What to do When You're Mentally Bombarded
The past few years have been a mental battle for me. In many ways I’ve experienced long jumps of improvements. A few weeks ago though an incident happened in my life that left me ruminating in worry. After examining the cause of what was happening and then working towards a solution I thought to myself, I can’t be the only person going through this. Have you ever felt bombarded by doubt, confusion or worry? Bombarded to the point that it takes away from your everyday joy? Well, I’m not one to just sit around and stay in a negative place so I talked to my therapist, a few of my mentors and then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work on impacting this immediately. The worst thing I could do was continue to let worry creep over daily thoughts, right? I can firmly say that after implementing a few small changes that had a HUGE impact - I’m feeling joyful and excited with a weight lifted off my shoulders. Here are a few recommendations on what to do when you’re mentally bombarded.
Accept Your Current State of Mind
I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Excuse my French but I learned that FINE means Fucked-up-Needy-Insecure-and-Emotional. Yep you heard me. The first step in every twelve step program is acceptance. Accept you are experiencing some sort of powerlessness and you may need a little help getting to where you want to go. As the Beatles put it, sometimes we just need a little help from our friends. Maybe not friends, but mentors. But if you continue to tell yourself you are great or fine and you’re really not then there’s not much to work with. In fact, you’re lying to yourself. Believe me, that’s not a good place to be. Lying is lying even if it’s only to yourself. I’m a practical person in many ways (okay… not in regards to the amount of shoes I have but for grins and giggles go with it). Take a sheet of paper out and write down 5 things you want to change.
Listen to Only Positive Things
Not the news. Not your complaining friend. No negative sounds aloud. Not even music that stirs negative feelings. To get a positive mindset you gotta block out the negative. So start with the following - classical music, instrumental music, uplifting music, books on audio and podcasts. I have been listenting to two books over the past couple of weeks from Audible - Healing the Soul of a Woman by Joyce Meyer and Whole Again by Jackson McKenzie. Surprisingly they are offering very similar advice. If your struggles are financial I recommend hearing You are a Badass at Making Money. She has a lot of humor and it’s pretty quick to get through. Now when I do chores, go on a walk or do pretty much anything where my body is moving I put on a pair of headphones and flood my mind with these. It blocks out negative thoughts and I'm working on the solution instead of thinking about the problem over and over.
Get Yourself a Few Good Books and Read First Thing
Reading will never go out of style. Did you know it’s like a workout for your brain? Yep, want to get sharper? Start reading. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a paragraph or a page get moving on this pastime. It significantly impacts your imagination, problem solving and linguistic skills. I begin almost everyday by reading. I currently have five books on rotation depending on the day and my mood. What can I say, I’m emotional and I like options. Five is plenty. I am reading 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader to help grow my own leadership skills with my team, The Happiness Project for self-improvement ,Battlefield of the Mind for positive thinking and mental clarity, Boundaries with Kids because as a single mom I need allllllll the help I can get, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective people to create a mission based life. If you want a breakdown of most of these - check out a recent Facebook live I did talking about four of them!
Start Writing in Your Journal
Now I understand not everyone gets exciting about writing the way I do, but at least bullet point what went well that day. You see it’s so easy to get into the habit of negative thinking. In fact, our brains are wired to be slightly negative to help us survive in the wild. Not so fitting for most of our lives now so we have to offset all those negative thoughts with gratitude. No matter how bad things get, there’s ALWAYS something to be grateful for. A mentor once told me that its impossible to worry and be grateful simultaneously. So get out a pen and paper and at the conclusion of everyday write those things down that went well. See how many add up at the end of the week.
Remember you have the power to change your mental state and your entire life. Most change happens over time so if something doesn’t immediately feel better then just keep going. Your emotions and feelings will catch up! I promise!
