Spring is here! What a wonderful time to start fresh. For many people that means cleaning the house from top to bottom. Airing out the house and clearing out the cobwebs. It’s great to do it for your home and even better to do some spring cleaning for your brain.
What is spring cleaning for your brain? Simply put it’s banishing the debris that collects in your brain, maybe taking up way too musch space, but is no longer necessary – if it ever was.
Some examples of the debris our brains collect include self doubt, second guessing, worry, negative talk, and every other way we sabotage ourselves and our dreams with toxic thought.
If you’d like to get rid of the clutter in your brain that’s just using up bandwidth then try some of the techniques below to spring clean your brain.
Spring Cleaning for your Brain
Focus on Now – Most of wander through life with a constant laundry list of the things we need to do each day. We’re always three or four tasks ahead of ourselves – trying to stay on task – but are really just making everything we do more difficult. Focus on the task at hand. If thoughts about the costume you need to make for the school play intrude on your mind while working on your presentation for work, you’re probably going to do both tasks poorly. Focus on the task you are performing and ignore the ones about upcoming tasks.
Write it Down – If you have difficult time ignore thoughts about upcoming tasks or commitments then write them down. To-do lists are wonderful for keeping on task and focusing on the here and now. By writing out a list of what you need to do each day, you can focus on one item at a time. Check or cross off the item when it has been completed and move on to the next task.
Drop the Worry – Worry gets you nowhere. If you could control the thing you worry about, you would, so let go and let the universe work it out. Free up your brain to deal with the things you can control. We create so many of our problems because we worry about things that have not happened yet and may never happen. If the thing you worry about does come to pass, you’ll deal with it at the time. There’s no point in worrying about it until that time. In other words – cross that bridge when you get to it.
Forgive – Forgive yourself and others. It’s one of the easiest and most difficult things to do. Forgiving someone does not mean you condone their behavior, but it does mean you’re not going to let it take up space in your brain anymore. Forgive and move on. That goes for forgiving yourself too. We’re extremely hard on ourselves, much more than other are to us. Treat yourself like your friends would treat you and forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made.
Change your Narrative – We all have a running narrative going on in our brains. It usually tells us when we screwed up, did poorly, look bad, acted weird, or any number of negative thoughts and feedback. Knock it off. Instead of letting that little voice say all those negative things about you flip the script and remind it what you do awesomely. If your little voice is telling you that you should have been more productive, remind it (and yourself) of all the things you accomplished. Banish that little voice that does you absolutley no good.