Our mind/mental level is a key part of ourselves as it directly affects our wellbeing. It is the main stress generator, and from there, we get intrusive thoughts, worries, and anger, and we are often struggling to sleep, but it also brings other consequences, as it affects our physical body and disconnects us from our true self.
The most common way to calm down the mind is to meditate. Meditation really helps, but not everyone is so successful, especially at the beginning. That's why I’d like to talk about another great tool quite common nowadays, even advised by psychologists - journaling.
It is free and available for everyone.
I often advise journaling as a mind cleansing therapy to my clients with busy minds and many of them could benefit from it.
But why and how does it work?
See there's an important part of our mental level - our ego. Normally it should have a regular “size” and it should be managed by the owner. It works as part of our personality and helps us being motivated, and accelerates our ambitions towards our goals.
But when some of our emotions are in place, like worry or anger, we start to feed our ego, which gradually grows until it becomes a monster so big that it seems there is no way out.
The more we keep this condition, the more our mental level gets affected, driving us towards anxiety and depression. It affects our sleep, we feel drained and tired all the time.
How can you improve this condition? What can you do yourself?
Instead of keeping intrusive thoughts, we should stop feeding the monster. We should let it go by journaling, which is the simplest way to do it.
Your journal can become your best friend to get that relief you need, as it always will be ready to listen to you. Write down everything you keep/digest in your mind. Put in the journal all your thoughts, all dialogues you have within your mind. If what you write down doesn’t make any sense, don’t be bother trying to make it sound nicer. Don’t try pickinp up the right words, just transfer them from your mind to the journal with no filters. No one should read this after you finish with it, not even you. You simply let go in this way.
Do this daily, choose the same time of the day, perhaps morning or evening, and write a few pages.
In the beginning, the flow of your thoughts can be intense. Some people say “I could write a book every day”. After a while, the flow becomes less intense and, day by day, you will notice the flow of the river of your thoughts becomes a calmer stream as your mind becomes calmer.
This self-work therapy doesn’t cost any money, but it takes a little time and effort every day. But if you can improve your mindset, if you can feel better, why not trying?
Journaling works very well for other options that I will explain in another blog article.