Get your brain on your side and not against you
Our brains are constantly feeding us thoughts automatically.
Thoughts are often big contributors to how we feel on a daily basis.
Those two points highlight how important making sure we are aware of our thoughts is. Explore your thoughts. Realize thoughts are things we make up, they are not real. Don’t get fixated on thoughts that are not bringing value to you.
Note: Prior to last year, I had never explored/spent time focusing on my mental health, so I am sharing my thoughts and experience as the beginner that I am.
Being self-aware
If you are not focusing on the present moment, a thought has captured our attention.It is important to point out that the point of being more self-aware is not to suppress negative thoughts, and instead just having the tools to being able to identify that this thought is negative, not bringing value, and it is just something our heads made up. By being able to identify these situations we are able to take control of our focus and redirect it to what is actually going on, in the present.Is this thought bringing value to you?I asked the previous question because there are many kinds of thoughts, and spending the time to improve our ability to identify when we are having this auto-generated thoughts will help us filter out (have more control over deciding to focus on them or not).Regardless, we should be writing them down. Doing this will help us get it out of our heads and into a place that you can revisit later on when you decide that it is the time to think about that thought and work on developing it.
Practicing self-awareness
Below are two of the tools and practices that I have been using that have help me get started being self-aware.
Meditation
Specially at the beginning, it was hard to notice any life-changing benefits from it. I did notice feeling more calm as I was about to begin my day, and also would help me clean my mental slate for bed time. I made it priority to build this practice as a habit (Constantly learning new tools/practices that could become part of my healthy habits).Personally, I started using Headspace to ease into this practice and haven’t stopped since. They have lots of different types of meditation, targeted to specific situations that you may be facing with. They have great quotes around whatever your meditation session was about, and I often look forward to reading it and writing it down after my morning session.Something I picked up from one of the sessions, that has stuck with me is that we need to practice meditation without the expectation that we will be pro’s at it from the very beginning, and that every session will be different. Andy from Headspace made the analogy that our minds are like a constant stream of water. We are always seeing something new, even if our heads don’t think about how water molecules are just flowing away. Thinking about the sound it makes, it will never be the same, and it’s the same with the water itself; and our thoughts.Practicing meditation is something that with practice we will always continue to get better with.Note: Often people get discouraged when they get too excited to start their practice and force themselves to long meditation sessions. Start small. And, as you feel you are getting better and better at this practice, and feel adventurous maybe increase your session until then. Listen to how you are feeling.
Journaling
I have stuck with a very simple structure to my journaling. This is going to change as we continue to learn and live life. It is a great tool!Have heard about Bullet journaling? I invite you to watch a video or two about it. Ryder Carroll shared this with the world and now there’s an entire community of people that continue to develop new ways of utilizing this tool.Currently my journaling has consisted in the following:
AM
Write something you are grateful for
Write something you are doing to make today great
Write an affirmation message (This is something I still struggle with)
“Write down the Headspace quote that I got after my 10 minute morning meditation session.”
PM
Write down three things that happened today
Write something that you would like to change from today (I’ve been trying to scope it to things I am in control of)
That’s it! Making sure I’m dating every entry for whenever you feel like revisiting what you’ve written down.Not only has this practice has allowed me to get my mindset align to a more positive mindset, being thankful for the things we have, but also, it has giving me the practice to write down my thoughts and just have a conversation with myself; checking up how I am doing. Journaling has given me a tool to get in touch with myself.I believe part of the reason why I have started wanting to share my experiences in this blog is partly due to the fact that I am more comfortable writing my thoughts down.There is so much more tools and practices out there, and I am curious to continue exploring this important topic; mental clarity. I hope that even though I am just starting this process and have only been using these two tools, that it gets someone curious to explore and join the journey.
