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

by S.J. Scott

Whether they are negative, neutral, or positive, these thoughts clutter our minds, just like your home can get cluttered when you have too many possessions.

Your brain contains about 100 billion neurons, with another billion in your spinal cord. The total number of connections between neurons—the cells responsible for processing—has been estimated at 100 trillion synapses.

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.

Your constant inner dialog distracts you from what is happening around you, right here and now. It causes you to miss valuable experiences and sabotages the joy of the present moment.

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.

Thinking may seem automatic and uncontrollable, but many of our thought patterns are habitual and, well, thoughtless.

We’re filling our homes with things we don’t need and filling our time with a steady stream of tweets, updates, articles, blog posts, and cat videos.

All of this extraneous stuff and data not only sucks our time and productivity, but also produces reactive, anxious, and negative thoughts.

The human nervous system has been evolving for 600 million years,

“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. Negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense (e.g., loud, bright) positive ones. They are also perceived more easily and quickly. Hanson says, “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.

Even though you take about 20,000 breaths a day,

One of the best ways to detach from negative thoughts and gain control over your mind is through slow, deep, rhythmic breathing.

If you establish a 5 – to 10-minute breathing habit, you can easily use this habit as a trigger and starting point for your meditation practice.

“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

“Meditation is a lot like doing reps at a gym. It strengthens your attention muscle.”

Your goal is to increasingly become the witness to all sounds, sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they arise and pass away. View them as though you are observing them from a distance without judgment or internal comment.

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way, you are right!” – Henry Ford

“Thus, evolution has shaped our brains so that we are hardwired to suffer psychologically: to compare, evaluate, and criticize ourselves, to focus on what we’re lacking, to rapidly become dissatisfied with what we have, and to imagine all sorts of frightening scenarios, most of which will never happen.

While the negativity bias is real, it isn’t impervious to your efforts for change and self-awareness.

impartial manner where

you’re not judging any particular thought. Simply be conscious of yourself as a detached witness to your thoughts.

This reinforces the fact that you are not your thoughts.

Try the Rubber Band Trick

Immerse yourself in a project that involves focus and brainpower. If you’re stuck in the car or waiting in line, go through the multiplication tables in your head or try to memorize a poem.

“Any search for a ‘pain-free existence’ is doomed to failure.”

Rather than allowing “all or nothing” thinking to have a free pass, challenge these negative thoughts whenever they occur. This simply means coming up with a concrete example that contradicts the thought by reminding yourself of a positive event or previous “win.”

Using positive reminders might feel awkward at first, but eventually you’ll train yourself to interrupt those cycles of negative thinking. This habit helps you take control

of your reality and puts a roadblock in front of the never-ending highway of self-sabotaging beliefs.

You can’t completely eradicate your troubled thoughts during hard times, but you can lessen them through acceptance.

When you struggle against the reality of a bad situation, you’re adding another layer of suffering to your psyche. You can’t worry or guilt yourself into a solution. Instead, you need a clear head and a calm mind.

Overthinking is usually a pointless activity, so why not turn that energy into structured thinking and then action?

In fact, one of the first mindful actions you could take is to define your values and priorities for the next year.

Writing Practicing an instrument Constructing something by hand Painting or drawing Working on a complex problem Studying Memorizing something Practicing a speech Designing something from scratch

All of these activities require focus and some level of mental challenge, which helps prevent you from falling back into random overthinking or worry.

Nor do we know how to prioritize it all. We become reactors to what life throws at us, rather than carefully evaluating what is best for us.

One of the simplest ways to eliminate mental clutter and live a more fulfilling life is to define your values and guiding principles for your life.

Because 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.

Who do you want to be and how do you want to live your life?

clarify your life priorities so you know exactly how you want to spend your time, energy, and money.

We recommend you begin with the priority that can make the most positive difference in your life or where you feel the most imbalance.

The renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow

reminds us

“the ability to be in the present moment is a major component ...

every moment in your life, every breath, every step you take, should be consciously experienced

as a moment of joyous arrival.

He suggests you don’t need to wait for change, for something better, for the future...