No, You Can’t Have My Mind, I’m Using It: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Your Mind

30 Jul No, You Can’t Have My Mind, I’m Using It: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Your Mind

The life-changing magic of tidying your mind. Your mind can look like this California Desert Landscape. Image by and uploaded by Beachboys5500 to Wikimedia Commons.

No, You Can’t Have My Mind, I’m Using It: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Your Mind

My subtitle is a nod to the magic being worked in many people’s lives by Marie Kondo’s book.

This post, however, is occasioned by my realizing I needed to tell more than one beloved recently they could not have my mind because I was using it.

I realize that people pay me for my mind–no matter how adorably beautiful I am, or how cleverly I write, people come to RAISING CLARITY for clarity and to learn to claim it for themselves. (Sometimes it has to do with having more money flow, too.)

Keeping Minds Tidy is My Job

We forget sometimes to keep our minds tidy and allow them to become cluttered with other people’s

• • thoughts
  • worries
  • doings
  • brilliance: wisdom, insights, art, writing
  • “news”
  • violence
  • passions (affections, fondnesses, “Likes”)
  • stuff.

Even I have to remind myself that mental “de-cluttering” is a habit and must be built. Habit energy is terrifically strong, like a Great Dane. It will carry you in the direction you train it. Training the Great Dane in the right habits is claiming clarity for yourself.

Four Habits for Mental Clarity

Here are four habits to cultivate for mental clarity:

1. 1. Meditation. Almost any kind. Sit up straight or stand, and focus awareness on as little as possible like (one of) the following: breath in your nose or belly, the present moment, time passing, sound,  your body as you scan from top to bottom or bottom to top. If you begin to feel you are diving “under” the present moment into timelessness, go with it.

   2. Every-minute re-centering of the mind back to the present moment. (How often? Well, how often? You tell me. I strive to be present in every moment. As often as you remember. My goal is so it starts to feel normal and good to be present and “off” when you are not.)

   3. Allowing ourselves enough time to plan so we are not constantly thinking about the details of our lives. Give planning its own time on the schedule. When you catch yourself un-present, chances are you are thinking about the past or the future. You know what to do about the past (see 2., above). As for thoughts about the future,  remind yourself you a) have a plan, and b) have time set aside (planned) at x time tomorrow (or whenever) to renew, revise and undo and remake plans.

   4. Reclaiming our minds! If you need to, you are welcome to give others the phrase that is the title of this post, “No, You Can’t Have My Mind, I’m Using It.”  As a way to tell them that you are actually using your mind and they can’t have your attention. Remember:

      •  Your mind is NOT YOU. It is a TOOL YOU USE. (You will start to notice this as you do 1., above.)
      • As a tool, it deserves to be kept in good condition. Watch what you feed it. Wash it clean often. Try for twice a day, once when you wake up and once when you go to bed.
      • Empty it completely. Have no fear you will forget stuff. Stuff will remind you and you can write stuff down.
      • Notice when people are trying to commandeer your attention. Be choiceful about whether they do.
      • Notice when you are seduced into focusing on something. Be choiceful about the seductions you allow. Your mind is an erotic place: practice safe sex and use prophylactic measures to achieve conception only when truly desired. What is the mental equivalent of a condom? Figure it out and use one often!
      • Over and over again, return to the glorious emptiness within. No one would accuse the empty desert landscape accompanying this post of being lazy. You aren’t lazy when you choose what is allowed access to your exquisite, spacious, richly generative, infinitely renewable mind.