Decluttering Your Thoughts

Upon starting my blog, I wrote a post on how to declutter your life. In that post, I shared the general life decluttering tips that helped me overcome anxiety disorder and panic attacks and transform my thoughts from negative to positive. Today, I would like to share some more specific steps that I took in the thought decluttering part.

Regarding decluttering your thoughts, the most important aspect to begin with, is getting your life more peaceful in a short period of time. You need your brain to realize that life is actually not as hectic as it has seemed. Life is probably already peaceful, odds are that you just didn’t know it before because of the many distractions constantly running in the background of your life.

Although some steps that I mention below might seem insignificant at first, everything I list was actually very helpful for me personally and some of the steps even worked wonders. Although I took many of the below given steps simultaneously, I think they will also work if you try them out one at a time.

Please note that these steps do not come with any guarantees. They might not have the same effect for others as they had for me, so I recommend making your own decision if you wish to try any of them or not.

Also, I think I should make this disclaimer just in case– it would be best to give your first try at these steps during your day off from work, because they are probably not fit to be included in your current typical work day.

Thought Decluttering Steps

So here goes, some of the detailed thought decluttering steps that I took, were the following:

1. Remove all wall clocks from your home – firstly, loosing the habit of constantly checking the time, can make you more relaxed very quickly. It will also make you enjoy living in the moment more.

You really do not need to know the time during every second of the day. You will also still have other types of clocks at hand (on your phone, computer, a wrist watch etc), so there is no need to fear that you will be late everywhere or miss out on something.

Wall clocks are the „loudest“ preachers of „you are late“, „you should be doing this and that instead of what you are doing now“, „start moving yourself already or you will be late“ etc. Removing these loudest forms of timekeepers will instantly make your life seem quieter and more peaceful.

2. Stop watching and listening to mass media news – just turn off the TV and radio for at least one day and also don’t read any of the mass media news on the internet.

You don’t actually need to know everything that is going on in the entire world. Everything you truly need to know for your life to run smoothly (at least during the day you are trying out this step), you already know. So don’t be afraid, nothing will happen if you take this step.

3. Stop watching the TV and listening to the radio entirely – this would be a good step to take for at least a couple of days. This step will demonstrate to your brain, how much negative influence actually pours into it daily from these mediums.

4. Watch only movies, series, shows with positive effects on you – by this I mean, stop watching things that make you mad, sad, frustrated, angry, depressed, stressed out etc.

Only watch things that make you feel happy, joyful and good. The best choice would be to only watch things that make you laugh. The more positive influences you add to your life, the better.

5. Only listen to music that has a positive effect on you – by this I mean, stop listening to music that makes you mad, sad, frustrated, angry, depressed, stressed out etc.

Only listen to music that makes you feel happy, joyful and good.

6. Spend time alone with your thoughts – do this as much as you can (depending on your specific life situation of course).

This allows you to focus your thoughts in the most efficient way. Any minute spent doing this step will benefit you greatly.

7. Take walks in the nature or just sit silently somewhere in the nature – connecting with nature removes worries and gives you strength and courage.

8. Meditate – I will note (in case there are people reading this post, who have not heard it before) – there are more ways to practice meditation, than just sitting in one place. For example, moving meditation can be done while dancing or walking.

There are many resources that introduce the different ways of meditation. I will not recommend anything specific at this point. I am sure that everyone, who has a wish to find a personally suitable meditation technique, will find it. Once you learn a bit about this topic, you will see that meditation is not that tricky as you might have thought.

9. Listen to silence – find a room in your home, where you can be alone, turn off every technological gadget that makes a sound and just listen to the silence. If you cannot „produce“ silence in your home, then try to find another place where you can be in silence (a library would be one possible choice).

By listening to silence you are again letting your brain know that life is not as hectic as it might have seemed before.

10. Do something that YOU love to do – life should actually be a series of things that we love to do, have and be, but if you are just starting out with thought decluttering, then I’m guessing it’s not the case for you yet. So just start by giving yourself the permission to do the things you love to do for at least one day.

When deciding what to do, do not ask for anyone else’s opinion about it. Decide for yourself, what you will be doing exactly. This is important because deciding by yourself will raise your self-confidence level and make you feel good about yourself.

If you cannot take a day, take half a day, a few hours or less, but just do it. Once you feel the awesome feeling of doing what you truly love to do, I’m sure you will find more time and ways to continue to multiply this feeling as often as possible.

With this step, I feel that I need to mention once more that I am not referring to egotism, narcissism or selfish behavior in any way. Loving and respecting oneself is not selfish. (I have written more about this in one of my previous posts „Say „I Love You“ … to Yourself“.)

11. Listen more than you talk – for at least one day, dedicate yourself to really listening to others. Talk as little as possible during this day and when you are listening to someone, really listen. By this I mean, turn off your own thoughts while listening to them.

This will give your thoughts/ brain a chance to rest for a while, thus also having a similar effect to meditation. This step will probably also give you a new perspective on life and how little we actually listen to each other during an average day.

12. Sleep – sleep as much as you can.

I believe that many illnesses and problems in this world arise from sleep deprivation. So give yourself a chance to sleep as much as you feel like it. Do this step as often as possible.

Also, don’t think of long sleeping hours as laziness! This has nothing to do with being lazy.

13. Use alarm clocks as rarely as possible – these little gadgets are just plain annoying. So try to give yourself as many days off as possible from using these things.

14. Stop thought criticism towards yourself and towards others – this means that you do not think badly about yourself and you do not criticize anything you do.

The main focus is on getting your thoughts decluttered (and positive) of course, so focusing on criticism towards others is not that important here. But unfortunately it is very difficult to stop criticizing yourself, when you are just starting out with thought decluttering (because we are so used to criticizing ourselves), so it helps if you don’t allow yourself to criticize anything/ anyone during this step.

15. Only say positive things to yourself and others – just train yourself to think before you speak and always stop if you want to say something negative. Only give yourself the permission to say your thought out loud if it is positive.

It is likely that at first you must force yourself a bit to follow this rule, but again it must be said that by following it you will gain a lot more than you lose. Also, it will become automatic at some point, so the force effect is only temporary.

16. Keep away from as many negative outside influences as possible – this includes people, situations, things, etc that make you feel badly about yourself. Eliminate as many negative aspects from your life as you can. People are probably the most difficult question in this point, so take your time to consider the effects of your different relationships (family, friends, acquaintances etc) before you make any decisions and actions regarding anyone.

17. Be kind to yourself – allow yourself to live your life in the way that feels right and good to you. As long as you live with a kind approach to everything, you cannot go wrong.

This is it for today. 🙂 I will probably get back to this topic also in the future, since keeping thoughts decluttered is a continuous process.

As with life in general, the whole topic of decluttering your life is very personal and should be done with careful consideration, so do not feel like you have to rush with anything against your will. You have to feel comfortable with every choice you make.

This whole process is meant to make your life better and more joyful, so take as much time as you need with every step. Also feel free to modify the given steps and create your own steps that work the best for you in your specific situation.

To sum this post up in a very general way – it’s all about balance. Find your unique balance (regarding everything) and your life will be decluttered.

I would be very interested to learn about the effective steps that you have discovered for yourself regarding the thought decluttering topic. So please feel free to comment and share your ideas below.

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