Do you have problems, thoughts and To Do's in your head that play on your mind all day, keep you awake at night, or distract you when you should be spending time with friends or family? On awful days you can feel defeated, distracted and obsesses, preventing you from experiencing a calm, free and happy life.
What if there was a simple way to help calm your mind? Thankfully, there is! Put your thoughts and feelings onto paper.
Research shows that writing can help silence nagging thoughts and help us to focus.
"When you write down your thoughts and ideas, you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few, if any of us, can write down one thought and think of another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools."
~ Michael LeBouef
The Benefits of writing things down
Writing can be therapeutic and provide a positive impact of both our mental and physical wellbeing. A pen and paper is a powerful tool that can be used to clear mental clutter, de-stress, change our habits and help us improve our lives.
Writing helps to clear mental clutter
As I wrote in a previous blog post - What is Clutter - mental clutter is any nagging thought that spins around your head, vying for attention. Mental clutter comes in many shapes and sizes. It could be things you need to add to your shopping list, a task you need to complete, appointments that you need to arrange, friends that you haven't messaged back or a nagging desire to fix something every time you walk by.
When nagging thoughts pop into your head, transfer them onto paper. This will help free your mind to focus on the present moment, ensuring that you don't get distracted continually by those thoughts throughout the day.
Storing tasks mentally causes unnecessary work for your brain, which can lead to overwhelm and stress.
Writing helps you to solve problems more efficiently
Writing down everything that you need to remember helps you to gain more mental clarity. This frees up resources in your brain, which can then be used to solve problems and give you solutions that you might have missed before.
As you begin to write, your brain will better process situations and form new connections between the problems that are troubling you.
Writing helps you to focus
Writing forces you to step back and evaluate your day (week or month). As we lead busy lives, it is very easy to get bogged down in the minutia of everyday tasks. Writing helps you to be more present.
Writing helps you to explore yourself and your mind
By writing things down you'll begin to explore your mind. You'll start to become more mindful of your relationships, issues and emotions. You'll learn what triggers certain feelings and understand the patterns in your behaviours.
Write down your goals to give you direction
Set written goals to bring clarity and focus to your life. Reaffirm your goals daily, and it will keep you on the right track.
There are several different types of writing that you can try. You might choose to keep a daily journal, update a weekly planner, spend a few minutes each day doing a 'brain dump' or carry a notebook around with and write every time you need to offload.
So buy yourself a lovely notebook or journal, or print off our free daily planner page with the 'on my mind' section and start writing whenever you are feeling a little frazzled.
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