Resting The Mind Is As Important As Resting The Body

Rest the mind, silence discursive thinking and deactivate worry is synonymous with health and well-being. However, we have to admit it, we are nomads of mental hyperactivity, we jump from one idea to another, we go from memory to obsession, from obsession to stress until we are exhausted. We are unable to disconnect even while on vacation, even lying on the bed.

Many will be surprised to learn that about 90% of the thoughts we have each day are useless. Our neuroses feed on precisely those ideas devoid of logic, the same ideas that feed anxieties and wire the human potential. Thinking is a simple act, we come into the world with that ability, however, ‘thinking well’ and knowing when to rest the brain is something that not everyone knows how to do.

Self-care goes beyond taking care of our body, combing and dressing, maintaining a healthy diet and exercising regularly. It’s also about learning to rest your mind. Sometimes ‘not thinking’ for a certain amount of time helps us to live better.

Rest the mind, control the thought

We have more than 60,000 thoughts a day. That flow of mental energy is something simply wonderful. Thanks to this exceptional ability, we have created everything that surrounds us, we have established culture, societies and carried space probes to know the surface of Mars. Now, the mind can work miracles, it can mediate creativity, our happiness, but also our discomfort.

Something really common in many people with anxiety is breaking down every thing done, said, seen or felt. They analyze their conversations to torture themselves about what they should have said and what they shouldn’t have said. They place their gaze on the future by anticipating events with an associated probability far from certainty. They become obsessed with mistakes, they feed ideas that taste like fear and negativity … Their mental discourses make up what we could call ‘junk thoughts’.

These latter mental approaches are characterized by two basic dimensions: they are false and they are sticky. That is to say, the garbage idea is the one that one takes for granted (I am a failure) and that is unable to get it out of his mind. It is like that gum in the shoe that prevents us from moving forward. In these cases, it is not only hygienic to rest the mind, it is also advisable to set aside those thought cycles that build nothing … and destroy a lot.

The effects of the exhausted mind

A mind inhabited by junk thoughts (negative, false and sticky) drifts into a very debilitating state. When we go through a time with high worry and anxiety, we begin to show certain cognitive failures. Concentration problems, memory lapses, attention problems appear …

Now, in a study published in the International Journal of Stress Management ,  and carried out at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, it was shown that mental exhaustion long maintained over time (or when we say to ourselves that of ‘I am burned out’) often leads to major depression.

We have a mental muscle capable of establishing rest periods

This data is interesting. Our brain is ‘designed’ to have regular rest periods. Actually, in our day to day it carries out two types of processes. The first is the one that requires active and conscious concentration; It is that which allows us to carry out tasks, solve problems, analyze what we see, make decisions, remember, think …

Now, the brain also has the  ‘automatic pilot’ state. This happens when we are absorbed in watching a landscape or television, when we walk in tranquility, when we are reading but we realize that we are not centered and we have not understood anything. In those moments, the mind is, but it stays away, disconnected in a way.

Learn to rest the mind, how to do it?

Rest your mind is not lying in a hammock, or closing your eyes or watching a Netflix series. Actually, to disconnect the mind requires a certain effort and will, because often, even when facing a sea and on vacation, our mind continues with its hyperactivity and nervousness.

So let’s look at some strategies that can help us.

• Become aware of your senses. The mind makes a lot of noise but for once, we are going to leave its palace to travel to our senses. For a moment, let’s focus on what our skin feels, what our eyes see, what we smell, what we hear …
• Dandelion strategy. While we allow ourselves to ‘listen to our senses’ to rest our minds, a thought may suddenly assail us (tomorrow you have that meeting, yesterday you made a mistake, next week you have that trip …). When this happens, we will carry out the dandelion technique. We will imagine that we have this plant in our hand and that, when we blow on it, our annoying thoughts are scattered – with the seeds.
• Clouds on a windy day. The Vietnamese monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh points out the following: “Do not stick to your thoughts and feelings. Let them go like clouds on a windy day as they come ” .

Let’s do the latter when it comes to resting the mind, let those disruptive thoughts go as they come. The useless, better, let it go.