Here are 15 Habits That Can Help Clear Your Mind Starting Today.
Please enjoy.
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15 Habits That Can Help Clear Your Mind.
1) The Practice of Being in the Present Moment Through Meditation, Prayer, and Gratitude.
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot
The point of practicing meditation is to understand the crazy bat cave that is our minds.
I don’t know what spiritual enlightenment means precisely, but I do feel I have a spiritual moment whenever I do one of the following:
- Praying — asking God for guidance, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, clarity, patience, etc. Knowing you’re not alone, or in full control of your life, really do helps put things in perspective.
- Practicing gratitude — Being thankful for life. Feeling a sense of connectedness to oneness, can actually help clear your mind, and alleviate our automatic negative thoughts (ANT).
- Sitting In silence— I have this specific pattern of breathing that I do where I’m observing the ins and outs of the breath, doing 3 sets of 6’s: I inhale on a count of six, hold on a count four, then release on a count of seven. Other times I simply use one of my favorite meditation apps.
Okay, the following might sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but spiritual teacher and author Ram Dass would remind us that, “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
To clear your minds, sometimes requires sitting in that quiet lonesome —listening, and hearing what the mind has to say.
Don’t judge these thoughts. Simply allow them to be there.
As entrepreneur, Tom Bilyeu would say, I don’t do overwhelm!
Because when we used phrases like, “I’m overwhelmed, I’m exhausted, and so on.” We’re quite literally inviting that kind of energy into our lives.
Therefore the solution is to shift from, “I’m struggling, my plate’s full…, to “I am honored for the privilege to be doing what I’m about to do, or gets to do.”
Reframing it like that will automatically shift your perspective.
Sure, you’re situation will still be challenging, but with reframing, it’s now becoming a stimulating adventure.
What exercise is to your body, meditation is to your mind. —John Thornton
In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Tibetan Buddhist and ordained nun, Pema Chödrön, describes meditation as a pack of dogs at night that barks restlessly, and then shut up simultaneously. She writes:
In Nepal, the dogs bark all night long. Every twenty minutes or so, they all stop at once, and there is an experience of immense relief and stillness. Then they all start barking again. The small mind of sem (a Tibetan word for the mind’s stream of chatter) can feel just like that. When we first start meditating, it’s as if the dogs never stop barking at all. Then, after a while, there are those gaps. Discursive thoughts are rather like wild dogs that need taming. Rather than beating them or throwing stones, we tame them with compassion. Over and over, we regard them with the precision and kindness to calm down gradually. Sometimes it feels like there’s much more space, with just a few yips and yaps here and there.
According to psychologist Victor Frankl, finding the gaps between the stimulus that comes our ways on a daily basis (e.g. the news, social media, in a conversation, and so on.) and how we respond to these stimulus, is the first step toward awareness, and clearing our mind.
Making meditation part of your routine, even for five-minutes a-day, will generate great benefits. But then again, It’s totally up to you. I know people who tried meditation who haven’t stuck with it. But I don’t know anyone who thought it was a waste of their time.
You are free of The mind when judgment stops through acceptance of what it is. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. —Eckhart Tolle (Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations)
Consider Going For a Brisk walk
Nothing cures an overload mind quicker than going for a brisk walk outside, and breathing in that fresh air.
From that vantage point, we realized that our life’s situation isn’t as monumental as we’re making it up to be in our minds; only when we’re lazer focus on our troubles.
So go outside to clear your mind.
Pet the cat down the road while you’re at it. That is, If it let you. 🙂
Help a neighbor or a stranger in need.
Hug a fcking tree.
I don’t know. Whatever gets the monkey mind off your back, will be a clear indication to what is working.
3) Reading a fun, light-hearted, or a thought-provoking book can work wonders in helping you to clear your mind.
If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book. — J K Rowling.
To help clear your mind, get interested in other people’s mental model. That is the secrets to clearing your mind and spiritual dimensions. It may require less time on social media, watching TV’s (or the Tell-lie-vision as I like to called it), instead consider getting cozy with a physical book, some scented candle, if that’s your thing, green tea or coffee.
As author and investor, Naval Ravikant puts it:
Read what you love until you love to read.” — Naval Ravikant.
Even if you read a single page every day, you’ll still make progress. Pro advice: go for books your soul is calling you to read.
3) Writing on a Journal Helps You to Clear Your Mind
For the most part, journaling will improve your mental state, help you gains greater clarity and inspiration.
So get on with it. You can jots down random thoughts, feelings, things you’re grateful for, or make a list of the things you’d like to get done for that day. If you haven’t read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, I’ve heard it’s a great place to start.
4) A Clear Mind Often Goes Hand-in-hand With Clean Eating.
The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison ― Ann Wigmore.
Don’t let these fast foods company,– microwave culture fool you now.
If you really want to clear your mind, there are certain foods, and toxicity that you’ll have to eliminate from diet. Sugar is at top of the list, followed by carbohydrates. These processed foods are destroying your brain cells, zapping you of your precious energy.
For me, ever since I’ve switched to a plant-based diet, I’ve regains my energy.
In many ways, I understood that many of the foods on the planet are drug foods that often robbed us of our energy. For this reason, I try to be intentional with the foods I eat.
Natural food contains enzymes to digest the food, whereas junk foods have fewer enzymes. Instead, they usually steal healthy cells inside your body to help digestion.
All I’m saying is, “Following a diet based on real food is the best thing you can do to make positive — sustainable changes to your lifestyle over time.
5) Drink More of This Here.
You can already sense what I’m going to say, but I’ll say anyway.
So recently I read a blog post by the amazing Maria Del Russo. There, she explained why we should drink more water. And it may sound like cliché advice, but many great health benefits occur in our cells when we start drinking more water.
Maria, for instance, drinks a gallon of water daily.
Over time, she said, you’ll begin noticing a great pattern in your mood, vitality, skin health, and basically an overall sense of well-being.
As someone who used to have terrible acne, this challenge have been one of the best habit I’ve cultivated in recent years.
6) Strength Training and Exercise Helps You to Clear Your Mind.
“Just because you aren’t fat” observed American sports commentator, Mike Emrick, “doesn’t mean you’re in shape.”
Humans did not evolve to sit in a chair for hours and staring at screens. That is not how God wants us to clear our minds. If anything, its the opposite.
Our bodies are designed for movement.
I’ve come to realize that whenever I feel some type of stress, or fatigue, more often than not, it’s because I’m on the computer or staring at screens for far too long.
For this reason, I take frequent breaks to move my body, and getting out in nature.
A little movement is better than no movement.
- Instead of “lose 10 pounds this year”, work on losing 2 lbs a week.
- Physical activity will improve your mood and enhances your brain’s cognitive functions.
- We only have one body, so better to take good care of it
7) Trimming Down Or Paying Off Debt, Will Help You to Clear Your Mind.
“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”— Dave Ramsey.
Less than three years ago, I knew nothing when it came to the subject of finance. But now, I feel more at home and at peace.
To help clear your mind, will require not participating in compulsive.
Let this be your wake-up call to do a complete 180 turn around from spending. Lately, I’ve started increasing my savings rate, and I must say: it felt pretty good. I can finally get that car I never wanted.
I use credit karma to keep track of my score report.
The trick is to pay off your statement balance in full at the end of every month. That’s it.
It’s a habit, if done right, will surely help clear your mind.
I forgot who says this but the idea is Money should help you improve your life, not make it more complicated.
8) Listening to Something Positive Will Help You to Clear Your Mind.
Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you, it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit. ― Neil Gaiman, M Is for Magic.
When we get into the habit of morning scroll — checking the news, emails, social media, notifications, and what have you. We are wiring our brains for passivity, and laziness.
Instead, consider listening to something positive such as a podcast, or read an uplifting book.
Doing so will help set the tone for the day, clear your mind, and leaving you feeling more positive.
Nowadays we can listen to a person’s entire life story or a positive podcast in hours and learn incredible lessons from that experiment. So I’d encourage you to make this habit parts of your routine.
9) Cutting Back On The News Will Help You to Clear Your Mind.
“To cure yourself of the news, read last week’s news.”— Nassim Taleb
Exposure to negative stories can make us feel negative, even more stressed out, and pessimistic about the world. And the truth is, there will always be bad news to feeds on our fears, as much as good news to feeds on our love for one another.
So try not let the shit-talk consume your life, because we tend to become what we consume.
Getting sucked into the vortex of Social Media and news updates has never been so easy.
One game-changer for me was installing a Google Chrome extension called Kill News Feed on my devices and turning off unwanted notifications.
10) UnCluttering Space Will Help You to Clear Your Mind
Owning less is better than organizing more.” ― Joshua Becker, Clutter-free with Kids.
There’s no greater feeling than waking up to a clean room. Where everything has its place.
For this reason, I try to start and end my day with a short decluttering session, ensuring my work desk and environment are somewhat tidy or at least organized.
To me, It’s not really about keeping things clean, but more so out of self-respect.
As the theologian and philosopher Alan Watts observed, “Our internal and external environment goeswith one another.”
If there is chaos on the outside, there’ll also be chaos on the inside. And so to clear your mind will require removing the items from the external world that you know deep inside, if eliminate, will make your life easier.
Decluttering will help clarify your mental state and boost your productivity level by a wide margin.
Have nothing in your house that you don’t know to be helpful, and do your mental state a favor and get rid of it.
Harvard Business Review states that: “Our physical environments significantly influence our cognition, emotions, and behavior, affecting our decision-making and relationships with others. A cluttered space can have negative effects on our stress and anxiety levels, as well as our ability to focus, our eating choices, and even our sleep.
11) Diversifying your Circle of Influence Will Help You to Clear Your Mind.
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours, and you’ll drift in that direction.” — Warren Buffett.
When you surround yourself with positive people, you’re more likely to adopt empowering beliefs, to see life as happening for you instead of to you.
Keep away from people who try to belittle you. Small people always do that, and their energy is very consuming. The great ones only want to lift you higher. — Mark Twain.
Having negative people in your life drags you down in many ways. To help clear your mind, surround yourself with the people who bring out the best in you, those who want to see you succeed.
Think of the people who inspired you, lifted you, gave good advice, or showed you a different approach to living the good life, –spend time with those people.
You only have 24 hours a day; time spent with those holding you back can’t be paid with the ones moving you forward.
12) Having a Creative Hobby Will Help You to Clear Your Mind.
The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before. — Neil Gaiman.
Art is the juice of life.
An activity that can help us learn how to learn, and further helps clearing our mind.
You can do it at your own pace or guided.
And sometimes with Art, your best isn’t going to be the picture you painted in your head, but that’s perfectly fine.
Remind yourself that you’re here to fun.
I truly believe when we’re committed to unlearning the limitations of the world, we tend to remember the playfulness of our true essence.
I particularly like drawing because drawing visualizes your improvement before your eyes.
And it’s pretty nice to have a trail of progress behind you.
I truly believe, without drawing and painting, I wouldn’t appreciate shapes, colors, the art that others make and the natural environment as much as I do.
In my view, having a hobby is very important to help clear your mind.
13) Comparison is the Thief of Joy to Clearing Your Mind.
Comparison is the most poisonous element in the human heart because it destroys ingenuity, and it robs peace and joy.” ― Euginia Herlihy.
As challenging as it is, I think it’s important to remember that other people’s opinions of us are simply none of our business.
Constantly comparing yourself to others steals your joy. To help clear your mind, you’ve got to let that ish go.
We often see other people’s shiny outside, but rarely do we know the reality of their life.
And the real truth is “people have hard lives.”
We all do.
Even the comparatively fortunate among us that we constantly measure ourselves to–have complex lives.
Social media posts may want you to think otherwise with their pretty filters but I think these apps are molding us to feel this sense of lack, insecurity and inauthenticity.
So watch out for that. Moderation is key to your sanity.
The only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday.
Avoid wasting your mental bandwidth, time on mindless pities; control what you can control.
14) To Clear Your Mind, Write Down a Result List — Instead of a To-Do-List
You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.― Richie Norton.
According to this Harvard Business Review article, the typical “to-do lists” aren’t necessarily the best way to prioritize getting things done. Not unless you want to clear your mind. Instead, attend your focus on the results you want to achieve for that particular day.
A to-do list is too vague.
A result list is on the other hand is of course, result-oriented.
For example, you might have a to-do list to workout 5 times per week. While a result list would say something like, “Lose 15lbs by the end of the week.
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To help clear your mind, you want to manage your energy efficiently. As Tibetan spiritual leader, Tarthang Tulku puts it:
Energy is our most precious resource, for it is the mean through which we transform our creative potential into meaningful action.” — Tarthang Tulku.
Use the idea of time blocking to help focus. To help you clear your mind. One of my favorite ways to time block is with this effective tool called the Forest app. Use my referral code: 5PWPNWGSG, to get a reward of 500 coins! 🙂
15) Airplane Mode Helps You to Clear Your Mind.
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
― Winston S. Churchill.
Distractions are the biggest enemy to clearing your mind.
Rather than constantly being bombarded with bells and whistles and notifications early in the day, have airplane mode switch on instead.
In a world filled with distractions, the ability to focus has become more rare and more important than ever. Study shows that the average American adult spends, on a daily average, 5 hours watching TV and staring at their smartphones. As challenging as that may be, try to keep these stimulus and consumptions at a bare minimum.
Too much screen time has been associated with mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, and making you feel further depressed and unhappy. Therefore the best thing to do for your mental health is to limit your daily screen time.
16) Prioritizing Sleep Helps You to Clear Your Mind.
Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together —Thomas Dekker.
You cannot perform at your best without sufficient sleep. Plain and simple. Your body needs sleep in order to help you clear your mind. Therefore, make it a non-negotiable to get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
There’s a blue light filter button built-in on almost every phone. Use it at night to dim the brightness of your screen.
Although that won’t suffice. So to that I say use some type of protection for your precious eyes.
As for me, I’ve been using blue-blocking nighttime glasses to minimize my exposure to these blue lights that can easily mess up your natural circadian rhythm around your sleep schedule.
It’s not a badge of honor when someone’s bragged about getting by on four or five hours of sleep.
Depriving yourself of sleep, will have a negative impact on your memory and cognitive functions. Not to mention, your cells will take longer to get repaired. You’ll feel a lot more irritated. Mood swings that can ultimately lead you to making poor decisions.
And so to clear your mind, prioritize sleep. It’ll be one of the best decisions you’ll ever made. Your sleep quality, explained sleep expert, Shawn Stevenson, is more important than your diets and exercise — combined.
If done correctly, sleep can be the ultimate superpower of your well-being and helping you to clear your mind.
Final Thought 💭
Clearing your mind is essential quality in your life because it forces you to have an open mind, to be open to new ideas, and trying new things.
Even though others may care for you, they don’t walk in your shoes. Only you know what’s behind that closet door and how much work is required to clearing it out. Some of us have a whole attic of storage in our minds from decades ago. Like mines use to be. But being lighter, (internal and external) is truly the only way to fly.
Having to re-discover this newfound love of learning; has helped me embrace the lessons I learned as my greatest asset.
And if you make these changes a habit, they’ll transform who you are and your experiences daily.
Our level of success is always going to parallel our level of personal development. Until we dedicate time each day to developing ourselves into the person, we need to be to create the life we want; success will always be a struggle to attain. Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning
Thank you for reading.
I hope this post was helpful to you as much as enjoyable.
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