You’ve experienced it: Your mind feels cluttered, you can’t focus, and you feel full of negative thoughts. It’s hard to achieve your dreams when you’re focused on the wrong things.
Detoxing your mind can get rid of the mental clutter and negativity and bring you peace so that you can focus on what’s important.
Here are 8 ways to detox your mind and get back on track:
1. Cut Out Stimulants (coffee, soda, etc.)
Caffeine and other stimulants in moderation can provide brief moments of mental clarity. However, if you’ve become addicted to stimulants or you consume them too often, they can actually cloud your focus and cause racing thoughts.
Not to mention, when your body becomes addicted to a substance, it finds it hard to function without it.
Give up caffeine for a week and see what happens. If you get headaches or have other physical symptoms, it’s a sign that your body needed to detox from those stimulants.
2. Stop Consuming Gossip and Polarizing News
Too much time worrying about controversial topics that you have no control over can clutters your thoughts. It also distracts you from things that you can control in your own life.
If you’ve made a habit of following up with the latest celebrity gossip or drama in your social group, it’s time to take a break. The same goes for polarizing news outlets that dramatize current events.
You may find that once you take a break from the drama, that you have renewed mental energy and focus.
3. Take a Break from Social Media
Have you ever used social media and left feeling like you’ve been inundated with negative and irrelevant information?
If you’ve never taken a break from Facebook or other social media, it’s about time. Social media constantly bombards your mind with news and information that you have little to no control over.
It also eats at our time. I think you’ll be surprised at just how much time you have to focus on more important things when you take a break from it. Here are a few things you can do with your time.
4. Find Inspirational and Positive Media
Of course, if you take a break from gossip periodicals and dramatic news sources, you probably don’t want to go back to that. Going back would just put you right back where you started.
Instead, search for inspirational sources of media to uplift you and keep your thoughts positive. And seek out objective new sources that don’t put an overly dramatic or emotional spin on the news.
You don’t necessarily always have to view the world through rose-colored glasses. But there’s no need to add mental stress to an already stressful world.
5. Work on a Positive Goal
Sometimes simply ridding yourself of mental clutter is not enough. You have to find something to occupy your mind that will not be negatively taxing.
Working toward a positive goal in your life can be stressful, but if it’s something you love and do in moderation as part of a healthy lifestyle, it can be the good kind of stress.
Have trouble sticking to your goals? Learn how to set and achieve goals that stick.
6. Learn to Quiet Your Mind
Do you frequently have racing thoughts? Perhaps you multitask too much or have trouble relaxing your mind from anxieties and worries.
An overly busy mind is often a stressed out mind. And a busy mind is not always a very productive one.
Learn how to quiet your mind through mindfulness and meditation. You’ll be able to focus more and therefore be more productive, and less stressed!
7. Start Journaling
Sometimes the only way to get cluttered thoughts out of your head to to literally write them down. That’s where journaling comes in handy!
Writing down your thoughts, feelings, worries, fears, dreams, hopes, and aspirations can help to keep them from clouding your thinking. It can also help you to understand them in a more concrete way.
Writing down your thoughts allows you to solidify them, think about them critically and solve everyday problems.
8. Get Out Into Nature
Nothing clears the mind quite like a trek through nature.
Make it a point to find a favorite spot, not too far from home, out in nature. Ideally it will be peaceful, as far away from civilization as you can comfortably get.
Some ideal spots would be by a river, creek, or lake, on a scenic trail, or in a peaceful field or garden.
Go to this spot whenever you are feeling the weight of your mental clutter and stress. Just take time to clear your thoughts and focus on the beautiful sights, sounds, and smells of the wilderness around you.
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What are your favorite ways to clear mental clutter? Let us know in the comments!
Vanessa integrates EMDR, sandtray, and attachment-focused approaches in her work and is completing credentials toward Registered Play Therapist and EMDRIA certification. With a background as a certified birth doula and a passion for making healing accessible, she writes and teaches on the intersection of trauma, neurodevelopment, and story-based therapy.