Declutter Your Mind: How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Thinking

by S.J. Scott

your core values can serve as a measuring stick for all of your choices and decisions in life, keeping you focused on the person you want to be and the life you wish to lead. By living in alignment with your values, you create the best environment for happiness, inner peace, and clear thinking.

Core values form a foundation for your life that endures through time, life difficulties, and major changes.

Embracing your core values is like being a tree with deep and stable roots—the storms of life will not dislodge you. When you’re clear on your values, you reduce...

Values act as our compass to put us back on course every single day, so that day after day, we’re moving in the direction that takes us closer and closer to our definition of the “best” life we could possibly live. The “best” is your own ideal, but generally as you get closer to this ideal, you’ll enjoy increasingly positive shades of “better” even if you never reach “best.” And this makes sense because many results in life exist on a continuum.

When you embrace the truth that contentment and change can happen simultaneously, you reduce the tension between thinking it’s an either/or proposition. There is a way to establish a balance between mindfulness and self-creation.

The simplest way to focus on what’s truly important in life is to create S.M.A.R.T. goals that will be achieved in the immediate future.

Why should you focus on three-month goals? Because your life is fast-paced and constantly shifting. In order to keep up with all these changes, it’s often better to create goals for the short term because this helps maintain consistent effort and a high level of motivation.

So to keep things simple, we recommend identifying the three to four areas of your life that are most important to you right now, and then creating a specific S.M.A.R.T. goal for each one that you hope to achieve within the next three months.

It’s not always easy to consistently work on your goals when you have a dozen other obligations. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this dilemma—schedule a weekly review session where you create a daily action plan for the next seven days.

Answer three questions: Think carefully about the next seven days and answer these three questions: What are my personal obligations? What are my priority projects? How much time do I have? Your responses to these questions are extremely important because they will determine the amount of time that can be devoted to your goals during the next seven days.

Schedule project tasks: After answering these three questions, map out the next seven days.

Process captured ideas:

The weekly review is an important part of achieving your goals.

It’s impossible to achieve your goals without action.

Turn your goal into a project: The easiest way to do this is to look at the target date and work your way backward. Visualize reaching this milestone.

Schedule time to work on goals: How much time you spend on each goal depends on what’s required for each activity. Some tasks might only require a few minutes each week, while others require hours of your day (that’s why it’s important to understand the time commitment of each goal).

Turn goals into priority tasks: We all have those busy schedules full of activities that conflict with one another.

Schedule time for single actions: Many people get bogged down by the single actions that are important but not immediately urgent. A quick fix for this is to schedule time each week to complete a number of single actions.

The key to achieving anything in life is consistency.

That’s why you should review your “goal project” on a daily basis and make sure you’re hitting every important milestone. We recommend creating specific measurements for each step of the process and using a weekly review to make sure you’re touching on those as well.

You work hard on your goals every day. You even review them on a weekly and daily basis.

people don’t review their goals to see if they’re actually worth pursuing. That’s why it’s important to evaluate your goals every three months, make sure they are aligned with your life purpose, and then create new goals based on what you’ve learned.

Too many people live lives of quiet desperation. They wake up with a low-level sense of dread, anxiety, or sadness. At work, they feel underutilized, unappreciated, and underwhelmed. And when they get home, they feel mentally and physically exhausted, with just enough energy to take care of the kids, fix a meal, and plop onto the couch to watch a few hours of television. Then they wake up and do it all over again.

Using your values and priorities as guides, write down what you want in every area of your life—especially in your work. You may not know precisely what to include, but a good starting point is to describe what you DON’T want.

Write a list of everything in your work that you do enjoy or view as positive—whether it’s the comfy desk chair or the client you really like. Write the same list for your personal life, including everything about your life that is working well for you.

Set aside 10 minutes a day to read everything you can about your interests or ideas for potential passions. Look at how other people have translated these interests and ideas into careers. Make notes about anything that seems interesting or relevant to you.

When moving from something safe and secure to the unknown, it’s natural to feel a lot of fear. Thinking, planning, fretting, and pontificating only go so far, and they contribute to your mental clutter.

One of the positive outcomes of this 14-step exercise is that you create a sense of purpose as you take control of your life and move toward something more meaningful. In fact, the effort of working toward your passion is sometimes as satisfying as the outcome.

Much of our mental distress and negative thinking comes from feeling uncertain and out-of-control about our lives. Once you start taking action toward finding your passion, you’ll have more and more mental clarity and peace of mind.

“Close relationships and social connections keep you happy and healthy. That is the bottom line. People who were more concerned with achievement or less concerned with connection were less happy. Basically, humans are wired for personal connections.”

The key is not just having relationships—it’s having high-quality relationships. Whether with a romantic partner, friend, family member, or even work associate, a high-quality relationship involves: Prioritizing the relationship Open communication Healthy conflict resolution Mutual trust and respect Shared interests Some level of emotional and/or intellectual intimacy Acceptance and forgiveness Physical touch (for personal relationships)

The practice of mindfulness allows us to be present with our partners, to be less emotionally reactive with them, and to more quickly overcome stressful situations in the relationship.

Empathic (or active) listening is a willingness to step outside of your distracted mind and listen to their words in a non-judgmental way. Empathy is the grace note of empathic listening, as it allows the speaker to feel safe, validated, and understood.

Active listening isn’t part of a conversation in the traditional sense. There’s no give and take, sharing dialogue, or competing to talk. With empathic listening, it’s all about the other person and what they are trying to communicate—with their words, with the words left unspoken, and with their emotions.

Allow the other person to dominate the conversation and determine the topic discussed. Remain completely attentive to what the other person is saying. Avoid interrupting, even when you have something important to add. Ask open-ended questions that invite more from the speaker. Avoid coming to premature conclusions or offering solutions. Reflect back to the speaker what you heard them say.

Negative thinking can have a damaging impact on the quality of your relationships. If your language is filled with fearful comments, self-condemnation, disparaging remarks about others, or self-pity, you do nothing more than convince others that you are a negative person to be around.

there should be five times as many positive interactions between partners as there are negative in order for a relationship to be stable and a marriage to last.

Awareness is always the first step toward change. We recommend paying close attention to what you say during a conversation, particularly in your love relationship. Place a mental filter between your thoughts and words, recognizing the power your words have on one of the most important people in your life.

Resist the temptation to simply react to someone’s words or actions. Take a moment to choose your words carefully. Speak in ways that are loving, compassionate, and respectful, and try to use a calm, non-threatening voice, even if the other person is agitated or angry.

A loving kindness meditation focuses on developing feelings of warmth towards others. You can use a loving kindness meditation specifically to improve your relationships with specific people in your life in order to reduce negative thinking about them. This kind of meditation cultivates our awareness of others as human beings deserving of compassion and love—even when they are being difficult—which can decrease relationship conflicts and improve your own well-being.

practicing seven weeks of loving kindness meditation increased feelings of love, joy, contentment, gratitude, pride, hope, interest, amusement, and awe.

You can practice a loving kindness meditation anywhere, but start with a short 10-minute meditation in a quiet place without distraction. Here is a simple process for practicing this habit: Sit in a comfortable position, either on the floor with your legs crossed and your hands sitting loosely in your lap, or sitting up straight in a chair with your legs uncrossed, feet on the floor, and hands resting in your lap. Close your eyes and take two or three deep cleansing breathes, and then begin counting each breath, going from 1 to 10. Once you are relaxed, bring to mind a person to whom you wish to send loving kindness, and consider their positive qualities—the light of goodness you see in them. After you focus on their positive qualities for a few minutes, mentally say the following statements directed to your loved one: “May you be happy,” “May you be well,” “May you be loved.” There is nothing wrong with altering the words slightly to focus on the needs of the individual. There are no hard and fast rules. You might substitute the person’s name rather than saying “you.” You could also add thoughts like: May you be free from inner and outer harm and danger. May you be safe and protected. May you be free of mental suffering or distress. May you be free of physical pain and suffering. May you be healthy and strong. May you be able to live in this world happily, peacefully, joyfully, with ease.

Comparing ourselves unfavorably to other people is one of the major causes of mental turmoil and emotional suffering.

These thoughts can spiral out of control, making us feel bad about ourselves while viewing other people as the cause of our unhappiness. By measuring ourselves against the achievements, possessions, or traits of everyone else, we set the stage for the disintegration of potentially fulfilling relationships.

Comparison fosters so many negative feelings that it destroys more than just your peace of mind—it damages your relationships.

Feelings of envy, jealously, shame, guilt, embarrassment, self-loathing, resentment, and anger are not qualities that enhance a relationship or make you attractive to others.

“Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.”

No amount of comparing, fretting, and ruminating will change who you are, how you look, what you’ve achieved, or what you own in this moment. The person you are right now is all you’ve got, at least for today. Rather than resisting this person, lean into it. Accept it, and acknowledge that you are perfectly okay right now. Simply adopting this moment of radical self-acceptance is liberating and empowering.

God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference.

Comparing yourself to others you admire can inspire you to change for the better, to step up your game, and to improve your life. But sometimes, no matter how hard you may try, you will never be able to match the accomplishments of a particular person.