Spring Cleaning For Your Brain
Many of us struggle to make decisions because we are driving down the “SUPER BUSY” highway with a million thoughts spinning in our heads.
Our minds feel cluttered. It is hard to know where one thought ends and another begins. We know we have the answers inside us but it feels too overwhelming to find them because we're moving so fast.
Instead of sorting through it all, it is just easier to ask our coach what to do, follow the advice of someone else we trust or blindly follow our culture’s current GPS trend. Other times, it is just easier to bury our heads in the sand and wish for the best. 🤞
Sound familiar? Yep, I’ve done this many times too.
When you’re speeding down the highway of life at 80 miles an hour trying to juggle multiple tasks with a cluttered unorganized mind on a regular basis, it makes sense that you'd spin in overwhelm or rely on someone else for direction. It's the smart thing to do - survival instinct. But you aren’t necessarily following your North Star and one day you’re going to wake up and wonder how the hell you got where you are!
I’m a big fan these days of pulling into the SLOW LANE when you can...to breathe and take stock of what is going on in your life. If not permanently, at least sometimes so you can get organized, assess your priorities and enjoy the view. If you don’t have space for that in your life, I find a hike in nature is an excellent quick reboot for chronic speeders. But hiking and all it’s medicinal properties is a blog for another time...😉🌳
Organize Your Mind
Today I want to talk about our minds. Just like we regularly clean, organize and declutter our homes of things we no longer need, we need to do the same for our minds.
Our minds have upwards of sixty thousand thoughts per day. Most of them run subconsciously in the background unnoticed because they are repetitive and efficient. Unconscious thoughts include every day thoughts like “put toothpaste on the toothbrush to brush my teeth” or “take a sharp left, then a right to get to work.” These kinds of thoughts are efficient and useful and don’t need to be organized. We can leave them alone.
But there are many thoughts spinning in our heads unnoticed that might be creating unwanted emotions in the background, like “I’m not good enough,” “I shouldn’t speak up,” “S/he doesn’t love me,” “I’m not lovable,” “My opinions aren’t justified,” etc, generating feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, heartbroken, sadness, and anxiety, to name a few.
Left unexamined many of us will tend to think they are true. We’ll think them over and over until they become ingrained beliefs in our minds.
We can’t neglect these because what we THINK determines how we FEEL. And how we feel drives all our ACTIONS and inactions which lead to the RESULTS we create in our life.
Our Thoughts → Our Feelings → Our Actions → Our Results
So it is of utmost of importance that we shed light on these thoughts and ask ourselves three questions about each of them:
Is this thought serving us?
Do we want to keep it?
Is this thought relevant in our present life or is it outdated?
We also have thoughts that are conscious that we think on purpose, judgements about daily things about the present and future. We’ll want to ask ourselves the same three questions.
The goal in all this is to become more aware of our thoughts, make a decision as to which thoughts we want to keep, learn how to let go of the ones we don’t want, and create thoughts we want.
Thought Download
The first and most important step in all this is becoming aware of your thoughts and the easiest way to do this is through establishing a daily thought download practice. A thought download is when you simply write down all your thoughts on a piece of paper without judging, editing or censoring yourself. As Master Coach Brooke Castillo often says, just like a fish is unaware of the water in which it swims, you are often unaware of the thoughts you are thinking until you see them on paper on a regular basis.
Imagine if you were trying to organize your messy closet standing inside it in the dark, unable to see anything and all cramped up with little space to try anything on. You aren’t going to get much sorting done.
But if you open the closet door and put all the clothes out on the bed where you can see them and try them on, you’ll be in a better space to decide which are worn out, outdated and no longer fit you. The same goes for your thoughts. Pulling the string of thoughts out of your head and putting them on paper is the equivalent of opening the closet door and sorting them on the bed. You’ll have a better perspective. Instead of just thinking your thoughts, you’ll shift to observing your thoughts and choosing which ones serve you.
A thought download allows you to eavesdrop on your mind. It allows you to take a step back from being caught up in the drama of your mind and become the Watcher of the sentences, opinions, judgements and beliefs swirling around in your brain. You get to be curious like a bystander or roommate would be and notice how your thoughts are creating your results.
All it takes is 10 minutes a day of writing your thoughts on paper. That alone day after day will give you huge insight into your mind and thought patterns. When you are ready to take it up a notch try adding these steps:
Separate the facts of your life from your opinions.
Get curious about a thought. Find evidence that it is both true and untrue to help neutralize it.
Notice the feeling that the thought creates.
Do Models on your thoughts (if you know the Self-Coaching Model, if not, stay tuned for future blogs on this topic 😉).
There are days when I do thought downloads on anything and everything that is in my head. Other times I choose to do a subject specific download if I’m working towards a certain goal. You can also spend time writing intentional thoughts, thoughts you want to practice thinking about your future. This is a great way to practice becoming the future YOU!
Happy thought downloading my friends. Let me know how it goes.
If you’d like to dive deeper on this topic, set up a free consult by clicking here. I'm passionate about helping you declutter your mind, find your truth and thrive!