Declutter your Mind

Guarding your heart/mind is very important, it's indeed a vital part of self care and overall well-being. Even though by guarding your heart I'm referring to emotional/mental well-being, it's still crucial to nurture it with the right values after all our minds can make us physically sick as scientifically proven so it's so vital that we indeed guard our hearts.

We all strive to find balance, peace and serenity but this balance is a combination of nurturing every aspect of our being and in this piece I am focusing on mental health and this is not to dismiss the benefits of physical fitness because i believe they are all equally important. Health, Fitness and general well-being is popular these days from adopting the right meal plan to implementing the best exercise regimen its fair to say there's no shortage of resources when it comes to getting into shape, but what about mental wellness?, how often do we really pay attention to our mental health?.

Having had my share of mental breakdowns, a result of complete neglect of my feelings and not asking myself the hard questions, I eventually found myself in the therapists office finally succumbing to talking about the very feelings I neglected for so long and being asked those very hard questions. But these sessions with the therapists is where i began my journey of becoming more self aware. Its funny but all these while i always thought that being expressive was weakness not realizing that the weakness was actually keeping things to myself and not sharing it was like procrastinating the day I will implode with the latter eventually happening resulting in me in the therapist office.

So I learnt the mind is like a muscle and it can be exercised to become more healthy hence the mindfulness exercises I been practicing lately. It is important to be aware of what is nurtured in the mind ranging from the type of content consumed to the type of relationships built and i noticed that your values determine what you allow into your life so i had to redefine my values, or better put searched within myself to know who i am, what do i want to stand for and why. Answering these questions helped me a lot in that i was able to start living my life based on the values that are important to me, indeed this journey was strange to me because I had to decide who I needed to cut out of my life as well as mindfully selecting what I put in my mind with regards to content consumed. Its no surprise that the endless scrolls on the feel good apps Instagram, snapchat, etc. could be addictive and detrimental to mental wellbeing because more often it keeps us bound to slouched positions constantly scrolling for hours.

So here are a few tips that I have been practicing to retrain my mind to be healthy and please note its a regular practice that must be done to keep the mind healthy just as the results of working out will fade away if you don't continue the regimen so also is this similar. Positive change will take a while to observe and more often even cant be observed by you but instead by the people who notice that you are indeed different somehow someway. The goal is to be excited about your new journey having faith in this new positive way of life you will be starting. It's as simple as trying out planning out your day, intentionally setting time out to do certain healthy habits everyday and sticking to it. Since the focus of this is the mind, the goal will be to keep staying present from time to time. Snapping back to reality whenever we become lost in morbid reflections of the past but instead pick a pen and paper and decipher steps to fix what can be fixed and asking for strength to let go off what cant be changed.

Its important that the daily goals must indeed be healthy, to get all the junk off and out. Next will be to nurture your mind by having a few minutes for quiet time daily. A time in which you are not having any thoughts but completely just at ease letting go off all the worries for those few minutes at least, and also within this daily plan would be a time to quickly check on family and loved ones and ensuring that you stick to a time frame and quickly end conversations when needed, trust me its all part of the mindfulness exercise. It's about taking ownership of your time again especially with matters that pertains to your mind. Another significant part would be to cut certain people out of your life, and this is advised to be done by speaking with a mentor or a professional that can help guide how that can be done so as not to do more damage than has already been done. Goal is to be objective and not sentimental about why you are cutting them out. They may be good people but might be bad for you and YOU is who is trying to heal right now. The final step is to try and stick to your plan as much as possible, not just in doing things but also in giving your mind a break and not constantly letting it spin because its saturated with junk. Its time to declutter the mind, you deserve it, its time to pamper your mind and there's nothing wrong with that. Happy Mindfulness and success in your new adventure.