Keeping your mind balanced

We all know that having a balanced mind is critical to doing anything great, similar to every habit even this can be built. Below are a few guidelines that helped me along the way.

Diet

We always like to have a balanced diet and also have a control over our desire to eat more.

Breakfast

Having a breakfast that is both salt-less, spice-less accompanied by fruits and soaked nuts will give you a fresh start for the day. When the food is salt-less we tend to eat with a desire to calm our hunger and not our palate.

Avoid munching

Avoid taking any food in between breakfast, lunch, dinner and eat only at the planned time. When the body gets food regularly at the planned time your digestive system would be ready to digest the foods be in sync. Irregular intake of foods would increase in the build up of fat and also reduce your ability to concentrate on the task at hand.

Fasting

Try fasting for a day at least once a week, if you cannot fast for an entire day, try fasting by skipping your dinner at night. During a fast keep yourself hydrated, try and avoid thoughts about food accompanied by a strong desire to build a distaste for foods. It would be easy if you keep yourself focused on something and be disciplined.

Fasting is useful when the mind cooperates with the starving body i.e. when the mind cultivates a distaste for the objects denied to the body. — Mahatma Gandhi

Mind

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work — Swami Vivekananda

Meditation

Meditation helps not only in calming the mind but also helps you relax. If you consider water as your mind, your thoughts are like ripples on that water, meditation helps in reducing the intensity of the ripples. The calmer the water the better we can see through it and the better we can understand our inner-selves.

Avoid distractions

We get disturbed all the time, either through our phone, or people needing our time, we often succumb to these distractions around out us, there by reducing out ability to focus. By reducing the number of distractions we can reduce the number of ripples and thereby improve our ability to remember and concentrate.

Follow silence

When we are in the company of others, we have a normal tendency to talk and silence is rarely appreciated. Sometimes during a talk we may say unintended things that could cause more harm than good.

Too much talk can also distract your mind, therefore building an ability to stay calm both verbally and mentally will help you maintain focus. Building an ability to think before saying anything and also having an ability to restrain oneself during a heated debate will go a long way in helping you avoid unnecessary trouble.

Self Restraint

Denying sensual pleasures visual, physical and mental would help build a strong ability for self restraint. This ability would help you go a long way in helping you become the person you want to be.