10 Simple Ways To Declutter Your Mind

“You should start choosing our thoughts like how we choose our clothes. Keep the ones you love and let go the rest.” ~ Mai Pham

You live in the world on chaos. All the responsibilities, pressures and deadlines constantly push you to move forward. They make you busy. Too many things with so little time.

Have you ever feel disappointed about your life, when things don’t go the way you want?

Do you notice when it happens, you start to listen to all the lies your inner critic tells you about yourself? The more you listen to that, the more chaotic and messy you feel, and the more crappy things you notice in your life.

Here’s the thing.

The mess you see outside reflects the mess you have inside.

You desperately seek for calm and order, but sometimes it is impossible. Because your mind is not calm and in order.

How do you declutter your mind? You have around 60,000 thoughts crossing our mind every day, and those thoughts are not laying around and waiting for you to pick up and put them back on the shelves.

Your life experience, your painful past, your expectation and sometimes, the lies you’ve been telling yourself can put many layers inside your mind, makes the decluttering task even more difficult.

But here’s the key.

Simplify. Don’t make them complex.

Here are 10 simple ways to declutter your mind. I hope you find something that works best for you and help to soothe the wildness inside you.

1. Deep breath

You might hear this piece of advice more than one million times. But it is the simplest and yet the most effective thing to do.

Take a few deep breath. Feel the air comes inside your lungs and stretch your lungs, then feel it comes out.

Deep breathing allows your thoughts to float away, clears your mind and relaxes your body.

2. Pour them down somewhere

You have thousands of thoughts inside your head. At this moment, they are jumping like crazy trying to get your attention. You cannot listen to them when they are all screaming.

Pour them down somewhere. One by one. On a piece of paper, on your computer. Anywhere that works for you.

Write down what bothers you, what is inside your head right now. Once you write it down, allow your mind to let it go. Don’t worry, you won’t forget because you have a note to remind you. This simple tip will keep your head from being filled with clutters and confusion.

3. Find your priorities

Have you ever noticed that you pay attention even to the simplest thing? Like which is the shortest path to reach the water fountain at work, or how do you save time while going to the printer?

You are too busy paying attention to those things, sometimes you forget to ask yourself what you have done today to help you reach one step closer to your goal.

So do me a favor. Slow down and figure out what are the most important things to you. Make a list and rank them from the most important to the least.

Your thought costs energy and willpower. Make sure they are well spent on the things that matter.

4. Keep a journal

Journaling is a great way to relax your mind and organizing your thoughts. It also helps to clear things off your chest. You don’t have to stress out and try to remember everything because you have something else to back you up.

5. Don’t go back and forth

How many times you pick up something you have to do, but because they are boring, painful or you just hate them, you end up procrastinating them. But what you are doing is to delay them, put them to the back of your mind.

The more you procrastinate, the more stuff your mind has to hold.

Be decisive. If you can handle something, deal with it right away and put it off the table.

6. Stop reading so much news and watching TV too much

We are addicted to shocking news. We love watching TV. But there are too many things in there.

They fill your mind with noise, negativity things and chaos.

Try to eliminate them if you can, or reduce your time reading the news and watching TV, you will notice your mind to become more peaceful.

7. Declutter your place

As I shared in my post on “Getting my feet wet with minimalism”, I couldn’t write in a house full of junk and stuff. That was the first time I realize that my physical environment actually impacts on my mind.

The more clutter you see outside, the messier you feel inside. It occupies your mind but you don’t even realize it.

Declutter your workplace, your house. Give away items that you never use. You will see the difference.

8. Focus on one task at a time

I know you like to multitask. Because it seems like you can save some time. But it is a good way to fill your brain with tasks and reduce productivity.

Instead of trying to do couple things at a time, try to write down your task for a day and focus on them one by one.

9. Share

Sometimes you can feel so much better if you can unload some of your thoughts to someone else. It is so much different from unloading them to a piece of paper, because you can seek for compassion, affection and sympathy.

No piece of paper or smartphone app provides that.

If you are lucky enough to have someone that you can trust with your soul, share your thoughts with them.

10. Accept yourself and let go

You can be stuffed with your feelings and emotions. It can make you frustrating and make things become more complicated than they truly are.

Let go your negative self-talk, learn to accept yourself and let go.

You cannot hear the answer you’ve been seeking for if your mind is too busy and noisy.

“It is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born, and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Imagine this.

You still have responsibilities and dreams to go after. You still have to face pressures and deadlines. But something has changed.

They no longer make you feel busy and messy. Because they are just things. Nothing more.

You can see right through them. Because you know what they really are right now.

No more crazy self-talk, no more disappointment.

Your perspective has changed. And so have you.

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Originally published at: www.liveaworthylife.com