Five Ways to Declutter Your Mind and Live a Happier Life
Life is busier than ever. From raising a family to maintaining relationships, work, and trying to stay healthy and fit, it’s no wonder that so many of us feel like our minds are overloaded!
Unfortunately, having an overloaded mind can make you feel like you’re stretched too thin. It can leave you feeling exhausted at the end of the day, but because your mind is so full, it can also keep you awake at night.
Decluttering your mind provides you with more room to enjoy life, but exactly how do you declutter your mind?
Deal with Mental Health Issues Head-On
The first step to decluttering your mind is to deal with mental health issues head-on. They can affect every area of your life if not properly resolved.
For example, the healing process for victims of sexual abuse may uncover mental health issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and addiction. Peeling back the layers of mental health issues and abuse can help you release them, leading you to live a fuller life.
Dealing with mental health issues might include scheduling appointments with a therapist, but it can also mean sharing your feelings with someone close to you. Sometimes, just sharing how we feel is enough to relieve us of their power.
Clear out Your Physical Space
It may seem like decluttering your mind and decluttering your space are very separate things, but they are more entwined than you think. Cluttered spaces can actually have a negative effect on your mental health.
Some studies have shown that people with cleaner houses are healthier, while those with cluttered houses report more depression and fatigue. A cluttered bedroom can even prevent you from getting a good night’s sleep!
Clear out some space in your home and you can clear out some space in your mind too. That means donating items you no longer use, reorganizing the items you’re going to keep, and keeping countertops clean and clear.
Write Things Down
How much time do you spend trying to remember things, only to end up forgetting what it was you were trying to remember? Writing lists can help.
To-do lists can help your brain. When you write things down to reference later, you no longer have to remember them. You don’t have to finish the list either. Anything you write down can be helpful for clearing out the clutter in your mind!
Lists are helpful, but writing can be even more powerful if you make it a regular part of your day. Start a journal where you write down your thoughts and feelings. Not only can writing things in a journal declutter your mind, writing can help you clarify your goals, work through complex feelings, and discover things about yourself you didn’t know before.
Develop a Routine
Tackling mental health issues and starting a journal can seem like huge commitments. If you’re looking for a quicker, easier way to free up a little mental space, look for ways to develop a routine in your everyday life.
That includes doing things like:
- Eating the same thing for lunch every day
- Wearing the same clothes every day
- Only check your email at certain times
- Getting up and going to bed at the same times every day
Although it may sound boring to eat the same thing or wear the same outfit every day, you are able to free up a lot of mental space. In a world where we make thousands of decisions every day, cutting back on those decisions enables us to focus on other, more important, things.
Tone Down Your Media Intake
What you fill your mind with matters. Although it’s great to have instant access to things that are happening around the world, the 24-hour news cycle can also be tiring.
Social media can be a huge problem too! Between learning about the latest mass shooting to comparing your life to friends and family on Facebook, it’s easy to spend most of your time thinking about things that don’t really matter.
Instead, unplug from the media and focus on things that are more immediately relevant to your life. Focus on local news and reduce the time you spend on social media to make more space in your mind.
Living a happier life can sound like an overcomplicated pipe dream, but it doesn’t have to be! No matter how much time you have to dedicate to decluttering your mind, you’ll find a tip on this list that will help.
