The Art of Mind - Cleansing
To taste fresh new flavors of life, I first need to free my taste buds from the existing ones.
Journaling is one of the most effective ways of doing this. It gives you clarity on the carry forward instances of the day, ways to close them at the earliest and set your mind free from baggage.
You will learn from the day you have lived and will be able to organize your thoughts in a better way.
To keep yourself free from the unrequired dramas of the day, spare 10 minutes before bedtime to write your day. Good - Bad - Ugly, pen it down. Don't try to create a flow, just write as it comes to your mind. Get it off your system.
Once you finish, read what you've written as a third person. Trust me, a lot of realizations will come by you about your own thoughts and actions, how required or not they were, what were the possible alternatives you could have looked at, how you could have handled the situations differently and lots more.
You as a third person reading your day journal will also realize what about someone else's thoughts or actions disturbed or troubled you during the day and what should your approach to it be.
Sharing my personal experience, I have been journaling since quite some time now. It has helped me big time. It taught me the difference between me living my journey and assuming that I am living my journey while I am actually not.
When we peep into our own selves, evaluate what we are going to do or what and how we want do - things and action it out , we are living our journey but when we look at what people are doing or think of what & how they should have done or should do a thing , we are living their life.
The truth is we exist in this world to live our journey. We can live , should and do live parallel journeys with our dear ones, probably share our journeys with them & vice versa but for sure can not and should not live their journey.
So a question here is why? If I love the ones close to me, why can't I live at least some part of their journey - is thinking about them wrong? Am I suppose to be so selfish?
No it is not. Thinking about someone close to your heart is obvious. Even I do. It could be right from a parent to a sibling, mentor, best friend or spouse, would - be to even someone I am just getting to know.
I may not be able to tell that specific person as to how important he or she is to me, which does happen at times. But my daily routine does include praying for that person.
When I have conversations with my people, sure we share our experiences, do a lot of listening as well, suggest stuff to each other, laugh, cry - everything, for that matter I tell them that I love them.
All of this is real and fine, but what is incorrect is - within your mind, going on to analyzing what and why people are doing, how they should be doing it, or why they are doing or not doing something or they should be doing things by your perspective to it or then discussing them with your self or other people - is getting in to their piece of the world, which is disrespectful towards someone you claim you love or even for a normal acquaintance that matters in your life.
It is only right to maintain the sanctity of a person's privacy and space to live.
Besides, growth is something everyone wants & talks about. Self growth is the most integral part of growth. It is an inwards phenomenon and not outwards. Inward here means your journey & outward - someone elses.
Journaling is not only an effective mind cleanser, but it also eventually helps you find your best friend within you.
The hard truth of life is that people and situations will come and go but you will need you!
If you know a friend or relative who will benefit from this please do share.
I would be glad to hear from you, your reflections on mind cleansing.
Comments
The one thing I realised when I look back at those journals was how the so called big issues that plagued me when I wrote about them actually were irrelevant in a course of a year, if not a month. It taught me not to hold on to grudges, pain, anger because the reasons to hold on them vanished or stopped mattering sooner than I thought they would. I also recognised that if issues caused by other people stopped bothering me so much, maybe my actions or words that I was so critical about while writing about them didn't impact others the way that I thought they did. It was a powerful and a humbling realisation that maybe I wasn't the center of other people's universe just like they weren't of mine :)
Somewhere along the line I stopped journaling and reading your blog made me realise how much I miss it. Maybe this was the jump start I needed to get back into this practise.
Thanks.
Each word touches one's heart
It's true people will come and go the life goes on and you yourself need to see and focus on things which keeps you updating not which the people who have went out from your life.
Life is beautiful and happening it all depends on how oneself has the ability to differentiate personal life and professional life one should know how to balance both his/her lives