Mental Health Cleanup

You may already have a daily mindfulness practice. Or, you may be in therapy to work on your perspective, and learn to manage your emotions.?

Perhaps you are actively working to improve your relationships, accept responsibility for your mistakes, and improve your overall mental state.?

To all of that, I say “GREAT JOB!”?

Rather than focusing on changing the world around you to fit your set of expectations, you are doing the work to improve your own perspective and create a more optimistic state of mind.?

Inner Work Is Hard But Important

This work is some of the most important work you can ever do.

This inner work is not only important, but it’s really hard. We are not wired to focus on the positive. Finding positive thoughts feels more like an archeological dig than a natural state.?

The reason is that we are often attempting to put positive thinking on top of a pile of negative thoughts that have been building up over the years. It’s essentially a pile of garbage that we have been tending to, never considering the idea of getting rid of it.?

In this article, you will get my top 8 tips to rid yourself of the unnecessary suffering that comes from our negative thought patterns.

8 Ways to Cleanup Your Mind

1. Release your developmental trauma. Even if you had a lovely childhood, you still will want to know about a newer concept in psychology called ‘developmental trauma.’ These are patterns that crop up from negative or even mildly distressing experiences in childhood. It might be that a teacher told you that you were lazy. Maybe a parent or family member told you that you are not good enough in some way. What happens is that those beliefs get trapped.

As children, we lacked a filter for this information and we might have taken these lies in as if they were true. Now, as adults, we catch ourselves in unproductive and self-sabotaging situations.

Why?

Because these situations are consistent with our negative shame-filled beliefs about ourselves. So, what can we do? Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do! Perhaps the most important step is to notice. As you hear these tired old scripts from childhood playing out, ask yourself, "Where did this belief come from?" If it is clearly from someone who didn't know much about you or simply got it wrong, can you dismiss these comments as the fiction that they are? Every single one of these negative beliefs you rid yourself of will free you up for more freedom and happiness.

Like rocks in the river.

Think of it this way. Imagine your thoughts and positive energy are like a river flowing down a beautiful mountain valley. Now, imagine that every negative and shame filled belief is like a rock. It is blocking the energy flow. If you take one rock out, will the water flow more freely right there? Of course it will! Try this today. Take one thing you have been saying to yourself that came up when you were a kid and try letting it go. It might not be easy but it WILL improve your mental health.

2. Give shame and blame the boot. Speaking of negative thoughts and beliefs, let’s take a look at these yucky words that just about no one wants to entertain. Shame and blame. It’s no surprise that these terms rhyme. Shame and blame are what I call the toxic twins.

Psychologists have a bit of a debate over the concept of shame. Some have suggested that shame is not an emotion but more of a process. Shame can be understood as a process of self-rejection, self-criticism, and self-judgment. But there’s good news. Once you are aware of the fact that shame and blame are literally doing you no good at all, you can set yourself free.

So what?

Try a 'so what' practice on these shame and blame messages. "If I did something wrong, so what?" "If I'm the worst player on the work softball team, so what?" "If nobody agreed with my idea in the meeting, so what?" You will often find that your dark rooms in your mind that you filled with shame and blame are really not that shameful after all. Maybe your worst case scenarios are not only not that bad but very unlikely to happen. Why waste your time on this? Instead, ask your worried and shameful thoughts, "So what?"

3. Let go of mistakes. Perhaps the most important mindfulness practice of all is letting go. And you know what one of the hardest things is for us to let go? Our mistakes. If we stop for a minute and think about our mistakes, we can begin to notice how minimal and inconsequential they are.

We may be thinking, “Everyone knows I did that. They think I am an idiot now!” If you really stopped to ask them, I’m going to venture a guess they hardly remember your mistake.

Why?

Because they were busy focusing on their own mistakes and problems. Far too much energy is wasted on mistakes, regrets, and resentments from yesterday. Keep in mind that it is highly likely the other people who experienced your seemingly tragic mistake probably don't even remember.

Take a moment instead to just notice the beauty of the world around you today. Do you see the sun poking through the trees? Have you noticed how the mountains turn pink at sunrise? Have you ever seen a moonrise? We don't want to miss these magical moments of our lives thinking about mistakes that nobody even remembers.

4. Spend more time with your dog. If you have a dog, you have a model citizen in your home in terms of staying in the moment and letting go of the past. Have you noticed how quickly a dog can go from upset to content?

Follow the dog's lead.

Do you see how dogs spend much of their time wagging their tail or peacefully napping on the couch? When they get upset, they might bark or growl. When that's over, it's just over. They are just as happy to wake up the next morning as if nothing ever happened.

We can learn something from them.

5. Stop taking yourself so seriously. One reason why our mental health suffers is that we get caught up in our own heads. We take a close-up view of our lives, rather than zooming out to see the vast expanse of the world around us.

It’s so natural to take things personally.

When someone is upset in our vicinity, we instantly jump to the conclusion that it must be about something we did wrong. Unfortunately, much of this is wasted energy. I’ve heard it said, “You would care less what people thought about you if you knew how little they do.”

Take a moment to zoom out to the wide world around you. Gaze up at the stars at night. There are trillions up there, just twinkling away as they always have. Then, look back at your problems and mistakes. How big of a deal is this really?

6. Let go of what you can’t control. A major cause of suffering is trying to control certain aspects of our lives. When we are really honest with ourselves, we start to notice what is inside our ‘sphere of influence’ and what is outside of it.

What can we control?

Our reactions, our beliefs about an event, and our perspective. Fortunately, that’s a long list. Most of our happiness comes from our internal experience. We get joy from how we think and interact with the moment that is unfolding in front of us.

However, what can we not control?

Other people’s words, other people’s beliefs, other people’s expectations, other people’s behaviors. If only we could learn to let go of that illusion of control.

You will know you have work to do on this when you find yourself giving someone else a brave speech in your mind. You know you've done it. You are walking around thinking of what you would say to this person if you see them again. You have the best speech in your head. The brilliance! The toughness! The power!

Deep down you know you are never going to give this speech in real life. Even if you do give this person a piece of your mind, it probably isn't going to be that well received. So, what are you doing?

Wasting your time.

Do yourself a favor. Right as your mind starts spinning up a speech, answer yourself with 'No thanks' or 'No time for that talk today' or 'I choose to release this so I can be happy today'. Stop questioning if you are right about this situation and the other person is so wrong. If you are right about your points, great. All the more reason to let this one go. Try to let it go and move on to enjoy this moment in front of you.

7. Leave the ‘what if’s’ behind. Think about a time in your life when your thoughts were dominated by statements that started with ‘WHAT IF…’ Notice what feeling is accompanied by these statements. About 9 times out of 10 your ‘what if’ statements are paired with anxiety.

Why?

What is happening is that your worried mind is trying to predict the future. I have heard the phrase, “Worrying is like praying for what we don’t want.”

Ouch! What can you do about this? Learn to notice the what if’s in your life and actively question their validity. See how likely these terrible scenarios are to happen.

Ask yourself 'what if this were to happen'? What would happen then? Can I live with that possibility? Even if you find that possibility unbearable to imagine, how likely is this really? Is it highly likely that you will be fired, exiled, imprisoned, or become famous for your mistakes? Probably not. Notice your mind playing these ridiculous games with you and try letting go of this tendency to 'what if yourself.'

8. Release your secrets & share your truth. Perhaps, some of the biggest pieces of garbage we have stored inside can be thought of like a beach ball.

The beach ball of secrets.

We all probably have a few little unsightly ideas we are stuffing deep down inside ourselves. Psychologists refer to this habit as repression. It’s the act of taking some difficult feeling and pushing it down, holding it back, and refusing to share it with anyone. This might be a secret you are storing. You may believe that if anyone knew this about you, they would reject you.

Have the talk.

I’ve heard it said that “your secrets keep you sick” and I couldn’t agree more. Or, perhaps just as dangerous are those important conversations you are procrastinating having with loved ones. The longer you wait to have this important discussion, the more damage it does.

Try this.

Make a firm decision about having this discussion or not. If you decide this is necessary to share, tell the person you want to have a talk and get this done in the next 24-48 hours. Decide what you want to say and say it.

The best 'speeches' to clear the air with a loved one are one sentence long.

Seriously.

I have heard it said that once you are really ready to have an important conversation, you should be able to sum it up in one sentence. Can you do that? If so, you are ready. Have the conversation you need to have and put this behind you forever. If you trust a loved one who respects and cares about you and your feelings, you may be pleasantly surprised at how well they handle this important conversation.

Congratulations!?

You did it. You learned something that really isn’t taught in school or the workplace.

You learned that thinking positively may have nothing to do with introducing new positive thoughts. It’s about letting go of your negative thoughts and beliefs.

It’s almost like walking into a beautiful home that has been messy for far too long. There are empty pizza boxes and pieces of garbage all over the place. If you wanted to redecorate this place and make it look beautiful again, you wouldn’t start by bringing stuff into the house. You would start by taking stuff out. You have to clean up the mess before you can truly make this a pleasant place to be. It is the same with your mind.?

Now, you have some new tools to clean up that place you live. You know that place inside your mind you occupy all day long? That place. You have done such a nice job getting rid of this mess that you can sit down and enjoy your clean space. What a great thing to do on World Mental Health Day! Good work.