How To Free Your Mind To Be More Effective

7 Things You Can Do to Keep Yourself in a Healthy Mental State

5 min readMay 23, 2018

Our capacity to produce the results we want and be the best we can be is closely related to the way we use our mind.

The better we use our mind, the more effective we’ll be, which will translate to the type of results we achieve. The more cluttered our mind, the less effective we’ll be.

If we have too many things cluttering our minds, it means our units of attention, or our ability to focus, is being taken up by different things, which will result in less attention being given to the things we want to do.

In order to more effectively use our minds, we have to give it better attention. Our thoughts form the key contents of our minds. The better we learn to harness our thoughts, the more effective we’ll be.

We’ll never get rid of all our thoughts and it should not be the objective. Our objective should be to free up mental units attention so that we can direct more attention to doing the things that’ll cause us to have greater progress in life.

While having thoughts that are empowering and uplifting is better than having negative thoughts, most of us don’t wake up each day intending to be negative. Joy is our natural state, but sometimes we aren’t aware of how we’re coming across. This is why learning to use our minds more effectively is important if we want to be in a healthy mental state.

Mental health is becoming more known and accepted today than it has in the past. With more people speaking up about mental health challenges, it’s helping us gain greater awareness of what it is and what can be done to assist someone dealing with it.

Recently, professional National Basketball Association (NBA) player, Kevin Love, spoke up about the importance of mental health. He wrote about his experience of suffering a panic attack during a game, which has helped shed more light into the importance of mental health.

7 Things That Will Help Free Your Mind So You Can Be More Effective

Learn mindfulness techniques. The more inner work we can do, the better our external results will be, which will help with how we feel and the outputs we produce. Allowing ourselves to be still through having quiet time through practices such as meditation and focused breathing, is highly beneficial.
Become more self-aware. We develop self-awareness through study. The more we learn about ourselves and from the experiences of others, the better informed we’ll be. This will also help us make better decisions and be more mindful about what to give our attention to.
Practice more self-care. The more we take care of ourselves, the better we’ll feel about ourselves. There is a connection between the mind and body. If our body is healthy, there’s a good chance we’ll have a healthy mind. On the other hand, if our mind is not healthy, our body will not be at its best. Self-love and self-acceptance and being more of ourselves are all part of practicing more self-care.
Release destructive thoughts and emotions. Hanging onto resentments, anger, guilt, remorse or other negative emotions uses up valuable mental energy and keeps us from being at our best. Learning to let go of those destructive negative patterns is a vital step if we want to free up our minds. Forgiveness can play a huge part in being able to let go of negative thoughts and emotions.
Use more positive self-talk. We can replace our destructive negative thoughts and emotions with positive self-talk through the use of affirmations or power phrases. The aim is to start conditioning our minds to focus more on what’s good rather than what’s not right. Practicing appreciation is another way we can train our minds to focus on what’s positive.
Be around inspiring people. We’re attracted to people just like us. If we spend more time around people who are positive, goal-oriented and willing to pursue their dreams in life, we’ll be inspired to do similar things. Having the right community or network is important for our continual evolvement.
Work with a professional. We’re always going through something, that may not be obvious to us at the time. Sometimes seeking out professional help to get to the root cause of issues we’re experiencing can be life-changing. We don’t have to suffer in silence.

The more work we do to clear out inner blocks or shift our internal dialogue, the stronger we’ll be mentally, which will help us use our minds more effectively.

As we pay more attention to our mental health, we’ll experience a shift in how we think, the emotions we experience, the actions we take and the behaviours we exhibit, which will lead to a better quality life.

Action Step: Choose one thing you can start practicing, either daily or weekly, in order to have better mental health. Make a commitment to give it the best you can for a month, at a minimum, and notice the difference it makes to how you feel and your overall life.

Question: What is another thing we can do to free our minds in order to be more effective?

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