It's All in Your Head

Have you ever hopped in your car after work and mindlessly driven home?  I'm talking about the kind of mindlessly that for the life of you, you can't actually remember the drive at all?  You don't really know how you got there because you were on auto pilot, your mind fully distracted by the thoughts bouncing around in your head and you're just fortunate to have made it home safely?

Yeah. . . same.  It can be really loud inside my head. 

Every day we are pulled in a million and one different directions and those doing the pulling are convinced their thing is the most important. With everything tagged as a number one priority, it's impossible to get it all done and meet the countless expectations placed on each of us.  It's no wonder we have trouble silencing the chatter in our minds when we're worrying about all the chores or tasks we weren't able to get to throughout the day.

I am most at peace when I'm outdoors, away from expectations of others, my mind goes quiet.  The views aren't bad either. 

I used to struggle hard to quiet the noises inside my head.  I couldn't sleep because the moment my head hit the pillow (no matter how exhausted I was) the chatter in my head would take off at a hundred miles a minute.  I'd overanalyze why I wasn't able to get to everything on the To Do list and replay all the conversations or encounters I had throughout the day, critiquing them for one reason or another.  

NEWS FLASH! This is NOT healthy!

We don't have to answer to the demands of others if they don't fully align with what's on our heart. . . AND we don't have to let the noise inside our minds rule our lives.  When we realize and prioritize what's important and meaningful to us and let go of the expectations of others, we free up a whole lot of bandwidth inside our minds. 

As much as we love them, the people, places and things in our lives create the noise that keep us from hearing our own thoughts and connecting with our intuition.  We have to be willing every once in a while to disconnect from everything in our life to find peace and to reconnect with the small voice inside of us that reveals what we want in life.

Easier said than done right?  Sure, it sounds easy to let go of the external expectations placed on us and it sounds like a great idea to disconnect from our work, family and friends every now and then, but in reality, we all know there are challenges that come along with living this way.  You CAN find the balance though! I promise!

When my mind-chatter is the worst I head straight for the mountains. 

Here are a few things I do to help quiet the chatter in my mind, disconnect and keep the balance. 

-Get outside in nature (preferably where you have no cell service). Breathe deeply and focus on the beauty that surrounds you.  It's hard to focus on anything else when you're surrounded by Mother Nature. 

-Before I leave work at the end of each day I write down a list of the things I need to do the following day. . .  brain dump it all onto a sheet of paper that I leave in the office.  If I've written it down and know it will be there the next morning, I don't feel the need to bring it all home with me at night.

-Get quiet with yourself, a.k.a. make time for meditation.  Meditation helps train your brain to control the thoughts that come and go in your head.  If you're new to meditation there are several apps like Headspace of Calm that you can try out for free.  You can hit the guided meditation jackpot on YouTube too!

-Make time for journaling.  Whether it's writing one thing you're grateful for each day or it's a dedicated practice of free flow for fifteen minutes before you go to bed, putting pen to paper is incredibly cathartic. Writing your feelings is a means of processing your emotions in a way that you simply can't do when their buzzing around in your head. 

-Set boundaries with the people in your life and communicate those boundaries to them.  Setting boundaries doesn't mean you love them any less, it just means you're willing to stick to some guidelines that, in the end, will benefit both of you. Whether it's that you need to go to yoga twice a week to maintain your sanity, or that you need to leave work at 5:30 p.m. each night in order to pick up your children from daycare.  When we set boundaries, we're taking steps toward quieting the noise in our lives. 

We all have that voice (or 20) inside our head that lead us to drive from one point to another with absolutely no recollection of how we got there. It's incredibly important that we learn to manage and quiet that noise if not for our sanity, at least for the sake of those we share the road with. :)

I hope this helps give you the courage to confront the things in your life that lead to your mind-chatter!

Love, Light, and the Highest Vibrations,

Lon