Realigned Living

Your mind is an amazing organ, capable of thinking up fantastic images and solving tricky problems. However, more often than not, it’s cluttered with junk. When your mind becomes full of unneeded thoughts, your ideas start to feel groggy, and you have a hard time organizing your thoughts.

When you want to clarify your thoughts and straighten out everything you’re thinking, there are three different techniques you can try. Next time you’re having trouble getting your thoughts organized, try one of the techniques. If that doesn’t work, try another technique. You’re bound to have clearer thoughts sooner or later.

Tip #1 - Talk to yourself.

People have this misconception that if you talk to yourself, there must be something mentally wrong with you. Not always! Talking to yourself allows you to actively hear and listen to what you’re thinking, which often leads to brainstorming to yourself out loud. As a result, you get a broader picture and better grasp of what you’re thinking.

There are two ways of talking to yourself:

• Talk to an imaginary audience. Pretend your overlooking a crowd of 5,000 people who are dying to hear every word that comes out of your mouth. What would you say to them? How would you acutely describe what you’re thinking? Don’t worry about how many times you retread the same topic. They love every word you’re saying!
• Talk to the mirror, as if you’re giving an interview. Pretend you’re being interviewed, and the interviewer is asking you specific questions regarding the topic you’re thinking about. How would you respond to his or her questions? Stand in front of a mirror, and pretend you’re looking into a TV camera while answering the questions. Give clear answers to the questions you ask yourself.

Tip #2 - Talk to somebody else.

Take a friend out for coffee, and unload everything you’re thinking on them. Make what you’re saying as organized as you possibly can. By explaining all of your thoughts to another real person, you’ll make attempts to make whatever you are thinking the first time it comes out of your mouth. You end up putting everything you’re thinking into “compartments” - you essentially organize everything in one swoop.

The downside to talking to another person? People can be judgmental. They aren’t exactly impartial when it comes to their opinions and beliefs, so if what you’re wrestling with is a red button issue, talking to others may not be recommended. Also, you might end up getting unwanted feedback - people also love to tell you what they’re thinking, even if you don’t want to hear it.

Tip #3 - Get it all on paper.

Throwing everything from your mind on paper works wonders. It clears up your mind, forces you to connect ideas in new ways, and lets you see your see your thoughts in new perspectives.

• Mind mapping and concept mapping - You make “maps” of ideas, connecting your ideas and thoughts in various ways. Work best for ideas whose relationships you want to explore, connect together, or brainstorm.
• Mind dumping - You literally “dump” all of your thoughts onto paper, making a running list of bulleted points on whatever you are thinking. Works best for concepts you have a lot of thoughts and ideas for that you want to get out of your head.

Clarifying your thoughts might be irritating at first - it can get rather time consuming - but in the end, you’ll get rid of all of your mental clutter and have some solid, tangible ideas to work with. Happy mental organizing!

I recently learned of a very simple, useful exercise called mind dumping, which is a process that you use to clear your mind of all of the mental clutter you currently have. Everybody feels as if their brain is on overload from time to time - this method is to turn those thoughts into ideas on paper, which can then be transfered into actions.

How to Perform a Mind Dump

1. Decide what topic you want to mind dump. Your topic can be anything from goals you want to complete one day to little things that need to be fixed up around the house.
2. Grab a piece of paper and a pencil, or sit at your computer with an open document.
3. Start writing everything and anything that has to do with your topic in a bulleted list form. The length of your list points doesn’t matter; you’re more concerned with having a running list of everything you are thinking. This is the time to declutter your mind. Get everything you’re thinking in a written form.
4. Stop writing when you feel you have written everything possible, and there is no more to be said.
5. Go through your newly made list, and sort through everything you’ve written down.

By putting all of your thoughts and ideas into a paper-and-ink form, you can detach yourself from them. Instead of having lofty ideas stagnating in your mind, they’re now solid theories on paper. You can look at what you wrote from an objective viewpoint, and then take actions on the ideas with the greatest long term benefits.

My Personal Example of a Mind Dump

A few weeks ago, I was starting to feel bogged down with mental clutter regarding this blog. I was thinking about basic blogging questions everybody goes through when they create a blog: How am I going to get visitors? What style of articles do I want to write? What topics do I want to cover? I had ideas for these questions in my mind, but the more I thought about solutions, the more solutions I imagined. My mental capacity for blogging was hitting the ceiling point.

It was then I learned about mind dumping, and I immediately put it to the test. I opened a Microsoft Word document, sat at the computer, and gave myself as much time as I needed to write down everything I was thinking about pertaining to my blog, in quick, snappy phrases and sentences. Even if what I was thinking seemed trivial, I wrote it down anyway. The list ended up topping about 90 different items, which I then sorted through and transferred to my main blog documents. The end results? My brain was mentally decluttered, I felt more creative afterwards, and I was able to test out and implement many of the solutions on the list, without fretting over forgetting to try out something.

Mind dumps don’t take long to perform. Spend five minutes right now, and mind dump something that’s been taking up your mental RAM. Then look at your list and analyze it. You’ll be surprised to see what you’ve been thinking all along.