How to clear your mind step by step: 5 tips

On a daily basis it is easy for things to happen to us that make us feel bad, that inoculate us with a certain amount of anxiety or being reminded of stressful experiences that come over and over to our consciousness.

Faced with this type of experience... how to clear your mind? In this article we will look at some tips that will facilitate this transition from an agitated and anxious mental state to another in the that there is greater calm and, in general, a better disposition to act constructively without focusing attention on what we disturbs.

• Related article: "The 7 types of anxiety (causes and symptoms)"

Tips for how to clear your mind

It is clear that the human mind is one of the most complex phenomena in nature. We are capable of feeling, thinking and imagining a great repertoire of psychological elements, and this has allowed us to survive for thousands of years, even when civilizations did not exist.

However, the fact that we are complex living beings with an amazing tendency to be psychologically influenced by our environment not only has advantages. The price for that facility for “soaking up” what is happening around us makes some of those mental traces escape our voluntary control. Traumas are the classic example of this, but there are many other less serious cases. For example,

if we have had a very stressful week or something has happened that has disturbed us, clearing our mind will not be something that will be solved in a matter of a second.

Considering that most mental processes escape immediate voluntary control, calm the mind is not a simple task, nor is it something that can be done immediately, in very few seconds. However, we can do things so that, indirectly, our nervous system comes out of that state of excessive excitement. To do this, we must act both in the way in which we relate to the environment, and in certain physiological processes that can be indirectly influenced. Let's see how to do it.

1. If you can, go to the quietest place available

This first step is important, as it allows the "noise" already in our head not to add more real noise from outside. Being subjected to many stimuli at the same time is not the best idea when it comes to calming the mind, since makes voluntary control of the focus difficult.

So, go to a quiet room or an open natural space where calm reigns, if it can be a wide meadow so as not to have visual obstacles nearby that can make you feel the existence of possible threats (something unrealistic but that, when we experience anxiety, we can come to think with relative ease).

2. Understand the cause of your discomfort

This is a first step that allows you to organize your thoughts so that your beliefs and opinions about them form a more or less coherent “whole”. Faced with uncertainty, we tend to assume that the most terrible and negative situations will occur, but express in a more rational and systematic way What we believe helps to rule out several of those fears, although usually not all.

So, this is a first step in locating those beliefs that may be affecting what you are we feel in that moment, the root of the fact that we need to calm the mind since there is something that makes us feel bad.

To make this step easier, you can write on a piece of paper what you think you feel. A few lines will suffice, but in some cases you will feel like spontaneously stretching yourself longer. If so, spend as much time as you think necessary and keep in mind that nothing you are writing has to conform to what is actually happening: simply is a description of how you feel at that moment.

Then see if there are aspects of that description that sound clearly unrealistic. Something that can help you is to imagine that what you read has happened to someone else: would everything that is explained make sense to you?

On the other hand, if you think that the reason why you have entered that state of anxiety is not based on specific experiences but has to do with something else primary and intuitive (the fact of having seen a video in which there is a lot of violence, the appearance of intrusive thoughts that make you remember a that you don't like, etc.) skip this section, since in this case the root of the problem is not easy to verbalize nor does it have to be based mainly on beliefs.

3. Use relaxation exercises

In this step, the target is in the physiological processes that help you stay on your toes even though there is no real immediate danger looming over you. To do this, you can use aids such as Jacobson's Progressive Relaxation or various types of breathing exercises.

Keep in mind that this is one of the ways to clear your mind that requires minimal preparation, although having practiced a few times is usually enough to get results.

4. Look for challenging tasks to channel your energy into

Unlike the rest of the tips to clear your mind, this one does not focus so much on eliminating that excess activation as, rather, on channel some of that psychological tension. Playing sports is a good way to achieve this, since in this type of activity it is easy for find a balance between your skill level and the level of difficulty of the challenges you you propose.

By doing this, it is easier for the attention to be fixed on the coordination of your muscles according to an immediate objective, so that the Recurring thoughts and mental images that came your way lose strength in favor of an activity that demands your five senses in the here and now.

5. Seek help

There are cases in which the discomfort and the feeling of mental agitation are so pronounced that one cannot manage the situation oneself. In this type of situation it is good to seek the help of other people, whether they are friends or family, so that together we can resignify what causes discomfort.

If this does not help, it is best to go to psychological therapyprovided by mental health professionals. Although in the latter case it obviously takes more than a few minutes to obtain results, it is highly recommended for situations in which the intensity of the phenomenon experienced is high.