Podcast Episode #76
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Extraordinary Life Podcast from the creator of the Extraordinary Life Tribe, Crystal Obregon, the Self-Development Podcast propelling you forward toward your goals using science-backed high performance habits. Reach the next level in your physical and mental health. See new heights in your relationships.
[00:00:18] Gain clarity on your purpose and live your extraordinary life. Welcome your host writer, speaker and coach, Crystal Obregon.
[00:00:29] Hi there. This is Crystal of Crystal Obregon Coaching with Episode Number 76 of the Extraordinary Life Podcast. Can you believe it's already the last week of January? I don't know about you, but it has flown by for me.
[00:00:47] Kids are all back where they're supposed to be, high school and college, and we're all mostly back in our routines here in Santa Cruz. We've had a ton of rain, which is mostly a good thing, [00:01:00] and I can already start to feel the days getting longer, which always makes me happy. I've been working on trading rooms with my daughter, my office for her bedroom, and vice versa.
[00:01:14] So that my office is the brighter room since she's away at college anyway, so it's involved painting, but also a ton of decluttering. I have to admit, we did this switch about two and a half years ago during the pandemic because while her bedroom was great for sleeping, it was not so great for being in all day doing online school.
[00:01:39] So I switched with her for her mental health. Honestly, a lot of the boxes of stuff that I put into the closet has remained in those boxes, so I'm in the process of getting rid of a ton of stuff. Physically. Decluttering is great for getting organized and being [00:02:00] productive, but also great for actually making room for what you want.
[00:02:05] Most people think more about the physical act of decluttering, which is important, but in today's podcast, I'd like to talk more about mental decluttering. Honestly, they do both impact each other, so it's not a completely separate conversation. You can apply some of what I say to physical decluttering as.
[00:02:30] I've been talking to a lot of people, mostly women that are feeling really overwhelmed. Today's world is already over stimulated and fast-paced, but with everything that's been happening in the past three years, there's even more overwhelm, confusion and disorientation. These are all signs of a cluttered mind.
[00:02:56] When your mind becomes overworked, it can lead [00:03:00] to an inability to even think straight. And when you feel like your mind is racing faster than you can keep up, it's essential that you take care of yourself and find a way to declutter your mind so that you can gain mental clarity and achieve your goals.
[00:03:18] In fact, I've talked to many women that are so off track that they feel like they even forgot what they want in the first place. There are ways you can train your brain to slow down and to focus, and the first thing that you need to understand are the various things that lead to a cluttered mind in the first place, which is what I'm focusing on today.
[00:03:45] There are five kinds of mental clutter that can end up causing you to lose focus and to keep you from greater success. And my hope with this podcast today is that you'll be able to [00:04:00] determine what type of mental clutter consumes your mind so that you can take the next steps to release it. The first type is a negative self-talk.
[00:04:11] Most of us have a voice inside our heads that dictates information to us. It might be a voice that prompts you to say something to a conversation or the voice that tells you what it is that you truly want in a given situation. It's the voice that speaks to you about how you look when you look in the mirror or the voice that talks to you in terms of your self-esteem.
[00:04:39] It can be both positive and negative. This type of self-talk when it's negative, can create a significant amount of mental clutter in your head when you tell yourself that a specific goal that you're trying to accomplish is impossible. It can end up actualizing a situation where you end up [00:05:00] failing. In fact, it most likely will.
[00:05:03] On the other hand, if you can cultivate positive self-talk, the results are much more likely to end up being positive, instead of failing you succeed. Negative self-talk ends up creating a negative mental environment that impacts every aspect of your life. Some common signs of this kind of negative mental environment include feelings of inadequacy, feelings of self-doubt, and even feelings of ugliness in your emotions.
[00:05:36] If you can relate, you're not alone. This is a common type of mental clutter that many people deal with and many don't even realize it's occurring until they really stop and think about it.
[00:05:50] The next type of mental clutter is worry. For some people, worrying can be chronic, and while it's fine to worry about things, [00:06:00] occasionally it starts to take over your life.
[00:06:03] It becomes chronic and might even become addictive or compulsive. For example, for those who worry excessively, it might be challenging for them to recognize that certain situations are out of their control. It might even feel unbearable for certain parts of life to be unpredictable. As much as you try to control things, the future is uncertain.
[00:06:28] You can't control everything. Worrying is a prime example of the fact of anxiety caused by things beyond your control and by shifting the focus of your mind to the more positive aspects of your life, it's possible to eliminate a large portion of this type of mental clutter.
[00:06:51] The next type of mental clutter I've mentioned in the past is fear.
[00:06:56] Fear can also clutter your mind and prevent it from [00:07:00] effectively processing information. If you've ever experienced the feeling of dread regarding a situation that you've never dealt with before, Then you're aware of the fact that fear can stop you in your tracks. Fear can prevent you from accomplishing what you should and also manipulates your brain in the process.
[00:07:23] If you become aware that you're allowing fear to penetrate your mind to the point that it's preventing you from doing something to move you closer to your. Then it should be clear that fear is an important kind of mental clutter that you need to eliminate from your life. For example, that fear of public speaking, I think I mentioned in one of my last few episodes, that's often something that people do need to do to move forward in their career or in their business. Finding those ways to move past it can be really [00:08:00] important.
[00:08:01] The next type of mental clutter is guilt or shame, which typically manifests in your mind when you're not happy with the decisions you've made or the results of those decisions. And this becomes twofold when the choices you've made in the past may end up hurting people you care about or people you've trusted, or people who've trusted you in some.
[00:08:28] Guilt can end up taking a lot of mental space in your mind when you're not able to let go of your poor choices. Instead of letting these poor decisions go and allowing them to become a learning experience, some people can clinging to their feelings out of guilt or even shame. This kind of clinging fuels a situation where the individual allows their self-worth to become tarnished and allows low self-esteem to develop.[00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Additionally, guilt and shame can end up opening your mind to that negative self-talk. That was the first example of mental clutter. For example, if you feel guilt or shame about a situation from your past, you can start to become resentful or angry towards yourself. Once you become angry or resentful, negative thoughts can start to form and take hold of your mind.
[00:09:28] Being able to acknowledge feelings of guilt and shame is the first step toward relinquishing your mind from that grasp of guilt. Once you can recognize these kinds of emotions in yourself, you can start to work on forgiving yourself and forming a more positive relationship with your mind.
[00:09:50] The fifth and final kind of mental clutter is regret.
[00:09:55] It's essential to realize that every single self-defined happy [00:10:00] person in this world has more than likely done something they regret. Making a bad decision is just one of the realities of being human with free choice. It's not about the decision itself, but rather how you deal with the decision when the outcome isn't what you expected.
[00:10:20] It's common to focus more on the result of a situation and less on what was learned from an experience. Being human involves being able to objectively look at what went wrong and where you can improve. The other side of the coin is becoming caught up in the past rather than being optimistic about your future.
[00:10:45] There's a common thread that runs through these five types of mental clutter can be best described as an inability to let go. So if you identify with any of these kinds of mental [00:11:00] clutter, then the chances are high that you sometimes bend too hard on yourself, which can block your ability to gain mental clarity.
[00:11:10] The ability to release yourself from the burden of knowing you could have done something differently is essential. So now that you know some of the most significant types of mental clutter that could be causing you to lose focus, I'd like to talk just a few minutes about some of the specific triggers that can lead to a more cluttered mind.
[00:11:35] So the first trigger is the news. For many people, the daily news can be a huge trigger that fuels unnecessary worry, guilt, and stress. Most traditional news sources focus on violence, controversy or negativity. It's what sells. For example, a past kind of mine was an early bird. She got up early in the morning [00:12:00] and she also felt it was her responsibility to it be informed.
[00:12:04] So, every morning before she started her day, she would focus on several sources of online news. It caused her to basically become focused on all that wasn't right with the world, which filled her with anxious thoughts. And this was at the start of the day. So she was actually interested in being more productive, which is why she took my suggestion and gradually weaned herself from the morning news
[00:12:34] and waited until midday to spend a scheduled limited amount of time becoming informed on the issues she was especially interested in or what was going on in the world. And this did help her to be more productive, but she also felt a lot less anxious. You can try it out for yourself if you're used to watching the nightly news or the [00:13:00] morning news.
[00:13:01] You can determine if it's a trigger by keeping track of how you feel afterwards. Keep track for a few nights and then take a few nights off from watching it and note how you feel. You'll likely find that your mind is clearer from not watching or not reading the news. This doesn't mean that you should completely hide from being informed about current events.
[00:13:26] By recognizing that the news can clutter your mind, you might be able to better protect it when necessary. Another trigger that leads to mental clutter for many of us is in the past, sometimes the past is simply a reference point as we move through life. However, this doesn't mean that you should allow the past to define your future.
[00:13:53] When you focus on the past, it can seem like your inner demons shine brighter than they should. [00:14:00] We've all made mistakes, taken others for granted and done things we're not proud of. When you focus on these negative aspects of your past rather than the positive aspects, you're more likely to be overly hard on yourself.
[00:14:14] In fact, I was in a workshop earlier today. Out of the 20 women that were in the workshop, many of them felt like something that was stopping them from moving forward was basically their past. Like if something had not worked in the past, then subconsciously they felt like it wouldn't work in the future, which generally kept them from moving forward at all or taking the actions necessary to create a better result.
[00:14:48] So if you can start to think of the past as being less defining to who you are today, take the lessons from it, but don't let it define you [00:15:00] and it can lead to a less cluttered mind when you're making important decisions for the future.
[00:15:07] The last trigger is your current habits. It's entirely natural to get stuck in your current ways, even if your, the circumstances don't make you particularly happy, if you feel like you have an attitude that you can't change things because it's just the way it is.
[00:15:26] Then this is a great place to start decluttering your mind and gaining mental clarity as well. And this was another thing that came up in the workshop I was in, out of the 20 people, many people could take something as, uh, just the way it is. This is just the way I am. This is just the way things work.
[00:15:47] Often the reality is, is it's not true. Even if you decide that there's something about your circumstances that you want to change, the first place to start is really in [00:16:00] your thoughts and clearing your mental clutter. Then you can make decisions from a place of greater mental clarity. I hope that helps, that you can find a few places to start clearing some mental clutter.
[00:16:16] Next week, I'm going to talk even more in depth about letting go of the past, because let's face it, the past is usually neither as great or as awful as you remember it. That's it for now. I am working on a workshop centered on clarifying your thoughts, who you want to be and your goals and dreams, so be on the lookout for that.
[00:16:42] In the meantime, have a great rest of your day and I will see you in here next week. Bye for now.
[00:16:50] Thank you for listening to the Extraordinary Live podcast with writer and coach, Crystal Obregon. We'd love to connect with you outside of the podcast too. To find more helpful insights, show [00:17:00] notes, and more about Crystal, go to Crystal Obregon.com.
[00:17:04] O B R E G O N, where you'll also find info for the Design Your Decade workshop. This workshop will help you to stop drifting and start creating. Until next time, be extraordinary.
