Mental Clarity: Practical Guide
The answer to that question is not a secret that no one knows about. On the contrary, it has been revealed and studied.
If you ever tried skateboarding or any other type of sports that require some sort of a flow, you will notice that the moment you are stuck in your thoughts, the moment you start controlling the direction of the skateboard, either you fall or drift away from your original style and therefore lose your authenticity.
The secret is to let your skateboard move while you give it space to flow. The skateboard in that case is your mind.
I experience that when I play piano, I have noticed that something goes missing in the performance whenever I swim in thoughts. Because life is music too, I am now playing piano to practice going with the flow of both life and the instrument. I reach that state only when I create space in my mind.
Having mental space is beneficial for a lot of reasons:
- Sharpens focus
- Helps in better sleep
- Decision-making becomes an easy thing
- Reduces stress
- Does wonders in creativity
The good news is that you too can train yourself to be an elegant performer by understanding the notion and practicing day by day.
I am sharing with you the best you can do to make the most out of those benefits. So let’s jump right into it.
Brain fog, what is that?
To find the cure, we should first know the disease. In that case, it is brain fog, a very complex condition that comes from different behaviors like diet, emotional well-being, psychology, lifestyle... and the list goes on.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say it is the lack of mental clarity and sharp focus. Brain fog can be a symptom of a medical condition, that’s another subject that requires professional intervention. The brain fog I am talking about now, which is the common one, is mainly caused by overload information, data we don’t necessarily need, and still occupies space in our minds causing us fatigue.
Overloading input consumption without processing is not healthy at all, what it does is not leave a place for creativity and peace of mind. Going through our day-to-day lives, we might underestimate the effect of those “little” web surfing breaks, comments we read, and even instructive videos we watch for too long. That noisy information is going somewhere, and that somewhere is your mind space!
Thought addiction is another big cause. You can be unaware of this but, chances are you’re addicted to thinking. How do I know? The majority of modern society has this addiction without even knowing! If you are an exception, it would be great to hear from you in the comments on how you overcame this bad habit. Otherwise, your mind is hurting itself by simply unstoppably thinking, especially if those thought patterns are negative ones, which is largely subconscious, that would be what I call: A toxic brain fog.
Mental space is freedom that allows for new creations, and new thought seeds that you welcome to your life and change you later on. However, if that room is already at capacity filled with guilt, stress, pressure, and excessive information, there would be no space left for beautiful things to be.
Now that you understand what brain fog is, let’s talk about what you came here for, the cure, and the solutions that will completely transform your life into a positive and peaceful being. This change will start showing in every single area of your life; creativity, productivity, lifestyle, quality of your relationships, perspective, and most importantly, peace of mind.
Forgiveness and letting go
The moment you forgive a person including yourself, is the moment you let go of all resentment, anger, guilt, and need for revenge. That act will create a new mind space, and that’s the reason behind a lot of people immediately get new ideas and beautiful inspirations after they truly forgive.
I have a whole blog about How to forgive someone when you can’t forget, check it out to get that negative energy out of your life and welcome a new beautiful one.
Chances are, it is going to be difficult for you to let go and tolerate, why? Because the mind, the ego, is operating from fear, it is attached to what it's used to, to the known even if it’s causing you such pain.
What I want you to do is start by reflecting, here are the exact steps that always work for me:
- If you find it hard to tolerate specific events, start by being willing to let go, and be open to it.
- Ask yourself: “What feelings do I need to let go of that don’t serve me anymore?”.
- Be honest when identifying those blind spots.
- Put the intention to release them.
- Experience what it feels like when you let go of them.
They will eventually go away with practice and some time.
Here is what’s waiting for you if you stick to the steps:
When you finally forgive and let go, you will experience amazing mind clarity to stay present in experiences and convey messages exactly the way you want to convey them. You also will have a sharp focus you can consciously guide towards things you choose in life rather than being confused all the time and distracted with thinking, and negative feelings you hold in your body and perspective.
Brain Dumps
The concept of this technique is to get EVERYTHING out of your mind either on paper or the digital device, you choose.
You can benefit from this practice in two ways: Getting space, and clarity of mind and developing ideas to use in improving your life. I prefer to explain this part by giving you my personal experiences.
I have 3 different notebooks: One for daily journaling, one for gratitude, and the third for random ideas and things I want to include in my life like new projects and habits.
I can’t stress enough the importance of journaling, it has done wonders in keeping my mind away from all those vague thoughts that only occupy space, crazy ideas and good ones. It allows me to be focused all day long and avoid wasting energy and time being distracted by thoughts I could steer clear of by simply writing them on paper.
As for the other ones, I’ve been doing them spontaneously, I just felt like writing down creative ideas that come to mind in moments of inspiration and letting them sit in my notebook. It wasn’t until I noticed that those transformed into reality that I started making it a habit to set thinking time sessions for personal matters, business, and new projects I manage. If you want to know more about this practice, tell me in the comments and I would be more than happy to give you more insight on the topic.
Important to mention that braindumps also helped in generating more and more wonderful creative ideas, that is obvious since by scrubbing all of these ideas, the mind finds space and automatically wants to fill it again, and if you rewire your brain to look for creative useful ideas, it will give you more and more of them. What I do now that I know the magic of that is whenever I want to start a new project or any form of new thing happening in my life, I open a new document or grab a blank paper.
Life is supposed to be an adventure, don’t hold to same beliefs, same repetitive ideas, same everything and expect things to change.
What a waste to not use ideas...
Single-Tasking is powerful
I was one of those people who are proud of multitasking, I was a master in that, it was like my superpower! - Looks like I’m still proud lol- I used to find it fun to switch between different things and liked the impression of doing many things.
It was not until this year that I became aware that it was not benefiting me, it was the worst way to work. I always ended up spending more time and energy with less results, the habit caused me stress whenever I started working even when I did things I loved doing. That’s when I did my research and decided to change the back-and-forth brain-switching habit.
Single-tasking simply means focusing on one thing at a time, it is the act of jogging without listening to music, eating without watching TV or videos, and working without checking emails or social media every 2 minutes.
A 2010 Harvard study mentioned that we spend 46.9% of our waking time thinking about something while doing something else. That is the result of programming our minds to constantly multitask, we are telling the mind that this is the right way to do everything, while all we do is fill all our mind space with various destructions.
That way, even when you choose to do nothing, you will do nothing, not even thinking, just living in your mind space, sharp focus and creativity will automatically flow through you like a volcano and you’ll be more at peace of mind.
You can’t imagine the amount of clarity you’ll get once you start doing one thing at a time. It is going to be hard at first, but you’ll get used to that mental habit and notice amazing results.
The way to single-tasking is by directing all of your attention to one task, like when you have a conversation with somebody, try putting your entire focus just on listening, not thinking about what to say. You’ll allow for space to flow through you and you’ll be a great listener and conversational, the same thing applies to every single thing you can imagine.
Single-tasking is by all means the way to efficiency and mind space.
Yoga and Meditation
Yoga and meditation are very popular practices nowadays, you may be aware of their physical benefits. But do you know what they can do to your mind in terms of clarity?
Scientific Research has a saying on this subject, meditation and yoga became ways to treat psychic troubles like stress and anxiety.
Meditation and Yoga were the very first habits I implemented in my daily life to level up my game. I wasn’t expecting to get that many noticeable results, but day by day my mind got clearer and my productivity increased like never. I cultivated impressive mindfulness, and who says mindfulness says peace of mind and productivity?
Just like we use our entire attention in balancing a yoga pose, the mind gets used to doing so and sets aside all destructive feelings and crazy thoughts off the mat. It’s very powerful, and a great way to deal with stress and improve mental focus.
As for meditation, the simple act of slow breathing focus creates detachment from thought and thus leaves room for mind space. I have a whole blog on Meditation tips for beginners, you can check it out.
PS: There are many videos and yoga poses you can find on the internet, so don’t make ‘Having a yoga class membership’ your excuse, and start acting if you want that magnificent mind space and clarity.
If you are going to take only one thing from this guide, I highly recommend you start yoga and meditation TODAY, you will start creating mind-space by the first week of practicing. Your body and mind will be connected and you’ll eventually be living in your body more instead of staying stuck in your mind and believing every thought that comes to mind.
Mental clarity - Why is a correct perception of reality so important?
Creating mind space is one of the most important aspects every person who wants to create a life full of creativity, mindfulness, and awareness of happiness has to master.
This guide is meant to help you do just that, you can save it or print it and implement the suggested tips step by step until you start noticing incredible changes showing in different areas starting from mental focus to relationships and career.
I hope this helped. I would love to know your intake on the subject!
Write to me in the comments below: Have you ever experienced moments where you lived in total mind space? If so, how did you do it and how did it feel?
