A Healthy Mind
It’s very easy to look out there and blame why life is difficult, but truly, the only thing that you can change in this world is yourself, and that is often the hardest thing to do.
The reason being, we can’t really see ourselves. It is easy to see what other people are doing, but it’s really hard to actually stop and close our eyes and look inside and figure out what is going on in ‘our mind’. This thing that we can’t see is so powerful.
Our mind can be our best friend, but it can also be our worst enemy. When I was learning to swim as an adult, my instructor would tell me to just put my head under water and breathe, and I could do that. Then he would say, now start to kick. Lift your foot off the floor of the pool, and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I knew it was because of what was going on in my mind. When conversations with the closest people in my life have gone to the deepest place, it always goes back to the same thing: ‘what’s going on in there and how do we actually get in control of what’s going on in our minds?
I am going to try and share what I envisioned in my head while cleaning my drawer one fine day.
When we are born, our mind is like a beautiful, clean, empty drawer. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s empty, and then our first introduction to the people around us gets put carefully and gently into our minds. As we grow up as kids, we learn about playing and being with other people. We start to think about what we want out of life, and as we keep growing up, things just keep going into that drawer. Sometimes they go in neatly, but very often they just get put in there like a cluttered mess.
As we grow older, the things that come to mind are inspirational, like: I know I want to pursue a sustainable lifestyle in the countryside, go overlanding, and need to focus, get inspired, and spend time in nature. Other things get put in there that are not so great, and we don’t even know sometimes that they are going in there and they are really creating a mess in our mind, like emotional needs not being met while growing up or unexpectedly losing a father, and that’s in there, and we continue to put other things, some neatly, some just throwing in into all of the corners of our mind. But we have a drawer that everybody has in their home — the drawer of all the random shit that you don’t know where to put elsewhere — and then we close it up, and we believe everything will work itself out, and I can get up and walk away from it. But wherever I go, I still know that there is that drawer full of random stuff. So, what do we do? What do we do if we want to start to clean up our minds? This is the metaphor that I’d like to use over and over again.
I open up that drawer, take every single thing out, and put it on the table. This is not easy because some of the things in there are like, how did that get in there? Why is that in there? I don’t like that in there. Oh, this old thing, I remember when I was inspired by it. Oh, yeah, this looks so much better now because I’ve been working on it. Taking out every item from the drawer is crucial because we need to know what’s actually in there before we try to tackle the mess. Look, I found a random sticky band aid. It’s sticky and gross, but that’s the kind of thing that gets stuck in our minds too. When everything is on the table, we can look at it and begin the process of tidying up. So, before we figure out what goes back in the drawer, we need to clean up the drawer of all the dirt and filth in all the corners of the drawer, which we can now see. This is what I see as almost the process of physical exercise or a good diet. Eating healthy food and being physically healthy is a step towards having a neat and organized mind.
Now we begin the process of cleaning the mind. This step is what I see as meditation, or really having the ability to be alone with yourself. To be able to sit in a room by yourself without any distraction, to be able to think, and in order for that to happen, your mind needs to be cleansed out, and it needs to become a place that is almost sacred where you have taken the time and effort to really clean out that drawer and to really see that you got every last bit of dirt that’s in there out. Most often, we can do it on our own, but sometimes we might need help from a professional to get out the sticky dirt in there, which is completely ok too.
This process of cleansing is not easy; it is something that requires a lot of effort, and you have to want to do it. Once the drawer is empty and clean, we can begin to put things back. I want to make this drawer a special place. I want to make this a place that’s never going to go back to being a jumbled, horrible mess again. I am going to put compartments that will fit in the drawer and help everything stay organized. We have a big compartment, which is for the main things in life: our career and our relationships with other people. You have to pick up every item that was there in your mental drawer, look at it, and ask yourself, why was this in there? Should it still be in there? How do I feel about it? Does this make me feel upset? Does this make me feel angry? Why? These are conversations that take much longer than five minutes. They are conversations that might take hours, days, weeks, or even years. These are the things you can do when you are alone with yourself. Throw away the things you don’t need, as this drawer only has a limited amount of space, and that is exactly the same as our minds.
Our mind cannot hold an endless amount of stuff, so curate what goes in there. Only put what you need to put back into the drawer. Now, when you look at the drawer, it feels nice to close it back up, leave, and walk all over the city knowing the drawer has been organized. I know what’s in the drawer; I like everything that’s in there; I am comfortable with all the things that are in the drawer; and I know that when I come home and open up the drawer, it’s still neat and organized. That is how you clean up your mind. You don’t just stop there because the dirt is always looming around, but you need to eliminate the dirt from going into the drawer of your mind. The filth can easily end up in there, and if the drawer remains neat, organized, and tidy, then it becomes the place that dirt doesn’t go.
By the end of the day, before you go to bed, the most precious things in your life get taken off, looked at, and put into the drawer, and when you go to bed at night, you have truly a peace of mind. So, this may be the most difficult thing that you can do with your life, but it is something that I think is vital for a healthy mind, and I encourage you all to at least start.
