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

by S.J. Scott

Our powerful brains are constantly processing all sorts of experiences and analyzing them in the form of thoughts. Thoughts form what we perceive to be reality.

Our thoughts make us restless, empty, and agitated as we project into the future or look to the past for answers. In fact, nearly every negative thought you have relates to the past or future.

This thinking/judging dynamic infects us with painful emotions. The more fearful, guilt-ridden, regretful thoughts we have, the more stressed, anxious, depressed, and angry we feel. Sometimes our thoughts paralyze us with bad feelings, and it’s those feelings that rob us of inner peace and contentment.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined the phrase “paradox of choice,” which sums up his findings that increased choice leads to greater anxiety, indecision, paralysis, and dissatisfaction. More choices might afford objectively better results, but they won’t make you happy.

Dr. Rick Hanson, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, in an article on his website says, “To keep our ancestors alive, Mother Nature evolved a brain that routinely tricked them into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources (for dealing with threats and fulfilling opportunities).” Thus evolved the “negativity bias,” our tendency to react to negative stimuli more intensely than positive.

“The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones.”

Mindfulness requires retraining your brain to stay out of the mental clutter from the future and focus instead on the present moment. When you are mindful, you no longer attach to your thoughts. You are simply present in whatever you happen to be doing.

“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there—buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.” – Deepak Chopra

The steps to meditating are simple and straightforward, but the practice is not as easy as it seems. You’ll discover that, at first, trying to quiet your mind and maintain focus is like attempting to train fleas. But the more you practice, the easier and more enjoyable the experience becomes.

Attempting to train fleas! That's a funny way to describe it