Mind Clutter

Have you ever one day just ,after weeks or even months of procrastinating ,decided to say, “you know what ,let me stop living like a filthy pig and just clean up this sty I call a room of mine” and then afterwards you are like “whoa ,I actually have more space in this room than I thought”? Well if you haven’t please do clean your room before reading this post because that’s what it is about, de-cluttering ,but in this case, your mind instead of your room.

 Our minds work just like our rooms. They act as storage for our property, this property being our thoughts in this case. What goes in and stays in our minds is completely up to us. The problem is that, just like with our rooms, we are terrible at realizing when there is just too much stuff occupying our minds and time for spring cleaning. Ok maybe let me rephrase. We know when our rooms are dirty, otherwise all those centuries of civilization would have gone to waste. The thing we are terrible at is endeavoring to actually clean that room and put things in order by getting rid of whatever is unimportant and correctly arranging whatever is left behind. Same thing with our minds, we know precisely when we have too much going on up there because it manifests in our physical being but we still decide to ignore those signs and continue to put off that all important spring cleaning.

 Robin Sharma said on The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (wonderful read by the way, highly recommended) that 95% of our thoughts are things that we have thought of before. This means we spend most of our time wasting our brain capacity and function by thinking about the same things over and over again. I know recycling is good for our mother earth but recycling of thoughts is terrible for our minds. We keep thinking about the same issues that are bothering us instead of actually doing something about those issues so they can leave our minds. We keep holding onto to thoughts that are harming us instead of proactively facing the issues that cause those thoughts. We keep thinking about scenarios of us solving those issues instead of actually solving those issues. We live too much in our heads and we forget that in your head, you get what you want, you get your issues solved by magic but in the real world, which is where you actually reside and not that Narnia in your head, it takes actual effort and initiative to conquer whatever is bothering you. When you live more in your head than in the real world, you are not doing anything to clean that cluttered room aka your mind.

 It is not fun having to deal with whatever issues are causing the clutter in our minds. Day dreaming about doing something about it instead of actually doing something about seems like such a convenient alternative, the comfort zone. Comfortable as comfort zones are, the problem with them is that they do not help us grow. The ship is safest when it’s docked at the port but that is not what ships were made for is it? That ship is you. Spending your time day dreaming and wishing things were like that instead of like this is wasting your potential. Go out there and face that storm head on, that is what you were made for.

 Taking time to actually clean your room sucks yes, but it is necessary because tripping over week old plates of food is really not fun. The same logic applies to your thoughts. Proactively confronting and dealing with them might suck but in the long run, you will look back and realize that the effort was very much worth it. You cannot do good if you do not feel good. Like the great Miss Lauryn Hill said, “how are you gon win when you aint right within? “. Doing good starts at the mind because the mind is the control center for everything we do and if your control center is cluttered and you cannot navigate through it properly then welp, you are in for a rough ride.
 
The mind is a good servant but a terrible master. It will let itself be filled with all kinds of thoughts, positive or negative. The filtering process all rests on you. You decide what you let reside in your mind and what you kick out, no one else. Your peace of mind and whether you attain and keep it solely rests on you. You are the gatekeeper to your mind and it is your job to drag whatever is trying to disturb your peace of mind the hell out. The thoughts that you let harbor in your mind make your world so if you let even negatives ones stay in your head rent free, you are destroying your own world. When we master our own minds and assume control of whatever goes in and out, we will definitely be able to master our own lives because like I mentioned earlier, our minds are the control centers of our lives.

Our minds are the epicenters of our being. They are where everything happens before it manifests in the physical world so calling them anything less than the most important part of our being is an utter understatement. Unfortunately, important and powerful as they are, they still rely on us to control what resides inside them and what does not. They rely on us to tell them what they should hold onto and what they should cast away and it’s on us to give them clear instructions of what to permeate and what not to permeate. No one but us is responsible for this filtering process and as much as it sucks to do the cleaning, it has to be done, it needs to be done because our lives depend on it, literally.

So please, I urge everyone to identify every single issue that is causing the clutter in your mind and proactively confront that issue and do whatever needs to be done to put it to rest. After the cleaning up process, maintenance should be done by minutely scrutinizing every thought and deciding which one gets to reside in your mind and which one does not get past the door. HAPPY SPRING CLEANING EVERYONE!!

Comments

ADVERTISEMENT

Popular Posts