Minimalism is all about getting rid of stuff to make room for what’s important.
Most people associate minimalism with decluttering physical and sometimes digital stuff but it
is also possible to declutter your mind.
We all overthink from time to time and overthinking can prevent us from being focused which can
stop us from living our lives.
This video will go over how to declutter your mind using concepts from minimalism and we
are starting right now.
The idea of applying concepts from minimalism to stop overthinking sounds great but a lot
of you might wonder how it will work.
You can’t just get rid of thoughts and emotions the way you can get rid of some clothes you
don’t need anymore.
The concept of minimalism you can apply to your thoughts is redirecting your focus.
In physical minimalism, you do get rid of the things you don’t need but you also redirect
your focus to what’s important and you also focus more on choosing what you want to let
into your life.
While you can’t get rid of distracting thoughts and feelings nor do you want to, you can redirect
your focus and engage with those thoughts and feelings less.
If you can redirect your attention somewhere else, it will give a similar result to getting
rid of thoughts you don’t want.
When you are focused on something else that isn’t your thoughts, your mind forgets about
those thoughts and focuses on the task at hand.
While redirecting your focus can be very effective, there is still decluttering to be done because
minimalism and decluttering truly go hand in hand.
You can’t get rid of your thoughts and emotions like I mentioned above but you can get rid
of the things that cause those thoughts and emotions.
It’s hard to be mentally minimal if you are focused on some physical and digital distractions.
For an example involving physical things, if you are constantly thinking about when
you are going to wear that fancy watch you bought a year ago, if you get rid of the watch
by selling it, you won’t have any more thoughts about that watch anymore.
As for an example involving digital things, if you are often thinking about the lives
of other people since you are spending a lot of time on social media, you should limit
how much time you spend on social media.
It’s up to you to determine what’s necessary in your life and what isn’t.
By cleaning out your physical stuff, you will have more mental clarity as well.
However, there is still one more thing you should do.
Redirecting your focus is a great way to stop overthinking in the moment and decluttering
your stuff is a great way to have more mental clarity but to be even more mentally minimal,
you should practice mindfulness.
You might have heard the term mindfulness get thrown around a lot and everyone has their
own definitions on what mindfulness is.
I would define mindfulness as living in the moment and paying attention without thinking.
Let me keep explaining.
Mindfulness involves your mind only and what’s going on inside.
You can be mindful at a loud party just like how you can be mindful while doing yoga or
meditating.
If you practice being mindful enough, it will become a habit and you can do it automatically.
But how exactly does this help with preventing overthinking and having too much in our head?
Well, when you are mindful and focused on the moment, you won’t be focused on the
thoughts in your head.
Also, we often go through life on autopilot and we don’t always live in the moment.
When you are on autopilot, you often focus on your thoughts rather than your surroundings.
By being more mindful in life, you will spend less time engaging with thoughts you don’t
want to engage with.
You will also be able to enjoy moments in your life more since you will be mindful during
those moments.
So how can you be more mindful?
First, you need to understand mindfulness better.
Here’s something interesting to think about.
Thinking requires attention but paying attention does not require thinking.
You can observe something without analyzing it or comparing it with something or whatever
you can think of.
Although it is possible, it’s really hard to focus on something without thinking since
we all spend a good majority of our time everyday thinking about various things.
There is nothing wrong with thinking but when you constantly do it, it can get pretty tiring.
If you are not used to being mindful, when you stop thinking, alarms in your brain will
go off since your brain perceives what is happening as something unnatural.
With that in mind, the next thing you can do to increase your mindfulness is to do some
mindfulness meditation.
If you think meditation is when you just sit there and do nothing, you are kinda right.
When you practice mindfulness meditation, you sit there and focus on your breath.
That’s it.
There’s nothing too complicated about this exercise.
You don’t need any fancy mats or some fancy incense burning to do this exercise either.
When you start thinking about something, you simply redirect your focus onto your breathing.
Just because you started thinking doesn’t mean you have failed.
Remember, it’s impossible to completely stop thinking so there is nothing wrong with
being distracted.
Ideally, you should meditate for 10 to 20 minutes a day but when you are starting out,
it’s ok to start with a smaller time frame like 5 minutes.
If that stuff on meditating sounds a bit complicated, there’s a lot of good videos on youtube
that can help explain what meditation is.
If you are going to search up some videos, make sure they are talking about mindfulness
meditation since there are many forms of meditation for different purposes.
To recap, to declutter your mind and stop overthinking, there are 3 things you can do.
1.
Redirect your focus somewhere else.
2.
Declutter your physical belongings.
3.
Practice mindfulness and be more mindful.
Do you meditate?
Leave a comment below and check out the video shown on the endscreen if you want more videos
about minimalism.