Aside from overthinking, the reasons why your mind would be so
cluttered causing you to worry all the time and keeping you up at night is because you have a negative mindset. The real questions here are, what is keeping me from having peace of mind? What is going on in my mind that is causing me to struggle with these overthinking patterns? What does it look like to finally have access to a quiet mind?
The answer is complex as it could be a number of things. First of all, your mind is cluttered with so much because you have trained yourself to obsess over even the smallest of thoughts. It could also be that you
have become so overwhelmed that all you see is negative views, and you have narrowed your mind due to the experiences in your life. The truth is, when we are young we view the world as a place of creativity. When we are toddlers to teenagers (in most cases), we view ourselves with love and beauty. This is because we don’t stress about bills, rent, our careers, our finances, etc.
When we are kids we may worry about things like how early our bedtime is or the rules we wish we didn’t have. As we get older we start to understand why punishment and discipline were needed. Then we become adolescents and worry about things like our grades, our teachers, how popular we are, bullies, beginner relationships, friends, curfews, etc… Once we become adults and move out on our own, the
world is fresh, and we are looking at it from a new perspective. We now worry about our own children, our marriage, our health, our careers
and so on.
Every experience that we undergo from when we were a child shapes us to who we are today, and somewhere along the line, we have become obsessed with thinking about every decision and every choice we have made or didn’t make. We worry about our future and more importantly our children’s future. From small things like what to wear to big things like what to study will shape our future. Most people don’t know what
they are doing, they are just living on auto-pilot which then causes
questions like what’s my purpose? What am I doing? Where do I want to be? Who do I want to be?
Over the years, we have developed a negative mindset based on our experiences, and with the overload of stress, we forgot how to relax and what peace felt like. So, the answer to what it looks like to finally have peace of mind is as simple and as complex as this: You are the only one who can change your mindset and shape your life by taking a good look at what has you so stressed in the first place. Can you control what
happened in the past? No. Can you control your future? Only to an extent. Can you control what you do right now? Absolutely. The trick is only focusing on right now, learning from the mistakes you made and striving towards your future goals to get you unstuck in the now.
Mindfulness
The power of mindfulness is extremely important in everything you do. Throughout this book, we have talked about mindfulness and how to be more in tune with yourself through this process. The reason why being mindful is so crucial to learn and practice is because if you
seriously want change in your life, everything you do should revolve
around being mindful. If your negative thoughts are getting the best of you, be mindful of them. If you’re obsessing about the past or the future, stay mindful of this. If your workload is too demanding and you are taking on unnecessary stress, being mindful can help you relax.
As you can see, everything you do can be associated with being
completely in the present moment. If you are unaware of your actions
based on your negative thoughts and results in your anxious state, then you will never be able to understand your triggers or create lasting and positive change. In short, if you want to change, you must do something different than you have done before. The first step is being more aware of it all.
What is mindfulness? It is defined as becoming more aware of yourself internally to be able to handle and address what’s going on externally. There are two examples here:
Let’s say it’s a nice day, you woke up feeling good, your kids are behaving, your relationship is awesome, and work isn’t demanding anything of you. You are trying to enjoy the day but your mind is racing.
You continue to think ‘something is going to go wrong’. Or, ‘I should be doing something else right now’. Then you end up twisting your
thoughts with, ‘what am I making for dinner? I wonder if my spouse is being silent today because they are thinking about our disagreement from last week. My kids are only being good because I was mean to them yesterday. Work hasn’t called, what if something bad is going to
happen? What if I get fired?’ Then, your spouse asks you something or compliments you and you totally freak out on them. You might even hide in your room because now you feel bad. Or, your kids come up to
you and ask you something, but your mind is so overwhelmed you now have to focus on what it is that they are asking but you cannot so you
say ‘ask your father/mother’. Now your thoughts spiral into ‘what if that was the wrong answer’? Can you see how this is going to affect your day and your mood? Now you are feeling bad, overthinking negatively, and just want to go to sleep.
The second example – The day is horrible. Your work phone keeps ringing, your kids are acting up or misbehaving, you are arguing with your spouse, the house isn’t clean, you are on the rocks with your best friend, and there is no way you can enjoy your day. Your brain goes on
overload and you think, ‘why does this have to happen today? Why can’t my husband/wife just understand? What is wrong with my kids misbehaving like this, it’s like they want to torture me. I can’t focus on work with everything else and so now my boss must think very low of me. I wish I had my best friend but they are mad at me too, and I
probably deserve it’. This is an overload of everything. So instead of making your day better you are making your day worse.
In the first example, you cannot enjoy your day because you are not in the present moment. Everything seems fine, but because it is fine, something must go wrong. Overthinking and being negative has put
your brain into thinking like this automatically. Being mindful of these thoughts, then bringing your attention to the present moment – your
day – will help you retrain your brain out of this automatic system.
In the second example, everything is a disaster. Your mind is cluttered, your life is cluttered, your stress is overwhelming, and your thoughts aren’t making anything better. Being mindful of the day –
instead of your thoughts – will bring your attention to your thoughts
and how you feel about them. You notice that the day is upside down, but also take note of how your thinking is relating to your day to make it worse.
The bottom line is that in any situation, you need to decide to be
mindful of every moment to find your triggers. The goal of mindfulness is to be aware of your mental mind, your emotional state, and your
physical surroundings in order to cope with or change the unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Mindfulness is not about changing anything, but being aware so you can make changes. Now in order to be mindful at any moment, you need to understand and learn the basics of mindfulness on your own time.
When you become good at observing yourself, you can become great at observing your life in stressful moments. Once this happens successfully, you can find ways around developing a positive attitude
and finding a more healthy peace of mind by replacing where you decide to put your focus. Being mindful, and mastering mindfulness will allow
you to easily put space between yourself and your reactions (mental mind to physical surroundings). Here is how to start being mindful
every day:
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Set a time to practice mindful meditation
Every day, find a peaceful time in the day and sit with yourself and your thoughts. At first you won’t be focusing on your
thoughts until you become more experienced. It doesn’t have to be a bed, couch, cushion, or designated area, just a space where you can be with yourself. The time could be after dinner, before bed, or in the most stressful time of your day – whatever works for you.
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Be in the present moment exactly how it is
This is easier said than done, but for now your only focus should be what is happening right now. Quiet your mind and focus on everything that is happening around you. Start by
bringing your full attention to your breath. Don’t try to change
it, just observe it. Next, bring your focus to your body. Do you feel warm or cold? Anxious or calm? Angry or happy? Is your heart racing? Are your fingers tingling? Don’t try to change it, just be mindful of it.
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Don’t be judgmental
This step is about just noticing when your brain goes ‘I feel bad, this is bad.’ Or, the opposite, ‘I feel happy, this is good.’ Don’t judge or label your heart racing as bad, or your good day as being happy. Notice when you make these judgments, make a note, and let them go.
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Return to your present moment
When we practice mindfulness, our mind may wander and our brain will try to use this time as a thinking period. Notice your thoughts, or judgments, and return back to your breath. Don’t change it, just notice it. Notice the feelings you have in your body. Notice your surroundings – What are people doing? How many colors do you see in the room? What does the air feel
like? What sounds do you hear? How far away or close are they? Bring your focus back to your breath, and just breathe naturally.
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It’s okay for your mind to wander
At first, mindfulness meditation may feel impossible to achieve if you are doing it in the midst of your day. But, it doesn’t
require any extra mental energy to do this. Mindfulness doesn’t ask you to change what you are doing. It doesn’t require you to intentionally avoid your thoughts and feelings. So, when your mind has wandered once again, take note of this, remember what you are doing, then come back and finish the exercise.
The meditation should take no longer than ten to twenty minutes at a time. You can choose to do this once a day, but it is better to do this multiple times a day. The goal is to be completely comfortable sitting
with yourself and observing all that is around you and what’s going on inside you. As you make mindfulness a routine, you will start to develop an awareness of the triggers of your mental exhaustion and also which
parts of the day you are the most distracted. When you become aware of these things, you can finally start tackling the clutter that has your
mind jammed.
Declutter Your Mind – Day In, Day Out
When addressing the cluttered mind, you need to ask yourself, why does it seem so hard to focus on simple tasks like spending time with
your family? This is because your mind is cluttered. But why is your
mind so cluttered? In truth, your mind can think 100 times faster than you can speak. So in just thirty seconds or less, your mind has already
processed a conversation, thought about what you are going to say next, and have built fifty different solutions. At least this was how it was since the beginning of time.
Now with social media and the various social platforms evolving, we have even more to think about. Have you ever sat down to focus on
work at your computer, or wanted to do your finances on a chart? But, instead, think ‘I will just check my Facebook first.’ Then once you have finished that, you see a topic that reminded you of a to-do you forgot about. Then stemming from that you start to beat yourself up because you forgot. Now you think, I should make a list of my to-do’s so I don’t
forget next time, but then your list turns into a chore list, a grocery list and time passes by without you even realizing it. Suddenly, it’s time to make dinner and follow through with your night time routine, work is now just a distant memory from when you first sat down. When you
return to the project you originally wanted to start with after you get everything else done, you stare at a blank computer screen and are
mentally paralyzed because you have too much happening inside your mind.
Why does this happen? It’s because you are not putting space
between yourself and your reactions (from mindfulness). You are not
trying to focus on just one thing, instead you are focusing on everything at once. This is where some people think multitasking comes in handy, but, in fact, multi-tasking is the one thing that is stopping you from decluttering your mind. It’s like when you try to declutter your house
(explained in Chapter Seven.) You will start in the kitchen, but then find dirty dish rags, so then you collect all the laundry. As you are collecting the laundry from every room, you may see that the beds haven’t been made. You are already here so why not make the beds before doing the laundry. As you are making your beds you see that the floor hasn’t been vacuumed or swept. So, you quickly finish the beds, and pull out your
floor supplies from the kitchen, then realize you still haven’t done the dishes. The point is that as you go through and clean your house – in this case your mind – you are so busy focusing on everything that needs to be done that you don’t stop to slow down to do one thing at a time. Then by the end of the day, your house still looks messy and yet you are wiped.
Same thing for your mind, you have spent all day thinking about this, that, the next thing, and what color your shoes are, that by the time it comes down to the one thing you wanted to focus on, you are too exhausted. So, what do you do next? You put it off until the next day,
and what happens? The same thing! By not giving yourself time to concentrate on one thing at a time, your fears, emotions, and attitude comes out strong which serves no purpose and you end up becoming more stressed than you need to be.
What do we do about it? Two words – brain dump. A brain dump is where you transfer what’s happening in your mind to something else
entirely like a computer hard drive full of notes and writings, or a piece of paper. This is where journaling can come in handy. If your brain is
overloaded by overthinking about everything that’s going on, start journaling to just get it out. Who knows, you may feel better and have a better perspective after. As far as your long lists of things to do and accomplish, write those down too, then organize them. Eventually, you won’t need to make lists or write things down, as your brain will have
processed and divided things up so it is easier to focus on one thing at a time automatically. Here is how to do a brain dump:
Just ten minutes a day
This exercise only has to take ten minutes a day. Usually you would do this dump once the business of your day has ended, before or after mindfulness meditation, and before bed. However, you can do this
anytime you want. If you feel stuck once you put your fingers to your keyboard, or your pen to your paper it’s okay, just write whatever
comes to your mind. Other times you may feel as though you have
tons to say and do. The important note to remember here, is that you are not making any lists, you are simply just writing for ten minutes whatever pops into your head. It doesn’t have to make sense, and you don’t need to edit it. Make it funny if you have nothing or cannot think of anything to write, simply just write ‘I have nothing to say.’
The creativity will flow from there.
Organize your brain dump
This should be more like a mindmap. When you read everything you wrote, take notes on the side about what you wrote. Break into categories, family related, business related, hobby related, or any other thing you think would fit. Add important dates to a calendar, as the lists grow, you will see which list is longer and which category
needs the most attention. When you can take a look at this from a distance, you will be able to figure out which needs to be thought about now, and which can be thought about in the near future, thus relaxing your mind and creating a less stressful environment for you.
Make to-do lists about your ideas
Is there anything in that brain dump that gave you ideas? Or did you write down ideas that you were stressing about? After brain dumping on paper, you can set your ideas up in a to-do list which will have you more prepared for the next day, instead of feeling rushed. When
looking at your to-do lists you can figure out if they are absolutely needed, what needs to be done now, and what can be saved for later. Get out a planner, and write down your lists and things you need to do then start writing them in the days you plan on doing them.
Here is an example of what a braindump would look like for a mother
with a husband, two kids and an assistant manager position at work – she is also an overthinker:
The clothes didn’t get washed today, the kids were misbehaving, my husband seems to have no time for me and I am losing control. I have so much to do at work, that I don’t even know where to start. I wish I had time to spend with my loved ones, and have an awesome performance at work, while also focusing on my scrapbooking skills. It feels as though I will never have time to take a photography class when our bills are piling up, and the demands of life are overwhelming. I don’t think I am strong enough to continue fighting every day as if it were my last because I can’t handle being a mom and a wife, while doing great at what I do. I need a vacation. My best friend won’t talk to me because she says I am bossy or angry most of the time. So now I have no one to talk too.
Our cupboards are getting low, and me and my hubby mostly fight about what we are going to make for dinner and who’s turn it is. How will I ever have the time to do what I love, while being a supermom, and spending more time with my husband? Tasks at work are piling up like making a work schedule for people. I have a deadline for this new project in a week. I haven’t started my project because of my home life. We have an overdue bill of $100 dollars for the internet, and $200 for hydro. I don’t get paid for another two weeks, and my husband gets paid this Friday in four days.
This example may not be like your piece of work, but you get the point. Now, the next step is to categorize and organize your thoughts. So, with this example, she talks about how she doesn’t have enough time for family, she wants to do her own things like photography and scrapbooking. She is behind on her bills and has overwhelming tasks at work to complete. Her list may look a little like this:
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Your list will look different, but for the sake of the example, this is what her list will look like. Now, she will have to grab her calendar and her to-do task book and start making lists and adding dates. The longest part of this list seems to be family, but there are other tasks that are daunting and need to be completed beforehand. What are the most important and time sensitive issues here? Work and finances. So, she
would write the due date of her project on a calendar, then when she
and her husband get paid. After that she would pull out another piece of paper and figure out the couple’s finances and which goes where. Now she would see if there was any money to be saved to put towards one of her hobbies, scrapbooking or photography. After these lists and
calendar dates were created she would then look at it as a whole. Which days does she have time for her best friend, and which days can she be
dedicated to her family? After this is done, she would then make a list
for what she needs to do the next morning. After viewing her successful dates and to-do’s she can now put her plan into action and start making her life less stressful.
The point of this exercise is to show you that the less clutter you have in your mind, the more time you can actually spend living your
life. When you practice brain dumping alongside mindfulness, you won’t feel overwhelmed and, thus, your thoughts will not be as troubling.
However, when you do this exercise, make sure you are focusing on this one thing. If anything else shall pop in your head while doing the lists
and writing dates, go back to the first step and just add it into your entry. When you put focus into what you are doing today and also looking forward to brain dumping tonight, you will have made this into a routine. Once this becomes a routine, all of the things that stress you
out during the day can be worked into your brain dump-mindmap, which will set you up for a better future in managing your days.
General Rules for a Decluttered Mind
In the last section we talked about decluttering your mind in the evening so you can set tomorrow – and your future – up for a refresh.
This part of the chapter will discuss ways for you to declutter your mind in general. Below is a list of the ways you can declutter your mind so that you can stop feeling stressed, accomplish more, and make wiser decisions.
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Let go of the past
As we have learned, anxiety and feeling overwhelmed occur because we worry too much about the past. I cannot repeat this enough – let go of all that is out of your control. This is way easier said than done, but the main reason why people will try to control what is out of their
hands is because they have developed perfectionism. Everything must be perfect, there is no room for mistakes. Our minds are so busy as it is, that by thinking this way, you are actually just causing more havoc in your mind. Accept what is (practicing mindfulness), let go of what was (things you can’t control), and be aware of who you are (you are not superman/superwoman.) Mistakes are to be made as a way for us to learn and grow. So let go of what happened and be in the now to help you understand what you can do for the future.
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Stop multitasking
I briefly explained in the last section that multitasking doesn’t get you anywhere. When you are multitasking, you may think or believe that it will help you get things done faster. This is not the case, or the result as you may have noticed. Instead, multi-tasking will get little
things done, and actually have you behind on the things you actually need to get done. When you are behind, you are more stressed which
results in more overthinking. Sometimes it may be difficult not to multitask, like if you are planning your child’s birthday, and you have kids coming up to you, and a cake to light, or whatever to attend to.
On these hectic days be okay with being scatter-brained, sometimes you just can’t help it. On the days that you can control it, just be focused on one thing. Look at your to-do list and tick off each task as you do it.
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Be decisive
The opposite of being decisive is when your mailbox is so full of mail, that you just don’t know what to do with it so you leave it there, watching it pile up. This actually adds to your stress and should be dealt with. If you have bills, put them in a bill box. If you have letters that you are keeping for future reading, put that in an archive box. If you have work requests, put that in a work box. Make some time to go through these boxes and deal with them one at a time. The bills and finances, you could go over with your spouse (if you have one).
The work stuff, you could talk to your boss or co-workers about, and your future reading material can be read on your downtime. Be
decisive about what you will do with the immediate mail, and pick a time to address the other stuff.
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Put your routine on ‘Auto-Pilot’
The little stuff matters, although it can really take up much of the
space and energy in your brain to focus on other things. These things may include deciding breakfast or meals during the day, what you’re going to wear, when you will have enough time to relax, etc… Get
these small tasks and routines out of your head by setting them on auto-pilot. By auto-pilot, I mean the little things you do without even realizing. When you understand and recognize that these things will
get done no matter what, then you don’t need to think about them as much. This should help clear the way to help you focus on bigger decisions.
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Prioritize
This last task is much like the previous recommendation. It includes making a list of all that needs to be done, and once written, forgetting about it because you have already made time for it. The reason prioritizing our tasks is so beneficial is because when we see what
needs to be done at a glance, we can see what is most important and what needs to come first. Once we get that out of the way we need to make time for relaxation, so add this as a priority as well.
Mental clutter is such a problem because it makes us rush. It gives us
the state of mind that things need to be done right now. It can really get in the way of our lives and stop us from making healthy decisions for us and for our children. When our minds are full of this task and what to do about that task, we don’t have much space left for other things like enjoying life. Remember that life is not to be rushed, but about taking the time to live. Start living by following what’s been said in this chapter and get familiar with what more there is to come.
Chapter Summary
This chapter is the start of you getting out of your head with the everyday stresses that you have and doing something about them. It’s the first chain you have to break in order to obtain your freedom. We
learned that if you cannot focus on the now by being mindfulness then you cannot learn how to tackle the important tasks that need to be
completed in a calm and structured manner. Mental clutter can damage your relationships and slow your performance at work. Your goal is to stop this, and so that is what this chapter was about.
In this chapter, we learned:
- How to be mindful
- How to brain dump
- Other things you can do to declutter your mind
- Why our minds are even cluttered
- How to solve the clutter once and for all.
In the next chapter – Chapter 6: Break the Second Chain: A Stressed Mind is a Stressed Body – you will learn how stress and overthinking can affect your body and the many ways you can overcome feeling fatigued. You
will learn how to improve your mental state through exercise and diet. By staying healthy physically, you can stay healthy mentally.
