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

by S.J. Scott

When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, make a mental list of everything good in your life and focus on each blessing for a minute or two. Do this before you go to sleep as well.

away from you,

You replay conversations that were unpleasant or hurtful. You dwell on a broken relationship or a lost love. Maybe you reflect with longing and sadness about children who have grown and moved out of the house, friends who have drifted away, or siblings who seem disconnected.

Perhaps you encountered relationship pain that was so deep and wounding you have never really healed from it, and it continues to disrupt your life and sabotage your thoughts. Looping these memories can trigger unresolved anger, shame, guilt, fear, and sadness.

Dragging the past around in this way is a heavy burden that drains you of energy and inner peace.

“We can learn to break the habit of accumulating and perpetuating old emotion by flapping our wings, metaphorically speaking, and refrain from mentally dwelling on the past, regardless of whether something happened yesterday or 30 years ago. We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making.”

If there’s an unresolved problem or hurt between you and another person, take action to resolve the situation. Rather than stewing about the past issue, initiate communication with the other person to talk through it, even if you feel you were “wronged.”

but the discomfort of doing this is far less than the slow torment of lingering on past pain.

When you mentally replay a situation over and over, your perspective becomes the ultimate truth for you. It seems impossible to view the situation from any other angle.

Challenge your own interpretation by stepping into the other person’s shoes.

How might they see what happened between you? What could you have said or done that they might have misinterpreted? Is it possible that your memories are incorrect? Does the other person have a valid point of view? Is it possible that things didn’t occur exactly as you believe they did?

“Forgiving others is essential for spiritual growth. Your experience of someone who has hurt you, while painful, is now nothing more than a thought or feeling that you carry around. These thoughts of resentment, anger, and hatred represent slow, debilitating energies that will dis-empower you if you continue to let these thoughts occupy space in your head. If you could release them, you would know more peace.”

When you find yourself ruminating about their past offenses, shift your thoughts away from them and to yourself.

“What have I learned from this? How can I use it to improve myself?”

Offering forgiveness might require you forgive yourself for something you said or did in a relationship.

Rather than beating yourself up over past relationship mistakes, try to honor the past and see your actions as a blessing. They were part of who you were at the time, and you needed to learn from them.

Mindfulness expert and Professor of Medicine Emeritus Jon Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment with intention, while letting go of judgment.

This ability alone can save you from days and even years of mental and emotional distress that depletes your emotional energy.

“Mindfulness isn’t about denying or burying our emotions,”

“It’s simply about cultivating a different relationship to our feelings and experiences, in which we are in the driver’s seat. We can see our feelings and thoughts like a passing train roaring through the station, but we alone choose if we want to get on board.”

Attuned presence allows your partner to feel less alone with his or her feelings.

Listen without defensiveness. When you and your partner have a conflict or emotionally charged conversation, presence means you listen without preparing your response or defense.

The willingness to reflect back to your partner the words you hear from them shows that you are actively listening.

Reflecting back isn’t simply parroting what your partner says. It’s a way of confirming that what you heard is actually what your partner meant. It opens dialog for clarification and invites discussion about mutual resolution and understanding. This is a highly valuable mindfulness technique during times of conflict, hurt feelings, or misunderstandings.

Being present with your partner is a mature relationship skill. It means you can’t respond or react in childlike ways, using passive-aggressive words or behaviors like eye rolling, the silent treatment, or sulking. Throwing tantrums or having angry outbursts always prevents open, authentic communication.

Share the issue without blame or criticism. State your perception of the issue, how it made you feel, and what you need from your partner in order to restore your connection.

Is it possible that I’m not entirely right? Is my partner’s perspective valid to some extent? Am I being the person I want to be with my partner? What have I learned from this conflict? What is the deeper issue triggering my reactions? How are my wounded feelings getting in the way of my growth? How do I want to change as a result of this interaction?

Where you choose to spend time every day ultimately determines the quality of your life.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris

Make sure it immediately follows a previously established habit like having your coffee in the morning or brushing your teeth.

For more on this, check out Steve’s article on how to build a habit in eight steps.

“The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”

All of this digital input creates agitation and has an addictive quality that pulls you away from more meaningful pursuits that energize you rather than depleting you.

How could I interact face-to-face with people in my work more often?

We feel guilty if our hours aren’t packed with “productive” activities that are either income-producing or ego-enlarging.

The time we gain is quickly sucked up to quell the anxiety created by not enough to do.

“Individualistic cultures, which emphasize achievement over affiliation, help cultivate this time-is-money mindset. This creates an urgency to make every

moment count,

We’ve already discussed how excessive digital activities can lead to mental agitation.

It

may make you hyperventilate to consider this idea, but one of the best ways to gain mental clarity in your life is to frequently take “digital sabbaticals” where you have no access to your cell phone, tablet, computer, or any device that connects you to the Internet.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high) is a Hungarian psychologist and pioneer in the work on understanding happiness, creativity, human fulfillment, and the notion of “flow”—a term he coined to describe a state of experience involving heightened focus and immersion in activities such as art, play, and work. He’s the author of the bestselling book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Cziksentmihalyi defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

During a “flow” state, a person is completely absorbed in an activity, especially one that involves creative abilities. During this activity, they feel “strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak o...

There are clear goals every step of the way. There is immediate feedback to one’s actions. There is a balance between challenges and skills. Action and awareness are merged. Distractions are excluded from consciousness. There is no worry of failure. Self-consciousness disappears. The sense of time becomes distorted. The activity becomes an end in itself.

An activity with a clear set of rules or defined goals makes the challenge better because you can act without questioning what should be done, or how.

However, if it’s too hard, you’ll be overwhelmed and you won’t be able to achieve that subconscious competence that is necessary for the flow state.

For example, you might say, “I’m going to write a chapter in my book. I’ll know that I’m succeeding if I define what the chapter will be about, outline the key points I want to make, research the facts I need to include, and know how I’ll structure the material.”

Once your concentration is broken, you have to rebuild the flow state.

It will take you at least 15 minutes to begin to get into the flow state, and a while longer after that until you feel fully present and immersed in the activity. Once you enter the flow state, you want to have plenty of time to complete your goals and reach the “peak experience.”