I am Dr. Hassan, a Board-Certified Physiatrist and Independent Practice Owner. I help physiatrists start and grow their own profitable practices so they can achieve financial independence and live without limits.
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Clutter of the mind is and isn’t like physical or visual clutter. It’s similar to clutter. You can see that it can be very distracting. The difference is you can’t reach out your hand and remove a piece of mental clutter like you can the physical things unnecessarily littering your space.
Mental clutter is insidious because you may not realize how much energy is devoted to dealing with it. Clutter of the mind includes those random thoughts that appear all day long, no matter what you do.
HealthyBrains.org tells us that the average person processes about 70,000 thoughts every day. That’s a lot of thinking. Of course, the vast majority of these happen without your permission. Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University says that of the many thousands of thoughts each person has, as many as 90% are repetitive.
So you needlessly think thousands of thoughts you have no control over, and most of them have been around before. That is a ton of mental clutter. One way to deal with much of it is to stop worrying and solve problems.
Worrying Leads to More Negative Thoughts
Why are most of your thoughts negative? The way the human brain developed means there is a negativity bias you have to deal with. For some reason, negative thoughts and experiences are given more attention than positive ones. One of the most negative aspects of this process is worry.
We worry about things all of the time, don’t we? It seems worrying is a favorite human pastime. The problem with this is that worrying never gets you to a point of resolution.
That’s why you should turn worrying into problem-solving.
The next time your ceaseless thinking machine cranks out another worrisome thought, address it. Instead of worrying, look at this thought as a problem. How can you solve it? How can you make the best out of this situation? If all you can see is negativity, look for the silver lining in the cloud.
Imagine that the following thought pops into your head.
You’ve been having some issues with a friend. You said some things, and she said some things, and now you aren’t sure if the two of you are in a good place in your relationship. If you have enough spare time, you can waste hours, if not days, of your life, worrying and imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios.
Or you can create a game plan that addresses the situation. Instead of worrying endlessly, solve problems.
Schedule a meeting if you can’t call or see your friend immediately. Talk it out. Most of the time, the things we worry about and imagine are going to be so terrible never end up being anywhere as miserable as we thought they would be.
To de-clutter your mind, stop worrying so much. When worry is prompted by your constantly negative thoughts, look at it as a problem that can be solved. Then solve it.
This is a simple way to keep mental clutter from building up in your brain. You might also find a lot more positivity in your life. Now you are solving problems when in the past you worried over them and let them fester.
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I’m Dr. Hassan, a Board-Certified Physiatrist and Independent Practice Owner. I help physiatrists start and grow their own profitable practices so they can achieve financial independence and live without limits. Please go to businessofrehab.com/contractnegotiations to pick up the free guide to help you negotiate the contract of your dreams.
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