Who would have thought that our minds and hearts could be cluttered by emotions? I certainly didn’t. But as I matured and touched my 30s, it dawned on me that the losses I suffered and the difficult thoughts stemming from traumatic events played on repeat. Apparently, up to 70% of our thoughts are the same every single day. If those thoughts aren’t good, we’re bound to suffer. And I was suffering until I applied myself and found a way to get rid of emotional clutter.
Prayer helped and continues to help. It’s a practice that evokes hope and peace in my mind and heart.
I would encourage everyone to pray on a daily basis. But I understand that this is idealistic of me, and some people don’t believe in prayer.
Which is why I want to speak about a component of prayer that helps with emotional clutter, and that is mindfulness.
Let’s talk about it. 🙂
Related article: The 6 types of clutter to minimize in your life
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the practice of focusing on the present moment without casting judgment on your thoughts and feelings. The origins of mindfulness can be traced back to ancient traditions, especially in Buddhism, but it has gained worldwide popularity and has been adapted for broad use.
I see mindfulness as surrendering to the present moment and letting go of our attachment to examining the past and future.
For someone who is battling with emotional clutter, the past causes feelings of sadness, regret, and resentment, while the future causes feelings of anxiety, fear, and stress.
It is in the present moment that we are able to live more freely, peacefully, and with positivity.
It is also in the present moment that we have the greatest opportunity to prevent the past from repeating itself and influence the future towards being more like what we desire.
If you imagined a dragon plunging down from the sky and setting you ablaze with it’s fiery breath, would you really get scared or upset? Would you pay that thought any heed? Would you feel any kind of emotional response to that thought?
No.
Because you don’t give that thought much importance. You either don’t judge it or you choose to judge it as something that shouldn’t affect your emotional and mental health.
But is that scenario a good one? No, on the contrary, it’s horrific, but it doesn’t feel like it because we believe that it would never happen.
My argument is that if we have the propensity to judge thoughts and not experience emotions automatically with every thought, why can’t we apply that intentionally to thoughts that cause us emotional clutter?
Could we choose not to indulge thoughts that worsen emotional clutter?
I believe so, and I’m a testament to that.
Prayer and meditation helped me experience clarity of mind and freedom from emotional clutter.
Related article: 7 Essential minimalist habits for a balanced lifestyle
How To Use Mindfulness To Let Go Of Emotional Clutter
Your thoughts become your actions, your actions become your habits, and your habits become your identity.
I felt like I was a weak, lazy, defeated, ugly, and unlucky person, and my actions reflected this. In a way, I became all of these things because my actions followed my thoughts until they formed habits that created this identity.
Breaking free from this sad identity required me to change the way I think.
Consider this for a second: your body is objective, and it responds to whatever you say without discretion.
If you repeatedly tell yourself that you’re stressed, even without a cause for stress, your body will believe it and enter a stressed state.
The exact opposite can be true as well.
If you repeatedly tell yourself that you are strong and calm, eventually, your body will enter a calm state, or at the very least, it won’t freak out under pressure.
Our thoughts have a greater influence on our emotions than we realize.
So that’s where mindfulness comes into play.
Through the practice of mindfulness, we can gain control of our thoughts and reprogram our minds to let go of emotional clutter.
It sounds too good to be true, right? You’re probably wondering what’s the catch.
Well, mindfulness is not an immediate fix.
Using mindfulness to let go of emotional clutter requires ongoing and intentional practice, and you only realize that it’s working when it actually works.
So there’s no timeline, and there are no immediate results.
Removing emotional clutter will happen piece by piece through each session of mindfulness and meditation.
It’s exactly the same as working out.
You don’t notice any change in your body or the scale after a single workout. You have to accumulate small results that are seemingly invisible until they suddenly become visible to you.
Most people quit before they’ve accumulated enough invisible results from mindfulness.
Those who stick with it as a daily habit tend to see the biggest change in their mindset and emotional health.
This Is How I Practice Mindfulness Every Day
Sit with your thoughts for a few minutes per day, pay attention to your breathing, and do not attempt to judge your thoughts. Allow feelings to rise and fall without attempting to alter them or your thoughts.
What I’ve realized is that if I’m able to observe my thoughts and feelings, then perhaps I’m not my thoughts and feelings. Which means that I don’t have a greater degree of control over myself than I’m led to believe by my thoughts and emotions.
When you begin to feel less burdened by difficult feelings and thoughts, use this time to intentionally reprogram your mind with affirming thoughts or visions for the future.
Watch yourself experience a wave of positive emotions associated with these new thoughts, and then awaken from your session of mindfulness.
There are three rules that must be followed in order to benefit from mindfulness for emotional clutter, and they are as follows:
- Do it daily.
- Do it properly.
- Do it honestly.
I started with just 5 minutes per day for a week. At the end of the first week, I added 2 more minutes and continued this progression each week until I reached 20 minutes of mindful meditation per day.
Ironically, a few weeks into forming this habit was when I actually started to witness a change in the way I thought.
Being conscious of what I say to myself was a game changer, and I feel way more centered as a person ever since I developed this identity.
Lessons I Learned From Letting Go Of Emotional Clutter
1. I don’t have to solve every emotional problem
Some things will make me sad, angry, frustrated, or afraid, and ruminating about these things may not be necessary at all.
The past can’t be changed, and the future can only be influenced but not controlled, so I may as well allow emotions based on the past and future to flow through me without an examination every single time.
The more I focus on how I feel, the more focused I am on my feelings. Which is counterintuitive to how I want to live my life.
If you can detach from the notion of ‘fixing’ low emotions, you’ll find that they don’t linger for as long as they ordinarily would.
Whenever I fall into old ways, I stop myself and practice mindfulness. There are also times when mindfulness shows me that I’ve been ruminating over an unsolvable thought, and that helps me to stop.
2. Life is always trying to teach me something
Far too often, we are blinded by our emotions to see life for what it is.
Many times, I have repeated the same mistake only to be taught the same lesson because I failed to look beyond my own emotions to learn the lesson and grow.
It’s the same reason why people get frustrated by attracting the same type of person in their love life.
This is happening because you’re not learning a lesson that life is trying to teach you through this archetype of a partner.
My emotional clutter was preventing me from seeing how I could cultivate a life for myself without being codependent on a relationship or hypercritical of myself.
Letting go of these thoughts and emotions allowed me to find joy in what I do.
Now I don’t try to succeed to prove a point to anyone or earn validation from others; I pursue financial and physical ‘success’ because I can and want to for myself.
3. Don’t force things
Emotional clutter can be closely linked with rumination. If we examine the act of rumination, it is a form of obsessive thinking pertaining to negative thoughts. What’s the objective of rumination?
To forcefully think of a solution to a negative thought.
Does it work?
No.
It just causes more anguish, suffering, and negative thinking.
This way of thinking seeped into the way I behaved in real life. I couldn’t surrender to life; instead, I constantly tried to control everything that was happening, to no avail.
I was so attached to the idea of avoiding pain and suffering that I caused it in many ways.
Surrendering to life while showing up with enthusiasm and clarity is a far superior way of living than anything else I’ve tried.
I’ve only been able to do this through prayer, which promotes submission to God, and mindfulness, which helped me declutter from unnecessary emotions that drove me to make many missteps in my life.
That’s pretty much my experience with how to let go of emotional clutter with mindfulness. I really hope that I’ve inspired you to try mindfulness and that it has a positive effect on your mind, body, and soul. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comment section below.