How To Attain Mental Clarity
I’ve had a small challenge recently and it took me some soul searching to find a solution to it. I thought it wise to share my experience with you, maybe it will be of help. I do not intend this to be a long article but just a few paragraphs.
As humans, we spend hours every day taking in new concepts and retrieving them from our brains. It’s natural to be tired overtime or get bored without a reason. The mind is a very strong tool, but an equally weak one when it comes to destructions…especially emotional ones. A blurry head is never the one to give you the patience you need to attain mental clarity. When in such a situation, I use these tips to help me maintain a clear head to do hard things; study, work etc
1 . Prepare Your Brain — Before a task, calm your brain, says Venezky. “Take a minute or two to sit in a comfortable position and breathe deeply into your stomach,” he says. “You don’t have to sit cross-legged or chant. Let your body calm down before you approach your work. You’ll find it really helps you concentrate.”
2. Take short breaks — Instead of succumbing to distraction, build it in, suggests a study from the University of Illinois. Psychologist Alejandro Lleras found that participants who were given short breaks during a 50-minute task performed better than those who worked straight through. The study examines a phenomenon called “vigilance decrement,” or losing focus over time. Taking a short break in the middle of a long task reenergizes the brain. Read the research paper here.
3. Make a thought diary — Whenever any thoughts come into your mind write them down, it will help you to come back and build on them later. You will also be able to realize that what triggers you to overthink. I’m one big fan of daily journaling, I look forward to writing every day.
4. Talk with your friends or loved ones, and discuss your problems, it will be easy to solve then. For example- when anybody asks you to solve their problems you very easily solve that, but if the same problems happen to you then you became unable to solve them. The same thing will happen if you asked somebody about your problems.
Being an introvert, this was a hard thing. It was a bit awkward when I tried to open up to someone. The attention, advice and care my friend gave me kept me going. Talking it out helps. Be careful about who you talk to, let it be someone you trust.
5. Engage yourself in hobbies, like watching movies, drawing, playing with a Rubick's cube etc. these hobbies will make you excited to do. And you do not anymore feel stressed. It will then lead you to stop overthinking.
6. Be a playful kitten. If you have any little siblings, play with them, it will also help you.
7. Meditation — Meditation is another key to solving this. First, be consistent, make your schedule such that you get 30 minutes extra to meditate.
At first, you will not able to meditate properly, but you have to practice every day, try to focus on your breathing and you will eventually catch up.
8. Walk 10 minutes in the presence of bright sunlight. It helps to maintain our normal biological clock. Sunlight is 5 to 10 times brighter than our indoor light and it turns out that our body needs sunlight in order to set our circadian rhythms right.
And biological clock helps you to maintain hormone regulation, time for sleep, time to feel energetic, any change in the normal biological clock leads us to stress, depression which is one of the main causes of overthinking. Imagine if you feel tired all of the day and when night comes you cannot sleep well. These are the common problems that most people with anxiety have, the solution is to adjust ad make a routine for yourself.
UPDATE:
- All my upcoming technical articles will be in my Hashnode blog
- This medium account will only contain non-technical posts
