A solution to control your thoughts

How can you achieve control over your thoughts?

Having control over your mind is one of the essential things which you must achieve. Your mind is associated with vivid thoughts and memories, they are positive and negative. Thoughts are reflected on overall living. It leads to having an impact on physical and emotional factors.

According to the research, 80% of thoughts are negative, you can refer to this article to read more (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/80-our-thoughts-negative-control-them-magsud-rahmanov/). It involves negative self-talk, fear of failure, thoughts of procrastination, no motivation to work, thoughts linked to bad memories, conflicts in the mind, and much more. Such thoughts create mental distress and lead to symptoms like dizziness, giddy, nausea, loss of sleep, loss of appetite can occur. On the emotional side, you might start losing interest in your favorite activities, you might avoid social gatherings, avoid talking to your friends and partner.

It is always said ‘Don’t let thoughts control you, let you control your thoughts’ but how can you achieve this control? Well, psychology says everything is associated with your mind. If your mind is healthy, so are you. Sometimes it becomes uncontrollable for you to relax your mind, to take a break from thinking, to pause your mind for some time. You always desire that you could have a control button for your mind which could have been regulated with an on/off switch. Take a moment and observe. Does your mind stop thinking for a while, is it empty? When I asked this question to my friends and colleagues, the majority of them replied NO, it does not stop thinking. They experience running thoughts and some undergo overthinking.

There is a way out, you can control your mind and thoughts. It takes 10 to 15mins to build control of your thoughts and have command over your mind. Here comes the magical word ‘Journaling’. It’s an underrated word that we generally don’t talk about. The common suggestions one gets when experiencing mental distress or burnout are to do meditation, do yoga, follow hobbies, go for a walk, gymming, whereas I have observed fewer people suggesting journaling. Let’s explore it today

Journaling organizes your mind to work efficiently. Cleansing is essential for your mind to function and journaling helps to cleanse our thoughts and declutter unwanted things. Even your phone commands for cleansing. It needs space, it keeps sending you reminders to clean clutters from photo albums, empty trash bins to function better, and have space for better things. The same goes for our minds and thoughts. It needs that space, that clearance. You can put all your clutter in your journal and make space for good things which will give you healthy outcomes. Journaling helps you gain better focus, concentration, a healthy mind, control over your body, relaxation, problem-solving ability, and much more.

Journaling is writing your thoughts on a piece of paper or maintaining a daily diary for it. It is a reflection of you, no one is observing or judging you, it’s just your own little world. How does writing thoughts generally help to have control over your mind? When you write your thoughts you are observing it, you are addressing that particular thought, you are experiencing that emotion and thought while writing. Most of the time we accumulate thoughts in our mind which are unsolved and they keep coming in to create distress, thoughts keep asking for your attention. Giving attention to your thoughts will give you a way to figure them out better.

Here are some of the effective ways which you can follow to maintain journals are

• Maintain a daily journal spend 10–15mins writing about your thoughts and feeling on an everyday basis
• If you can’t maintain a daily journal you can do it once or twice a week where you write everything you wish to.
• If you are an overthinker, you can’t stop your running thoughts while working or you are unable to concentrate. you can keep a piece of paper/diary and simultaneously while working write all the thoughts coming into your mind. It will surely help you gain positive results
• The most important part of journaling is to ignore spelling mistakes and grammatical errors just let your ink flow your way
• If you find it difficult to write it I have some suggestions for you, go for digital journal there are many apps for journaling, refer to this given link (https://www.self.com/story/best-journal-apps)

Hopefully, you will implement the solution from this article to clear your mind and control your thoughts. I am sure it will give you positive results. Share your experiences in the comments below.

Happy journaling