SPACE: Clearing Your Brain

The biggest issue I have on a daily basis is using my brain for the right tasks. Sure, it’s one thing to set aside time to write and work, but often, don’t you find that your brain goes just a bit on auto-pilot? The thoughts that come when I least expect them to. “You’re a failure, you can’t do this, look how you failed the first time.”

Oh good grief.

1. Keep your brain busy enough on some project everyday. Thinking about a project is much more enjoyable to me than thinking about how I’ve failed in the past. I work very hard each morning to start off my day with some time to read things I WANT to think about (usually for me the Psalms) and then I put up a post-it on my monitor with a question my subconscious mind is working through on a project. Sometimes, it’s work-related: “Do the Cochrane refs in Best Health need the year included?” and sometimes it’s me-related: “So if I make these characters cousins, does that change my story too much? or “Do I need to include the stimulus plan data on COBRA health plans in X’s blog post?”

2. Recognize when you’re headed into the dark territory. Stop yourself. There’s no reason to rehash bad mistakes. We’ve all made them. We were mean to someone, someone was mean to us, we gossiped about someone, someone gossiped about us, we criticized someone, someone criticized us. LET IT GO already. Move on. No need to rehash. If you have to take it to your higher power, do so. There’s no reason to be pressed down by things that make us human.

3. Recognize your patterns. If you haven’t been able to read much all day, find 15 minutes to fill your mind with something good. If you find yourself not doing well because of what you’re reading, read something else. It’s all about you knowing what your brain needs to stay clear and ready to function well.

4. Try to avoid television or radio that makes life seem futile. There are some days listening to NPR that I just can’t take anymore. I flip the switch and turn it off. Or the evening news (I will not watch it, unless the President is speaking to me) or daytime television, or evening comedy sitcoms (futility at its best!), movies from Netflix (only a rare few are worth the time they require), or even the evening crime shows. I think most media subverts my creativity, so I ignore it. Now, LOST is another story (but you knew that already).

5. Back away from negative people. I have friends who are like on/off buttons. One minute, they are delighted with life and then the next thing you hear, life just sucks. I keep those folks at arm’s length. It takes too much of my glass half-full energy stores to pump them up, plus, as my hubby always tells me, I need those energy stores for myself, my marriage, and people in my life who really are struggling and need me. I’m not saying to cut anyone off, but if they can’t give me any effort when I’m trying to give them energy, well, we both need some space.

Tactics like this are no brainers to some of you, but I only recently learned these in the past five years. It took a drastic life change, change of scenery, change of friendships, change of life role, change of jobs, even change of climate to show me that I had been in a rut. I’m sure I’m now in another rut, but this is my rut and I’m supposed to be here.

Tagged as: creativity, postive waves, SPACE, success