of. There might be many other things going on, but that’s a start.
Alright, so you’re aware of what you’re thinking. Now what?
One thing I’ve learnt from observing successful people is that they do all their thinking in writing.
So where do you start?
Writing down your thinking process not only helps you declutter and clarify your thoughts, but it also increases your motivation. You can go away and come back another time and you can add random ideas as they come to you, to sort out later.
People who don’t write down dates for appointments or reminders for tasks drive me nuts. How can you function? (The answer is they don’t.) If you have more than three things to remember, you can’t rely on your mind—it’s too dangerous! Any effective person does their goal setting and planning in writing, either in a diary or on an excel spreadsheet.
Writing things down also helps you sleep, because you know you’ve thought about this issue as far as you can, you will pick it up again another time, you don’t have to worry about forgetting anything—you can relax!
The third step involves selecting just one thing to work on. If you’ve identified worries about pressing problems, you need to choose the most urgent. All I will say, for the moment, is never ask for advice before you’ve tried to sort things out yourself. People are usually not objective when telling you what to do, and their hang-ups could too easily influence you. If you ask for advice only after you’ve thought out all your options and solution steps, you might pick up something you’ve overlooked, but you’re less likely to be influenced in the wrong direction.
Letting old issues go to declutter your mind
What if you’re ruminating about old issues you can do nothing about? You know you need to let go, but you’d have already done it if it were that easy, right?
We usually need closure before we can let go. Often that involves receiving an apology from someone, but that’s not always possible. We need to teach ourselves to accept it is what it is. If people have let us down, remember they can only do what they can. If they knew better, they would do better, but they can’t, just as you sometimes fail to meet other people’s expectations. You can only do what you can until you learn to do better.
Be aware of where you’re spending your energy
.If you’re wasting energy and creating stress over something that’s over, that’s now your responsibility. It’s like wasting money—there comes a time when you must decide it’s not worth it anymore. The trick, then, is to switch to another thought. The mind is designed to be thinking all the time. You can’t stop thinking about one thing until you replace the thought with another. Otherwise, the mind will continue focusing on the unwanted thought.
It would help if you rebelled against your own thinking. Refuse flatly to dedicate a second more to this issue. Decide it’s not worth it. Keep switching to another thought and it will become easier with practice. I promise it will. I’ve done it myself. Of course, unwanted thoughts sometimes creep back, but you just gently nudge them off your radar and focus on something else.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the beginning of how to declutter your mind. I welcome your questions, objections, and problems… let me know how you’re going and if you want any more pointers.
I’d love to hear your comments or questions. Please share your thoughts by contacting me directly.
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