Hey Dan here and in this video I'm answering a question sent in about how
do you deal with a buzzing mind in other words an ever busy always thinking
overwhelming mind now this question happened to be sent in from someone who
identified themselves as an INFP personality and I think there's some
reasoning behind that and I'll talk about that in the video as well in terms
of creative minds and how to handle this so the first thing is in terms of having
a busy mind is you're not alone this is how we are all wired and why there is
such a move towards things like meditation or a wellness practice or
whatever it is but there's definitely certain things you can do to calm this
down and have more direction not just in the moment in terms of kind of a
meditation Zen sense of having a peaceful mind but in terms of overall in
your life in terms of being less maybe reactive and changing direction a lot
and being very emotional and that sort of thing it makes sense to me that the
personality types like an INFP or an ENFP more creative types tend to have a
busy mind or have the sense of a buzz in mind and if you look at a lot of great
artists there happens to be a correlation with things like alcoholism
and drugs and I think a big part of that is trying to calm our minds and trying
to find that kind of peace because we can't turn off our heads now I'm all for
having a glass or a bottle of wine when I stay up and right at night but I also
think there's some other ways to calm your mind and get that freedom without
having to necessarily indulge so one of the absolute best ways to have more
freedom in terms of your head to calm that buzzing mind is actually believe it
or not to give yourself more structure so you probably are someone who likes
freedom you don't like to be held down by rules me too I understand but giving
yourself more structure will actually help you have a lot calmer of a mind and
you can do this in two different ways one is big-picture planning like
planning your week in advance or having goals in terms of what you're trying to
accomplish really having to focus on that and that's going to help you
calm down in terms of always thinking about possibilities if you have the kind
of mind where one day you're thinking hey I could start that business and the
next day you're thinking like oh maybe I'll you know draw cartoons for a living
and the next day maybe I'll be a public speaker you have that kind of a crazy
mind I emphasize whether you trust me but one of the best ways to deal with it
is to pick a goal basically pick a target of where you're going to focus
and then give yourself Direction talk to yourself and when you have these
thoughts come up that tell you hey you know maybe I want to do this other thing
or this other thing and you're debating 20 different options for your life just
say hey Dan remember last week we decided we're just going to focus on
this thing for the next month yeah shut up just do that one thing and I'm not
even kidding give yourself that direction
so set a focus and then if you need to and I encourage it have some self-talk
reduce remind yourself hey this is where I'm focusing maybe next year I look at
these other opportunities but right now I'm going to give myself a chance to
succeed in this one so the other place is really important to direct your mind
is in day to day activities and specifically how you're going to spend
your time and focus so if you sit down to do your work whether that's studying
for school work in a job or working on your own business and you just sit down
and kind of see what will happen you're going to open up your mind to everything
it's going to be really hard to focus where if you plan out your day and say
okay from 10:00 a.m. to noon I'm going to be writing from 2:00 to 4:00 I'll be
reading or studying whatever it is you plan these things out during that time
your job is to tell your mind to shut up and just do the main thing so the same
thing if you're working on something and then you have these thoughts pop in if I
should be doing this know maybe I could do this oh what about what about you
know if I could trip it no tell your mind to shut up and actually just
redirect yourself to the work at hand and say you know okay I'll get back to
that later one thing that helps with this is if you keep a pen and paper by
you not a text file it's better if it's manual and just write down these
thoughts so the thought comes in like oh why don't I check on airfares or oh I
wonder how that gets made and you are about to go on that wicked pee
a journey that never ends I would encourage you just to write it down
really quick and then get back to the task at hand rather than following those
whims all the time the more you train yourself to just focus on the one thing
at a time and not follow these winds these crazy thoughts that come up the
easier it becomes you build these habits and you you strengthen that discipline
to focus on one thing and the reason this in terms of focusing in the moment
and also focusing on your life like climbing out is so important is if you
don't give yourself direction your mind is naturally going to go everywhere what
you expect it to do you're not directing it you need to give yourself a place to
go and then trust your discipline and that to get you there but if you don't
have that place to go then you're asking your mind to think of every possibility
to play out every scenario and you're just feeding this machine of the buzzing
mind and it's going to make it harder and harder to be focused and that for
that reason if you've been doing this for a long time it's probably going to
take a little while to change those habits so this for the first couple
months of trying to be trying to do things differently might be a bit harder
just stick with it now there's a whole second aspect to this and that's around
your prefrontal cortex and strengthening that muscle that's the part of your
brain that's in charge of things like making decisions and focusing and where
to direct your unconscious mind essentially it's a lot weaker than your
unconscious mind and that is why for most of us we get overwhelmed by
emotions and controlled by our unconscious mind sometimes called our
lizard brain or a reptile brain and that's the part that's a lot more
powerful but more emotionally driven and not what we want to be controlling us
necessarily in the moment or dealing with planning so there's some ways to
strengthen your prefrontal cortex and therefore have a lot more control over
how you focus and where you focus the best way and I know this might be a
repetitive topic for some people but it is meditation this is one of the things
that's been proven to actually change brain matter and build up your ability
to focus change direction just maintain that part of your brain really well so
meditation to me a no-brainer no pun intended in terms of
strengthening that part of your brain the other things though that you can do
is around diet and exercise what I found myself is if I'm eating like a protein
fat heavy diet my brain works awesome I can focus I can think I work a lot
better I'm eating a lot of sugar carbs that kind of thing I just find my brain
doesn't work as well and I don't have the same ability to focus so if you're
on a very sugar kind of carb heavy heavy diet that's going to weaken your brain's
ability just to work at its best and you might notice this where you kind of
change directions or you don't have a lot of energy all that it could very
much be tied to diet and so try changing that up adding fish oil to your diet
eating more fat healthy fat any fat well not trans fat but the other fat and a
more protein and you might find that actually really helped as well
and then lastly exercise exercise just helps with the brain with proper
biochemistry hormones all that kind of stuff that I don't fully understand but
I know that exercise is going to really help you there so takeaway from this
video is to give yourself structure in terms of your days how you spend your
hours and also on your week your month your year like planning out and setting
the goals and then giving yourself mechanically what you need to excel here
and calm that buzzing mind and that's going to be things like meditation
eating healthier fats and proteins and then exercising on a regular basis if
you've enjoyed this video I want to thank you for watching and encourage you
to subscribe to the channel because I'll be making a lot more videos on staying
focused productivity and personality types as well so if you've enjoyed this
there's a lots more good stuff to come and I'm currently publishing every
Monday Wednesday and Friday so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on
those and catch you in the next one