ACTIVITY 2: SPRING CLEAN YOUR MIND
It’s in this exercise that you learn to listen to your sub-conscious so that you can respond, make changes and begin letting go of the things you no longer need so that you can make room for the opportunities and happiness you deserve.
The first step to a positive mindest and overall well-being is clearing your mind and letting go of anything and everything that doesn’t serve you. This involves digging deep into the sub-conscious and bringing to surface those experiences and feelings that you’ve been holding onto without realising.
Think of letting go as a good clear out of your head (like you would your pantry or wardrobe) so that you can see everything clearly. Think of this as a good mental spring clean to recharge your energy and free yourself from anything that is sub-consciously holding you back.
We’re going to go a little deep with this one because it’s a key step to learning to truly love yourself. Firstly, because it’s about letting go and removing any blockers or triggers so you can open yourself to more opportunity and happiness and secondly to allow yourself to get to the root cause of understanding why you react and behave the way you do to certain situations and people.
To start, you’ll need a pen and paper (or journal) and sit yourself down in a quiet, comfortable space where you can think, uninterrupted. This activity could take some time to work through, so allow yourself the time you need.
When you’re ready, strategically go through your life and write down every time you’ve experienced grief, heartbreak, turmoil, trauma and/or been hurt or any situation that caused overwhelming emotion. Start from when you were a child – did you get bullied at school? Did your parents divorce? Did you lose a grandparent or loved one? Did a close friend move away? Then move onto your younger adult years – did you experience your first heart wrenching break up? Did you have a car accident? Did you get fired from a job? Then onto the next stage of life – did you have a falling out with a friend? Did a partner cheat on you? Did you have an affair? Did you experience ill-health? Did you lose a much-loved pet? Whatever it is, write it down. Whilst it might be overwhelming to see everything out in the open and in writing, know that this is a very normal and real reaction because it’s likely you’ve been through quite a lot without really realising just how much.
When you have all these situations / experiences written down, go back to the top of the page and think about:
- how that experience made you feel at the time (if you can remember).
- how it makes you feel now?
- Are you at peace with it? Or does this experience, or experiences similar to this, still cause you anxiety, stress, anger or any other overwhelming emotion?
If you didn’t fully deal with a situation at the time of it happening, your unprocessed emotions you’ve got bottled up inside likely determines how you perceive the world. A person full of fear will see an unsafe and fearful world, a person full of anger will see a world with judgement and full of conflict.
In order to move from these negative emotions to a positive mindset and healthy perception of yourself and the world, you need to process these unprocessed emotions. Dealing with and letting go of your emotions in a balanced way is the key to good health and ultimate healing. So if you need to cry, sit in the shower and cry. If you need to scream, grab the closest pillow and scream into it. If it’s anger you’re holding onto, find a healthy outlet to release this anger (maybe a boxing class or a rage run). If you need to tell someone how you feel, pick up the phone and call them. If you need to forgive someone, do so; for your benefit not theirs. You don’t even need to tell me or acknowledge them; just let go of the resentment.
As you’re unpacking and processing your emotions, acknowledge and take note of any common themes or reactions in the way that you did or didn’t handle / deal with it? If you are noticing behavioural patterns, write them down so that you can become self-aware of these behaviours so you can address, process and change them in the future. Ask yourself:
- Are you realising that you bottle your emotions and then sees it explode down the track; perhaps taking it out on other people?
- Do you withdraw and shut people out?
- Do you get on with life and pretend nothing happened?
- Are you someone who holds a grudge and refuses to forgive people who hurt you?
- Are you constantly beating yourself up for what happened?
- Do you think some of the later experiences in life were caused or a ripple effect of one of your earlier experiences?
When you’re done, pick up your pen again and at the bottom of the page, write down one piece of advice you will give yourself for when dealing with life altering experiences like these again.
Finally (and optionally), if you want one final act of releasing it all, you can perform a burning ritual (safely) that practices the release of the past and what no longer serves you to make space for what is to come. To start, find a safe and quiet place to ground yourself. Clear your mind and find a place of calm. Once you’re ready, grab your piece of paper, light the corner on fire and drop it into a fire safe bowl in front of you. As you watch it burn, take in the flames, the crackling sound, the smell of the smoke and allow yourself to let go of everything that you’ve felt during this exercise and speak the one piece of advice you wrote down on the bottom of the page so that you it’s ingrained in your mind to create positive change moving forward.
Please note that if you need to reach out to a professional and speak to someone to help you gain clarity and/or closure or help you work through something that has come up during this exercise, PLEASE do. There is absolutely NO shame in doing so and having a therapist to see regularly is an amazing resource to have on hand. If anyone makes you think otherwise, they probably need a therapist themselves.