We know how things are these days on the pandemic plane. Unless this situation completely under control, things will not be getting back to normal. So, I am writing this article by thinking myself 5 years ahead in life, and if I am a reader of this at that time, how it should be. Let’s start with that idea as of now. I will tell you why this image is important at the end of this article.
Being at home and working remotely is not only taking away precious time that we spend with our family but also it is cluttering our life with a lot of unproductive stuff. It is not that easy to get on with life like how Jerry rigs everything of the gadgets and show in his YouTube channel.
We cannot just rip everything inside us as most of us don’t like to share personal problems with the world. Human beings are not an open book that says, come and explore me I am open for any experiment you do. We crave for privacy no matter how close we both are, you are not gonna tell me everything you have in your mind, are you? I highly doubt that.
As long as we think ourselves more and more in life, our mind starts to store garbages in our mind like how a computer creates temp files to perform certain tasks. Unfortunately, in computers, if we don’t program the Garbage Collection Algorithm, temp files will just pile up and the resources that are used by the program will not be deallocated. The same thing happens to our minds. By default, in our brain, we have a garbage collector and it clears our memory time and time again — This process we can call it as forgetting. Sometimes, when our thoughts that are connected to our emotions come up to our minds, we will not be able to forget it hence, we need to clear our mind by ourselves like implementing our own garbage collector. We can call this process a custom forgetting.
Always remember this process of how a thought starts and ends. Every single thought will start from not seeing things clearly as it is in life. When you see things from your perspective instead of the things as they are, you start imagining yourself. Imagination turns to Visualization. This Visualization turns into a series of events that lets your brain process this as a Thought. As this continues, this will be added with Emotion. When you reach the stage of emotion, you still have the chance to get rid of the thought but if you fail to do so, it will evolve and become a Memory.
When an Imagination turns into Memory, it is almost impossible to forget unless you replace that with something else, even though it won’t go away from your mind, it will just be buried within. This process is true for everything irrespective of the nature of the imagination. The more positive the imagination is, then it gets only better. If you ever imagine the wrong things as I said above like seeing things only in your perspective, it will only multiply and make that memory stronger and this negative thought will make you weak. This collection of unwanted thoughts in mind and converting these thoughts into a memory, we can call this as Intentional Cluttering.
As J. Krishnamurti asks everyone this question,
Is there a thinking without the word?
Carefully, ask yourself this question, can you ever think of something without the word think? This will help us to move forward to the next section of this article. How to declutter your mind from overthinking?
There are 3 ways you can do to declutter your mind. These points might be the ones that you have known for a long time but you are struggling to keep up or execute them.
- Keep everything simple
- Assessing yourself every day
- Spend at least 30 mins every day to do what you love.
Keep Everything Simple
We think our lives are complicated and this is true in certain cases. I am not imposing that life should be simple but when you overthink something or you give power to your brain to process negative thoughts for a longer period, it will be rooted deeper into your subconscious. Here is a simple trick on what you can do when you feel that you are thinking about something too much.
- Step aside from the moment and divert yourself to doing something else. Changing tracks for some time to move away from the moving obstacle that is cruising toward you is a better choice than speeding yourself and banging into it.
- Have a ritual that inspires you and keep repeating it. This will prevent any negative thoughts in your mind to go deeper. Usually, I repeat myself, “World is waiting for me to embrace its greatness” or I chant the prayer (Prayer can be anything as long as it is pure).
- Look at the things as they are, simplify your world. Talk to the person you love or sometimes even you can go ahead and irritate them as long as you can if you feel they can bear your nonsense. I do it so many times to the person I trust and who is mean special to me. In your life, there may be multiple people but this still works for multiple people as well.
To summarize the first point that I am making here, always keep things simple. If you ever want to make a decision that is conflicting your interest or begging you to choose between that or this, don’t put pressure on yourself. Choose the one that is simpler and won’t make your life complicated. Take time to decide and never make promises when you are happy and don’t make decisions when you are angry.
Assessing Your Emotional Goals Everyday
Finding your way back in anything easy as long as you have an anchor with you to pull you back in. That anchor can be your goal in life or ambition. It is easy to forget why we started or even why we are living our lives with all the distractions that are happening around in this modern world. Revisiting your goals every day will keep you in check with the purpose of life. Some might be having a different approach to this, they just go with the flow and don’t think of the endgame. One way or the other going with the flow is also a goal that you have, right?
We might be careful in life but when we start to think several things at a time, we might get stuck and the phase where we fail to decide or even indulging in the things that matter less to our lives can clutter your mind as well. Like spending more than 2 hours of your day using smartphones or checking social media posts that don’t matter or even judging other people based on the news about them in media can affect your mental health and makes you desperate in life. When you feel this way, this means you definitely need to declutter your mind. How you do it? By revisiting the fact that why you started your journey you had set out. Check your goals or a goal.
- It is good to write down your endgame of life on a sheet of paper and refer to it regularly.
- Always have that badass vision for your life. Even if you don’t reach that desired level, that is completely cool.
- Think yourself always 5 years ahead in life. I am not telling you not to live in present or got with the flow. Keep your goal level to maximum. Be crazy — This will make your mind to tackle problems with an open heart — Open heartedness will help you solve problems faster by letting you manufacture brilliant ideas.
Problems can’t be solved by the same kind of thinking that has created them. — Albert Einstein
Spending At Least 30 Minutes Everyday To Do What You Love
You may walk, run, quarrel, listen, sneak out, or hookup doesn’t matter as long as you love it while you are doing it. Are you quarreling with your friend or a partner? As long as you are doing it with Love, it will not impact on anyone’s life negatively. The reason I am telling you this is that the human brain works in a very simple way but I don’t know why people make it so complicated. As long as we do what we love, our minds will never get cluttered. It is the perfect medicine for decluttering in any place (Work or Personal).
Spend at least 30 minutes in your day to do the thing you love in life. Do you love to write a program? Code. Are you interested in Writing? Sit tight and write something or anything. Do you love to read books? Read it or purchase a new one. One interesting thing is, do you want to irritate the person you love? Do it. Irritate them like anything — Don’t worry they will not go anywhere or leave you for irritating them, instead they love you more and more. You can even try other things as well like, Photography, Social Media, Flirting, Drawing, or Going out and exploring the world.
These 30 minutes can be split time. I prefer to take it one shot as this will give some sense of accomplishment for the day. Some days, I feel good and proud about these 30 minutes than the rest of 23 and half hours of the day. I usually write articles when I feel my life is getting boring of I feel like I am over thinking too much. Writing is one thing among many things that I love but no other thing can give me much satisfaction than writing.
- Find your specific interest in something doesn’t matter as long as it won’t hurt anyone around you to the feelings. One thing I never love to do is being dishonest or betray so do you.
- Make that interest to stick with you. We all like to get immediate results for the work we have done so, publish your work what you do. It will give you a sense of completeness. You can also talk to someone and get their appreciation for the work you do on that day. Journaling is the best idea for introverts.
- Do it every day. There is no exception to it. (There is for some like quarreling. I am just talking about productive things) 30 minutes, consider yourself that you don’t have a choice.
Conclusion
At the start, I told you that the image I have created is required and I will come back to it. The reason I decided to read this like 5-year-old me is to measure the maturity level of my skill and how far I have come in my life. The last 5 years made me experience bad things in life as I dropped out of college and got betrayed by the people I cared about. My business was shut down and also I had to leave my family in pursuit of my start-up for 3 years. I had an accident, lost friends, gained some amazing people in my life, Humiliated, Lost myself. All this happened in the last 5 years but again today am here writing this article and hoping that my words will inspire you to be better and adapt few things that I adapted to declutter my mind using the above methods.
The next 5 years will be different for me. I am sure of it. Decluttering life is not just about gaining freedom from your thoughts, it is also about the steps you take to do it. No matter how experienced you are or famous you are, you all feel the burn out situations where your mind only will be filled up with crap. The above-mentioned steps will definitely help you to get back on track. Fro today and also for the next 5 years.
Always remember to keep it simple, assess your goals, and spend 30 mins in doing what you love everyday.
Happy reading and Keep smiling. Be happy. Feel free to connect with me if you have any comments. You can always get in touch with me, harithsa@thenexteam.com
