Dejunk your Life – Tips to clear Mental Junk
When we think of junk, we often think of clutter. And physical clutter makes the place around us feel very crowded.
The same can be said about mental clutter. Mental junk. Mental junk can takes its toll on our mental health.
We often use terms like wanting to clear our head. In essence, that is effectively what we need to do.
But how?
##1 Say goodbye to toxic friends
Association is important. There is a saying Birds of the same feather flock together. What do your friends say about you? Do your friends encourage you? Do they motivate you? Or do they make you feel deflated, uninspired and even worthless? Are they even controlling???
You cannot hang around with the wrong people just because of sentimental reasons. Even if you think they cannot influence you, remember words are powerful. So what they may be saying to you maybe cluttering your mental well-being.
Hanging around with someone who moans and complains will soon make you a chronic complainer. Wonder why you argue with your spouse every night? Check who you are hanging out with? That is no joke!
In fact the good book, says not to befriend an angry person lest you learn their ways! (Proverbs 22:24-25).
Choose your friends carefully. And see your moods, self esteem and even your life improve!
##2 Banish perfectionism
It is nice to have everything perfect, bright and beautiful. But sometimes it just does not happen that way. Rather, see perfection in everything you do, rather than look for the errors and mistakes, even if they are obvious. See the flaws as uniqueness and creativity. Stop over-planning to the nth degree. Stop the self criticism.
##3 Change your job
Many people are really unhappy and unfulfilled in their job. They are stuck in a career that they literally hate just because they spent many years in university studying for it. As they result, Sunday nights are the worst nights, and every morning is filled with utter dread. Their dreams are full of work stresses.
An acquaintance of mine is changing her job from being a highly paid solicitor to running her own day nursery. A big step but she wants to do; something she enjoys doing, even if it is less money. You can imagine how much ‘lighter’ she already feels by the thought of it.
You can make a career move at any age. You can even go to college or learn something new. Obviously, plan any big step or change very well.
##4 Stop living someone else’s dream
It is your life. Your parents, teachers and mentors all have (hopefully) a positive influence on your life, and (hopefully) want the best out of you. However, know your purpose. Set your plans and dreams according to your purpose. And live them. Trying to live to someone else’s expectations is slavery.
##5 Turn off some App notifications!
We are living in the Information Age. Like it or not, we are bombarded with data and information every second of the day. Our phones are constantly buzzing with notifications. We are constantly downloading Apps that are to make our lives easier and have notifications!
Go through the notifications. Here are one or two you can do now:
- Do you need to be notified immediately you get an email? How about getting your mail sync’ed every 2 hours instead. Consider, there was a time when people wrote letters and waited days and weeks even for a reply!
- Do you need to know when your friends post something on Facebook. Often times, it is just a selfie anyway! Turn off the notification or log out so you have to purposely log in each time you want to check your Facebook timeline.
- On your WhatsApp groups, do you need to be notified every time someone posts in the group. It can build into a tempo especially in a large group. Why not mute notifications for the group. You can mute for 8 hours, 1 week or even a year (as of October 2016). You can even stop new notifications from showing on the status bar of your phone.
- Do you need to wake up in the middle of the night to check your phone? There, I got you! It is said that 50% of us check our phones up to 50 times a day. And most of us reach for our phone within 5 minutes of waking up. We are already bombarding ourselves with information.
Read Business Insider’s report on: 1 in 3 check their smartphones in the middle of the night
In all the above, remember, except where there has been a change, example, friends have got their act together, no recycling allowed!
Have you successfully de-junked mental clutter in your life? Why not send in a guest blog on how you did it.
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