Finding Clarity

Here are some ideas to help you find clarity in your life.

1 Express your thoughts in writing. 

If your mind is a tangled mess of thoughts, it can help to write them down. Start off writing in free-form: record how you're feeling, why you're feeling, and what you want to do about it. After recording this information, you'll have something concrete to reflect upon; this will help you feel a sense of accomplishment, even if you haven't "done" anything.

This really interesting trick will help you literally throw away your thoughts. Write all your troubles down on a piece of paper, discussing why they're bothering you. Then crumble it up and throw it away. Yes, throw it away! Researchers found that people who threw away their written concerns were less likely to be worried by them.

2 Express your thoughts in drawing. 

So you may not be a Van Gogh, but you don't have to be to create art. All you need is a medium and a piece of paper. Have fun decorating with rainbow crayons; experiment with oil painting; get just the right shading with charcoal. Releasing your anxieties and clearing your mind through drawing can be an incredibly powerful force.

3 Have a discussion with another person.

Maybe you're the kind of person who keeps their thoughts and emotions bubbled up inside. That's not a bad a thing, necessarily, but it means that small concerns can quickly snowball into seemingly big ones overnight. In order to free your mind of worries you may be having, worries about love, stress about health, doubts about your job, learn to talk to someone.

Reach out to friends and family first. Your friends and family love you and understand you. They don't need rationalizations, and they won't sugarcoat advice. Tell them about what you're going through and listen for advice. If your friends and family aren't the kind to lean a helping hand, consider talking to a therapist. A therapist is trained to listen to your particular concerns and find solutions based on calculated research and troves of experience. Don't feel like you're inferior for seeking the advice of a therapist. 

Have a deep conversation with someone. Easier said than done, but totally worthwhile. Researchers have found that having deep conversations, in which you go beyond the superficial and share something thought-provoking or intimate, actually makes people happier.

4 Hang out with a pet. 

While there is no scientific evidence that owning a pet can directly help clear your mind, there is a host of evidence that is worth looking at. Owning a pet lowers your risk of depression; lowers blood pressure; elevates serotonin and dopamine; and lowers your risk of visiting the doctor if you're older than 65. If you're happier and healthier, wouldn't it also be easier to let go of things that are bothering you and embrace what you do have in your life?

5 Remind yourself of the truly important things in life. 

Sometimes, our minds become flooded with thoughts that, in retrospects, aren't very important. Perhaps you lost your job, or maybe your girlfriend just broke up with you. While definitely important, these things are by no means the end of the world. Remind your brain of all the truly important things that it has going for it:

Friends and family

Health and safety

Food and shelter

Opportunity and freedom

Finding Clarity in Meditation

1 Try walking meditation. 

Walking meditation is exactly what it sounds: Using the openness and beauty of nature to inspire calm, positive thoughts in the brain. Be like Henry David Thoreau, walking through the wilderness and planning the site of your cabin-to-be. Or imagine you're Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist, who classified many plants and animals. Being outside on a warm sunny day can do wonders for your disposition.

2 Still your eyes. 

This is a meditation technique that helps you clear your mind by obliterating your sense of time. Here's how to do it:

Focus your eyes on one point in the distance. Any stationary object about 10 feet (3.0 m) away works best; objects that are too far away are harder to focus on for longer periods of time. The object could be a wall, a vase, a speck of dirt, as long as it's not moving.

Dim your conscious mind and continue to focus on the object. Your brainpower is all being channeled toward one task. Continue focusing on the object, even if your eyes begin to stray or your mind begins to wander.

After a certain point, time will begin to slow. You'll be in the zone. Your concentration will not waver. You won't begin to worry about what was once worrying you because your concentration is 100% devoted to maintaining its gaze on the object. When you're ready, relax your concentration. Your mind should feel a little worn out, like it's just gone through mental calisthenics. You should feel better.

3 Try breathing exercises. 

Breathing is an essential part of meditation, which can be an essential part of clearing your mind. Mastering several different breathing techniques can help you achieve the open-minded clarity that comes with transcendence. Master this quick breathing technique, the complete breath, in order to better master meditation:

Standing up straight, exhale completely.

Relax your belly muscles as you begin to inhale. Concentrate on filling your belly with air.

Once your belly is completely filled with air, keep on breathing, expanding your chest and rib cage.

Momentarily hold your breath, fighting the instinct to exhale.

Exhale slowly — as slowly as possible. Feel the air moving out of your lips.

Relax your chest and rib cage, pulling in your belly in order to force out any remaining air.

Close your eyes, concentrate on your normal breathing, and clear your mind.

Repeat process for 5 to 30 minutes.

4 Try different forms of meditation. 

There are many ways to skin a cat, and not all of them involve a knife. Learn the different forms of meditation, everything from mantra meditation to zen meditation.

5 Once you've begun meditating, learn to deepen your meditation skills.

Once you've gotten a hang of the basics of meditation, learn how to enhance the effects of your efforts. There are several ways to do this:

Relax the body completely. Make sure your body isn't unconsciously tensing up while you descend into mindlessness. Try tensing your body purposely, and then releasing the tension. Repeat this exercise until you know that your body is completely relaxed.

Try staying completely still while you meditate. It's hard achieving a state of enlightened mindlessness when your body is moving, sending sensation and demanding response from your brain. Make an effort to stay completely still.

Let your breathing flow naturally. After some initial breathing exercises, let go of the conscious exertion of your breath. Let it do what it wants. Focus your awareness out into the farther points of your body, and by doing so, eliminate that awareness.

Finding Productive Ways to Distract Yourself

1 Play sports or make a game out of something. 

Sometimes, clearing your mind is about distracting yourself from negative thoughts that creep into your consciousness. Nothing is more distracting than playing an absorbing game or making a game out of ordinary routine.

Getting physical exercise by playing sports is a great way to feel better and take your mind off whatever is bothering you. On top of that, physical activity is a great way to cure physiological ailments and soothe psychological disorders.

Make a game out of whatever ordinary activity you are performing at the time. Have to organise your room? Make a game out of it by shooting dirty laundry into your hamper. Have to run errands? Challenge yourself to be frugal and spend half of what you normally spend.

2 Challenge yourself to an open-ended task. 

They say that idle hands are the devil's workshop, so the best thing that you can do to keep your mind clear is keep your hands occupied. Your metaphorical hands. And challenging yourself to an open-ended task is a great way to do that. Here are some ideas that you can try out to stay busy:

Take a picture of yourself every day for a year. You're probably seen the montage videos by now, the succession of pictures accompanied by music, chronicling the life of a human being in pictures. It's a great idea, and anyone can try it. But you need patience and persistence to do it every day for a year.

Do something you're afraid of, every day. This was Eleanor Roosevelt's famous advice, and one that strikes a chord with many people. Maybe you're afraid of interacting with other people. (Many people share this fear.) Go out and stop a stranger for directions, and then strike up a conversation. You'll slowly begin to conquer your fear, helping your mind realise that it can let go of other troubles, as well.

Reduce Stress in 60 Seconds with QiGong Breathing

Two thousand years ago, in China, they discovered that our breath, or lack of it, is at the root of most of our stress and health problems. It’s no secret that meditative breathing can help bring down your stress level. Well, with QiGong breathing, you can change your whole outlook! In this guide, you will learn a simple QiGong (chi kung), or breathing technique, that will shift your outlook on life in 60 seconds.

Open Up to Relaxation

Your body is made of energy—as is everything in the universe. The energy field that you are can get tight and squeezed when we are under stress and don’t breathe fully. So, as you sit back and enjoy the sensation of the body loosening, opening, and being massaged by the rhythm of your own breathing, allow this energy field of your being to just “let go” and to be expanded open by a silken effortlessness that begins to permeate your being.

Feel your entire being “un-gripping” and surrendering itself open to the expanding lightness that is permeating you. Expand your energy to be open with it, like an unfolding blooming rose. It is a feeling of simply lightening up on yourself and the world all around you.

As you practice this breathing technique and your body become familiar with it, you will begin to allow the breaths to fill you, and relax out of you. Don’t force it, or strain. T’ai Chi and QiGong are the arts of learning to live “effortlessly,” so you just let the breathing “breathe you,” as you relax out of the way, almost being massaged by the rhythm of your own breathing.

Breathe for Stress Reduction

Before you begin, make sure you have a quiet space where you can be uninterrupted and without distraction. Read through this exercise, then practice it step-by-step to get familiar with it. Once you understand the exercise, go through it all with your eyes closed for one or two minutes, completely surrendering yourself to the full breaths and the absolute letting go suggested.

1. To begin, sit comfortably upright, preferably in a straight-backed chair. Lightly touch the tip of your tongue to the gum line just behind your front/top teeth.

2. Let your eyes close easily and naturally, as you just sit back and enjoy the sensation of your body filling and emptying of breath. Let your shoulders relax down away from your neck, and allow your torso muscles to relax around your rib cage. Think of the 50 trillion cells of your being absolutely letting go on each releasing breath.

3. Now, as you breathe in, think of breathing into your dan tien, or upper pelvis. Of course your lungs don’t go down that far, but thinking of breathing into the upper pelvis will cause your lower lungs to fill first …

… and then your chest will naturally inflate as well.

On your sighing exhale, again let your shoulders sink and relax down away from your neck, and let every one of your 50 trillion cells let go of everything. The air will empty out of your chest first …

… and then will empty out of your lower lungs, as you allow your abdominal wall to gently relax inward.

4. With eyes closed, repeat this for a minute or two. Let it become very relaxed, as your body and torso “relax open” to a full breath—filling from the lower torso, and then on up to fill the upper chest as well. On each sighing exhale allow every aspect of your being—your mind, your heart, your body—to let go of everything it’s been squeezing on to.

As you exhale, think of the brain-mind beginning to let go of all the tight thoughts it’s been squeezing onto. It’s as if the brain were a muscle that you’ve unconsciously squeezed for no reason at all … and now you can enjoy the sensation of the airy fibers of your mind beginning to un-grip, to unfurl, and to relax open this this expanding lightness as you exhale. As you let that breath sigh out of your relaxing body, it’s as though your brain could exhale and let go.

Think of your heart beginning to let go of all the tight feelings it’s been unconsciously squeezing within it. Enjoy the effortless sensation of your tight heart beginning to exhale and let go of everything that it’s been holding onto. Enjoy that silken effortless lightness that expands through your heart and chest and torso, as the heart lets go again and again and again.

5. As you continue breathing with the tip of the tongue lightly touching the gums behind the top/front teeth, and deeply letting go over and over again, allowing the silken effortlessness of this soothing energy to permeate you, and to expand you open and outward … just let go of the process.

Let the breath breathe you, as you relax out of the way, being massaged, loosened and opened by it.

6. Before you open your eyes, give yourself a few moments to just bask and soak in this ocean of expanding radiance that you have become. Be lifted, lightened, and opened by it. Let yourself float in this field of absolute safety, and complete acceptance. Nothing to rush off to, nothing to measure up to … you are held dearly floating in this field of lightness … cherished and appreciated for who you are.

Let this expanding radiance hold you and embrace you. Let yourself be loved. You are loveable. You don’t have to earn it. You are floating in a field of absolute safety and love.

Just breathing, and letting go.

And in a few moments, whenever you are ready, very slowly, and very gently … open your eyes.

If the experience of doing this QiGong breathing exercise did not blow your mind and relieve you of your stress, you need to try it again—and don’t try so hard this time. The problems we face with these techniques are never because we didn’t try hard enough, or weren’t precise enough … it is usually because we try way too hard. 

Just remember to sit back and let this happen to you, just for the fun and pleasure of it. Breathe, and let go. Open and lighten, as you let the lightness and radiant energy expanding through you open you. You just relax out of the way. QiGong gives you the sense of lightness, which is who you really are. 

You are a being of light, bathe and luxuriate in your incredible lightness of being. Enjoy the peace.