Three Things: How to Practice Mental Minimalism
In this episode of Flow Over Fear, learn about the practice of mental minimalism and its benefits in reducing anxiety and increasing focus. Discover three ways to start incorporating mental minimalism into your life, including avoiding sensationalized news and media, and learning to control what you allow into your mind.
The three things discussed in this video are:
- Avoiding the news
- Cleaning up your social media
- Taking clarity breaks (Big “S” Little “s” Sabbath)
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that was inspiring to me that Lifted MeUpand so when you’re looking at yoursocials when you’re looking at yoursocial media feedsask yourself that is this empowering meis this Lifting me up or is it sendingme into the spiral of anger fear uhunhappinessyou know a frustrationor you know it is and is it just is itliving in my brainhello everyone and welcome to the flowover fear podcast where it is ourmission to help you to rise above fearand realize your ultimate potential inleadership and life I’m your host AdamHill and it is my goal to share with youthe human side of high performance myguests share their experience with fearanxiety struggle Challenge and mostimportantly despite all of it how theyRose above it to achieve incredibleresults so if you’re ready to rise uplet’s get started hey everyone welcometo this episode of flow over fear andthree things and today I want to sharethree ways in which you can start topractice mental minimalism now what ismental minimalism well as you may knowas an anxiety superhero that when weexperience anxiety it’s just a bunch ofdifferent stuff that just comes into ourbrains and overwhelms us and Spinsaround and just starts causing Mayhem inour mindsand the one of the ways in which we canstart to alleviate that anxiety andstart to practice more focus andtherefore more flow in our livesis to is to remove a lot of the itemsthat are just causing that Mayhem tohappen this is a practice I like to callmental minimalism because we weultimately yeah well we want to remove alot of this stuff that’s causing us somuch havoc and so much chaos in ourmindsultimately what we want to do first iswe want to control what we’re puttinginto it and you know a lot of times whatwe put into it is not healthy but we putthat stuff in there under this guiseunder this veil of of of wanting to restor relax or or recover or things likethatyou know we’ll we’ll put in you knowwe’ll do things like we we will drink touh to you know take the edge off butultimately what that does is it itstarts to deplete our energy it takestakes away from our health that kind ofthing and um and the same happens whenwe put information in and the type ofinformation that we put into our brainsinto our minds so I want to share threeways in which you can start to practicemental minimalism and start to enjoy thebenefits of relieving yourself from someof that anxiety some of that chaos andstart to achieve greater flow in yourlife and this all comes down to what wefocus on and where we focus our energythe first way the first thing that youwant to do is to avoid the news and thisisn’t some conspiracy-esque Theory kindof thing I’m not on the side of Fox Newsor MSNBC or anything like that I avoidall of it and this may you may look atthis as something like well Adam’s notbeing informed how how is he going toknow what’s happening in the world trustme when something important happens Ifind out about it I mean I talk topeople people know things I hear aboutthe things that happen in our world andif it’s important enough it will get tome that’s the nature of our world rightnow we’re at we are in an on-demandworld meaning we don’t just have to tunein to Walter concrete at uh at at eighto’clock in the evening this one newsprogram that we have on only threechannels we have infinite stations wehave infinite websites we can go to tofind information or news and all of itis there and all of it issensationalized all of it is there todrag you in to make you click on thebutton to instigate feelings that willhappen within you and that’s problematicbecause if it’s if if if instead ofbeing this unbiased source for news it’sit’s trying to invoke feelings orpassions or or or polarizing viewstowards everybodyit’s causing more chaos in our minds youknow the more we think about congressmenso and so who’s doing you know this thisevil act or whatever it might be themore that’s just weighing on everythingelse that needs to be important to usand so personally I avoid the news andthat might be that might be seen assomething that’s insensitive or orsomething like that but the way I lookat the news unfortunately it’s gottenout of handand it’s gotten out of our controland and I I don’t see a way in which wecan come back to those Walter Cronkitedays or or the days where we can justget the news and collectively watch aperson walk on the moon without uhgetting different uh perspectives on onthis or that or opinions and all thiskind of stuff or Talking Heads that uhthat create all this Mayhemso if you’re a if you want to practicethis mental minimalismthen the one of the first ways and oneof the easiest ways to get into thatstate is to avoid watching any kind ofmedia that is that is trying to uhtrying to inject information into youthat is that is injecting a belief or orreinforcing a paradigm or anything likethat becauseis it is it really serving youso and and when you’re watching that andwhen you’re absorbing any informationlike that that’s a good question to askis this serving youuh because chances are it might not beit might just be adding to the drama inyour life and dramamy friends is an energy killer drama isis thethe anti-minimalism to our minds dramaadds more elements into our minds atmore more chaos to our mindsetso avoid the news and on that same notethis gets me into the second point ofhow to practice mental minimalismand that is to detox your socials andsome of your friends some of your familymay not like you for this but if you’revery clear with them as to why you’redoing it uh and and that you are thatyou are doing it uhthat you’re doing it in such a way thatit is it is you know not personal but itis just for your own benefit then peopleshould understand I say should inquotation marks becausenot a lot of people do understand whentheir friends leave leave them orunfollow them on social mediabut if there is if there are people thataresimply justdoing too much or or promoting too muchnegativity orum or attacking or or inciting on yoursocial media feedwell that too is adding to that chaosthat’s in your mindand if you can minimize that if you canall if you can just if you can commit tomaking your social mediaa source for positivitymeaning you know you you see maybekittens or or puppy dogs and things likethat but also what inspires you what doyou want to see that inspires you wellfor me when I detox my socials I endedup I truly did end up unfollowing a lotof friends and family just because ofwhat they were posting and I justcouldn’t stand to see it on both sidesof the spectrum uh I didn’t want to hearabout anybody in any election I didn’twant to I didn’t want to I didn’t wantto read about uh you know any kind ofGossip uh from from celebrity gossip oranything like that what I wanted to seeI wanted to see people achieving theirdreamsI wanted to see people achieving goals Iwanted to see people traveling the worldI wanted to see uh I wanted to hearabout the celebrations and the wins inpeople’s lives because that wasinspiring to me that Lifted Me Upand so when you’re looking at yoursocials when you’re looking at yoursocial media feedsask yourself that is this empowering meis this Lifting me up oris it sending me into the spiral ofanger fear uh unhappinessyou know a frustrationor you know it is and is it just is itliving in my brain we’ve all had thatsituation where we’ve read the commentsand that’s what they say don’t read thecomments right don’t read the commentsbut we’ve had those situations wherewe’ve read something that’s reallygotten to us and it’s been in our mindsall day longor we might have seen something ifsomebody posted it may that or that thatmay have just been that we have made mayhave taken personally and it sits withus all day it gets into our mind all daythose kinds of things become obstaclesto experiencing greater flow in ourlivesyou have to be on the lookout for thosethings if you want to practice greaterflow in your lifethen you have to you have to take outthose things that hit you like that oryou have to learn and be resilient tonot let them get to you but the best wayand the easiest way with social media isto just not not notexpose yourself to them as often as youas you need toum because it just it becomes achallenge to try to remove that fromyour life so detoxing your socials isalso a good one to uh to add in additionto avoiding the news that will providethat mental minimalism and improve yourflowand then finally here’s a practical tiponum the third thing I want to share withyou to practice mental minimalism is apractical tip on how you can resetand resetting is an important part ofcontinuing to stay and flow andalleviate that that anxiety and thatchaos that’s going around in your mindand the way to do that is to practicebig S little s and that’s big Sabbathand little Sabbath and I know I’m kindof getting onto the onto the religiousangle here but hear me out becauseuh because a Sabbath is a day of rest aSabbath is a time of rest and there’s areason why that’s reinforced you knowwhether it be a a day that’s that’sgiven to us by God as a day of rest orwhether it be just something that wehave to practice the reality is is thathuman beings need restto in order to thrive in order toexperience flowso this is something you have to putinto your calendar the big Sabbath is afull day of rest where you take off anentire day from work where you don’t doany work and this gets really reallyhard to do this gets really really hardto do guys because when you try to takethat time off you want to start doingstuff you find that oh my gosh I’m gonnamiss something I I have to do this thingI have to do this project I have tofinish this project do you reallybut make that for what it whether you’respiritual or not make that day sacredbecause if you can make that day sacredI guarantee that’s one of the bestthings that you could do to alleviatethe chaos in your brain is give yourselfone day one day one day a week uh to togive yourself that rest and that thatday I traded as tradition would put itdo that on Sundays I I take a full daywhere I don’t do any work and it doesn’tmean I can’t think of it because I Idon’t think of it because sometimesthose topics come into my headbut I don’t I don’t live there I don’t Idon’t give in and I don’t do the workand I don’t turn on the computer onthose daysthat’s a that’s an important thing to dois to take that big S and and take thatday for yourselfspend some time with your family spendsome time with your loved ones spendsome time with yourself spend some timein nature do whatever you need to doum spend some time with video games butjust just take that time away from worktake that time away from yourobligations take that time away from thethings that stress you outum and then the little s is the dailySabbath The Daily little breaks you wantto take throughout the course of the dayand these are important too becausethese will help you to stay in the flowa lot of times we get into that flowstate where we get into work and we justwant to keep working keep working keepworking you know what the best time totake those breaks is the best time isright when you’re at that Peakproductivitywhy at that time because that’s rightwhen you’re you’re about to start comingdown and when you start that downwardtrajectory it is really really hard toget yourself back to a state ofproductivity throughout the day so youwant to take it when you’ve when you’vebeen in that Peak state for a little bitand you want to take it while you’restill at that Peak state of productivityyou take that break you come back to itand then you take a little bit of a of adip to to get yourself back into it butthen you start to have this new Peak andyou start to come backall it takes is 15 to 20 minutes 15 to20 minute breaks when you have that Peakprotein productivity and honestly getaway from your computer get away fromyour phone this isn’t a time to checksocial media see item two for that thisis a time to just get outside meditatewatch whateverum whatever nature is around you listento the sounds but take it as a time foryourselfand do it with discipline because againyour mind is going to tell you well Ican’t do that now because I need to getin this no make it a scheduled point inyour day and make it non-negotiableso those are the three things you wantto focus on to get that mentalminimalism if you do those three thingsyou will clear your mind of a lot ofthat clutter a lot of that chaos that uhthat we’re starting to put in there ontop of the other things that we have tothink about things like family thingslike our work things like our businessall of those things those things aregoing to be in there we’re going to haveto think about those things you don’thave to add any more drama or any moreChaos on top of that that has nothing todo with youso uh if you want to practice mentalminimalism avoid the newsdetox your socials and practice a big Slittle Sabbath every week and every dayand you will start to experience moremental minimalism thanks for joining meon this episode we’ll see you next timehey everyone Thanks for tuning in to theflow over fear podcast if you’d like tolearn more about getting into flow andlearn the foundations of flow I have afree video series on my website atwww.adamcliffordhill.com called thefoundations of flow feel free to gothere and download it and start yourjourney to Rising above fear andachieving greater flow in your life ifyou like this episode and I’m guessingyou did if you stuck around for thislong then please do me a favor and hitthe Subscribe button and you willreceive notifications when I have newinterviews new Recaps and new trainingsthat pop up on YouTube thanks again forjoining us
