Spice of Life: Declutter to make the mind your best friend

As I looked at the cupboard bursting at the edges as part of my biannual ritual of arranging clothes according to the weather, I racked my brain to think what could have motivated me to pack it up like a stuffed turkey at Christmas. So, I, along with my 11-year-old son, resolved to organise the wardrobe to free up space for necessary things and provide some array of semblance to it.

As the hours passed by and things started falling into their assigned places, I couldn’t help but wonder why like our homes, we don’t declutter our minds of unneeded thoughts, thus freeing up space for the flow of creativity. A study conducted in 2020 suggested that on an average, human beings have six to seven thousand thoughts a day. Our mind is cluttered all the time starting from the moment we wake up until the time we sleep and sometimes a few nagging notions don’t let us sleep at night as well.

This realisation forced me to find a way to organise my mind just like I organised the wardrobe. I embarked upon this exciting experiment to note down and test the hypothesis to understand this ever-elusive part – the mind. On research into the working of my mind, I realised that the second the eyes open in the morning, the mind wants attention. Just like on waking up, we nourish the body with a glass of water, the best nourishment for the brain is 10 minutes of meditation before we flood it with things to do and thoughts to think. Once it is satisfied with the meal, the next step would be to let the day’s agenda and other communications enter the mind.

Instead of asking ourselves to multi-task mentally, it is important to journal and enlist everything according to priority. This list would be quite simple but arranged in an orderly fashion at the same time, with four columns marked – urgent, non-urgent, important and unimportant. For instance, one would first deal with the urgent and important thoughts like preparing breakfast for your family before going for work and then moving on to urgent and unimportant tasks like apologising to a colleague for a rude remark passed the day before which though urgent does not require your immediate attention that instant.

Journaling thoughts gives an opportunity to the mind to relax as it is aware that it need not burden itself with those things constantly. As the day goes by, circumstances might arise, leading to the mind getting busy. To smoothly get through the day, dealing with one thing at a time provides the brain with the right amount of stimulation and satisfaction on completing the given tasks. With each sunset, the mind too should be reset after working productively throughout the day by rewarding it with music, an uplifting walk in nature or engaging in a fun game or a movie.

Having followed this pattern for a month, I felt truly rejuvenated and geared up to deal with my mind and welcome the challenges that life springs upon us each day. In his book, Energize Your Mind: Learn the Art of Mastering Your Thoughts, Feelings and Emotions, Gaur Gopal Das quotes Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, reaffirming the significance: “The mind can act as our best friend or worst enemy depending on how we regulate it.” ashmeg20@gmail.com

(The writer is a Ludhiana-based freelance contributor .)