
6 Proven Habits To Keep A Clear And Positive Mind
Not all habits are equal. Habits that will keep your mind clear don’t necessarily make it positive.
From my experience, a clear mind is easier to achieve than a positive one. I’ll share with you what works for me and what I discovered is working for many other people.
1. Keep an Order.
There is no simpler and better way to keep your mind clear than by keeping your environment clear.
Make your bed. Fold your clothes. Have your tools in order and put them in the right place after you use them.

The same applies to your digital tools. I have a structured tree of folders on my hard drive where I keep my posts in progress, posts to be proofread, sent to a proofreader and published. I have a different folder for my blog content and a different one for Quora answers. I keep my Quora answers in several separate files, depending on the category of the questions. And so on.
I don’t have to think where to save a new article or answer. I don’t need to wonder where to save an image I want to use in my Medium article. It’s all structured.
Systems and processes spare your mental bandwidth.
2. Declutter.
It’s an easy habit to develop. For example, each time you sit behind your desk, you quickly scan your environment and put one item in the right place.

The same may be done with digital clutter. Every time I check my email inbox, I move emails around, putting them in relevant subfolders. From time to time, when the number of messages gets annoying, I schedule half an hour to completely clean my inbox.
Positivity
Habits that will help you keep positive are almost exclusively connected to your self-talk. It’s not an easy job to get a grip over your internal dialog. Its patterns have been forming for years and decades. Saying “choose to be happy” or “believe in yourself” will not cut the mustard, if you have no idea how to do that in the first place.
The habits I mention below are two-edged. They help you become aware of what’s going on in your mind in the first place, and then, once you’re aware, you can act to limit the damage or frame your thoughts in a more positive way.
1. Meditation.
It may be a shortcut to your internal world. While meditating, you focus on a single simple thing, like your breathing, hearing, or sensual impulses from your body.

But our monkey mind cannot stand focusing on one thing for longer than several seconds. Other thoughts will appear uninvited. If you practice meditation regularly, you will quickly start noticing your thinking patterns. You will become more aware of them.
Meditation also “magically” helps you to deal with your thoughts. People who meditate get practice in stepping between the thought impulse and automatic reaction. The process of noticing, acknowledging, and ignoring uninvited thoughts helps them to separate their “self” from their subconscious thinking patterns.
2. Journaling.
It may help you to become aware of your self-talk as efficiently as meditation. It is my favorite form of dialog with my subconscious mind.
Meditation can be easier — it can be done in very short intervals and practically wherever you are. My journaling sessions take me about 10–15 minutes and I, of course, need at least pen and paper for them.
At the beginning you may write whatever you want, which usually means a lot of vicious poison going from your head onto paper. But if you keep the intention of becoming more positive, your journaling will drift from complaining into looking for solutions and the bright side of things.

Journaling has two main advantages over other methods:
-it freezes your self-talk on paper; you are no longer trapped in your head with “voices” that say how hopeless and weak you are. The self-talk captured in writing looks exactly like what it is — a quite stupid string of invectives, complaining and negative questions that can never have the positive answers. (“It’s unfair. Why is this always happening to me?”)
-it gives you the “me” time; we are not used to consciously abiding with ourselves for longer than a few seconds. The act of journaling makes you realize what really happens inside you for most of the time.
3. Striving.
If your thoughts are reasonably future-oriented (I don’t mean daydreaming for hours and alienating yourself from the reality) and filled with hope, it’s much easier to keep your mind positive.
You need some habits that focus your mind on a better future. Successful people use different methods to that end:
-they carry their goals on index cards all the time and look at them many times a day;
-they look at their vision board that illustrates their dreams and goals;
-they repeat affirmations;
-they repeat/read/consult their mission/vision statement.
I saved the best habit for the end. This habit is easy to start, to maintain, and has amazingly holistic effects.
4. Keep a Gratitude Journal.
Cultivating gratitude in any form is highly beneficial; a gratitude journal is just a way that is well-documented and effective.
The best way to do it is writing down, by hand, in the morning, three new things you are grateful for. However, you don’t need to do it “perfectly” to reap the awesome benefits.
One of my “gratitude heroes,” my friend who went through the sudden death of her boyfriend thanks to gratitude journaling (yes, she kept her gratitude journal in such a dark time!), keeps her journal in a digital form. I practically always make my entries in the evening, not in the morning. You get 80% of the results from the consistent practice of writing down your reasons for being grateful, not from the way you practice it.
And the results are mind-blowing. Keeping a gratitude journal can turn a person with a pessimist’s gene into an optimist, even if they are 80 years old, so they were negative their whole lives.
And when your brain is positive…
“Every possible outcome we know how to test for raises dramatically.” — Shawn Achor
I attest for genuineness of the above statement. I have been keeping my gratitude journals since September 2012 and, in this period, my whole life improved dramatically.
I doubled my income. I beat over 170 fitness records. I got new friends all over the world. I started two new careers that I love (a writer and coach). I overcame my shyness. I more than doubled my reading speed. I wrote and published 15 books.
I could go on and on. Everything is better in my life and I attribute it, in not a small part, to my gratitude journals.
The other big contributions of my success and happiness were my habits. I confirm that daily habits are the best way to improve your life in any area.
You came up with a great question that nails it. The right daily habits can achieve anything, including a clear and positive mind.
Originally published at www.quora.com.
