Clearing Away Things That Don’t Serve You
“You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy.”
— C. Joy Bell
If you want to live to your fullest potential, you might need to consider clearing away the things that are holding you back.
Good mental health is not achieved by magic. It comes as a result of good choices and good habits worked at over long periods of time.
It is difficult to live badly and feel well.
When I assess new clients I ask them to fill in a questionnaire about their lifestyles. It asks about things like sleep, diet, exercise, screen usage and alcohol intake. I ask because it is useful to know how these things might be affecting their general sense of wellbeing and it gives us a starting point to make some positive changes. For example, a client might be suffering from high levels of anxiety and poor self-esteem. From their questionnaire response, I can see that they sleep poorly, do little exercise, and spend multiple hours a day on social media. It would obviously be impossible for me to help them improve their self-esteem and reduce their levels of anxiety without first addressing these unhealthy habits.
If you are struggling with things like anxiety or depression, consider trying to clean up these important areas of your life. I am not suggesting that these things are the root cause of your distress, but addressing them will certainly help.
5 Ways to Detox Your Life
- Diet
If you are overeating, under eating or eating huge amounts of sugar or highly processed foods, you’re going to feel terrible. We need to get our relationship with food in a good place if we are going to feel well. - Substances
Alcohol or drugs, illicit or prescription. Like food, if we put toxins into our bodies on a regular basis we’re going to feel bad and it’s likely to affect many other areas of our lives. - Relationships
Be careful who you spend time with. Try to work out who is good for you and who is not. Reducing the amount of time that you spend with toxic people will improve your life.
- Information
We are a sensitive species so the information that we allow to flow through our consciousness obviously matters. If you spend hours scrolling social media or hungrily devouring the news you’re probably going to feel quite low. Consider improving the quality of the media that you consume and your mental health will definitely improve. - Commitments
Balancing your responsibilities with time for rest and reflection is crucial. Try to cut back on unnecessary commitments to ensure that you have proper time to take good care of yourself.
The point is, you don’t always need to add things to your life to feel fulfilled. Sometimes the very act of removing unhealthy habits from your life can set you on a more positive, calmer and saner path. Once these fundamental changes have become habits, you will then have space to welcome new, healthier behaviours into your life, which is what I will be discussing next week.
