Life is meant to be lived, to be experienced, to be loved, and above all to be enjoyed. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? Well as we all know from personal experiences this isn’t always the case. There are many challenges, roadblocks, and various obstacles that will come our way at any given point and time during our personal journey of life.
When those challenges appear they aren’t always easy to overcome, which can make life in those moments not feel pleasant to experience.
It’s a normal part of life. The honest truth is that we wouldn’t be who we are, we wouldn’t have all that we have, and we wouldn’t be where we are in life without those life experiences. Even though we can learn to be grateful for those challenging life experiences, that doesn’t mean it was always easy to get through them.
While I have had my very own great challenges to overcome, I never was great at overcoming them mentally or emotionally. I use to be a complete disaster within the disaster that was happening around me. It wasn’t until I was much older when I started to understand the importance of self-care and religiously practicing it daily.
Now I approach challenges that come my way with a clearer and more focused mindset so that I can remain in control of my thoughts and emotions and ultimately continue to find the joy in life. It’s never an easy battle but if equipped with the right tools, facing those challenging life experiences can be easier to overcome.
Here are some of my best tips to relax your mind to better enjoy your life even when it may seem like everything is falling apart.
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Stay off of social media
I truly believe that the number one thing to keep us locked in a negative headspace surrounded by negative emotions is continuing to stay connected to social media.
Yes, this can be a fun and great place to connect with people from all over the world, find inspiration to help spark creativity in your life, and even stay in the loop about things happening in the lives of close family and friends you don’t get to see or talk to often.
However, social media can also be a place of endless pain and great sadness if you don’t effectively manage your time spent on it. This of course isn’t a general statement for what it means to be active on social media, but more so when you may feel mentally or emotionally out of control and are seeking for a “cure” to those emotions.
Social media is never the place to go. There are a couple of reasons why I believe this but for now I’ll share with you my top three reasons.
- If you’re not happy but you’re constantly seeing and reading about the lives of other people who are happy, you can easily trick yourself into believing that things will never get better for you.
- We often use social media as a distraction, and when we are distracting ourselves from our own life, we aren’t solving or fixing any of the existing problems. We’re just excusing them for the moment.
- To piggyback off of number 2, when you avoid what’s going on in your life and needs to be fixed in order for you to move forward, you’re just building a bigger snowball of more troubling problems to unfold in your life.
You see, social media is yet another privileged tool in our lives that we have to learn how to use responsibly. We can’t depend on social media to be our go-to way of connecting and healing ourselves. We have to have the necessary tools and skills that exist outside of it to be able to do that.
So, when your mind is wandering off and you’re having a hard time getting control of it, I always, always, always recommend people to stay off of social media for at least a week. Sometimes longer if you honestly need that time away from social media.
This gives you time and freedom to really check in with yourself, understand what’s off within your personal atmosphere, and actually do the work that needs to get done to make everything better. Plus, it’s very healthy to give yourself permission to not be active on social media from time to time.
Most of us literally use social media as a way for us to stay in the loop with everything happening in the world. From pop culture news to real life news, and even to help connect with family and friends, social media has so much power in our lives.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, we can easily become addicted to using social media as an outlet for our emotions. Allowing your life to become consumed by social media can make it harder to relax your mind in times when you do feel overwhelmed by life.
So how can stay off of social media so that we are able to engage in more self-reflection and self-care to relax our heart and mind? I’m glad you asked. Here are my two best pieces of advice for effectively managing your time on social media.
The first thing you can do is choose a specific time of day to get on social media and leave it at that. For example, I like to do my social media posts for my followers in the morning about an hour or two after I start my day. Once I post whatever inspiring message I felt in my heart to share that day, I stay off of social media for the rest of the day.
Another thing you can do is make a list of things that you would like to get done for the day. This helps to give you something to do where you are actively working towards your goals and not just wasting time away on social media. This list doesn’t have to be anything extensive or exhaustive. Simply make a list of things that you may have been putting off doing, or things that you need to do in order to move forward with something.
Unplug for a couple of hours during the day. Spending less time on social media and more time in the real world is one of the easiest ways to relax your mind and presently enjoy your life.
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Choose to be present
Of course this tip was going to be on the list! I preach this all the time because I truly believe it makes all the difference in our mental and emotional health. When you are choosing to be present you are allowing yourself to be aware of everything that is happening within you and around you.
This means you notice the car alarm that is going off across the street during your 10am meditation session. You noticed the burning smell of toast coming from the kitchen as your 3-year-old niece tries to make toast by herself for the first time. You may even notice the heavy breathing coming from your dog as she sleeps on the floor beneath your feet.
You notice everything when you allow yourself to be present. Being super in-tuned with the world can be overwhelming, but that’s why you have boundaries and effective self-care techniques in place to help limit this.
One way I like to be present and aware is through meditation. Meditation is a great daily practice to help you become more connected to yourself, learn how to trust your intuition more, and be more mindful of the way you live your life. Meditation is a practice that directly connects the mind, body, and spirit.
Which means that it’s an effective technique to help you relax your mind. Sometimes when we are feeling overwhelmed by our thoughts or emotions, we don’t recognize the underlying thoughts and emotions that are fueling the surface level ones.
For example, experiencing surface level stress may be the result of the underlying feeling of being tired. You may be too tired to think clearly and function properly but instead of allowing yourself time to rest and recover you choose to push yourself through it. Doing so may cause you to feel stressed and overwhelmed because you lack the energy and mental clarity to get the task at hand done.
Engaging in meditation can provide you with the skill to take a step back when something does not feel right, evaluate what’s really going on, and then have the knowledge to do what needs to be done first in order to accomplish what you’re currently trying to do. This can ultimately help you feel and experience less stress and move through your day with a more relaxed mind.
Meditation is not the answer to everything (but I think it could potentially be argued?) but it most certainly is a great mental activity to keep your mind at ease. There are so many great benefits to learning how to be present through meditation. Mental clarity and having a relaxed mind are among one of those benefits.
Do activities that make you happy
This one is a no-brainer, right? When we feel down in the dumps, not like ourselves, or we’re bored don’t we naturally gravitate towards things that make us feel good? Well relaxing your mind so that you can better enjoy life is no different.
It’s so important to participate in activities that you enjoy. Ideally, I would encourage you to do this daily, but I understand that for a lot of people this can’t always be the case. So, at the very least I encourage you to do activities that make you happy twice a week.
You should always participate in activities that bring you joy. We all know what makes us happy. Now it’s time to commit to engaging in those activities at least twice a week.
Participating in activities that make you happy will keep yourself busy in a fun, healthy and productive way. This leaves less room to feel overwhelmed or consumed by everything that is happening outside of your control. Which in turn creates more room to invite thoughts and feelings of love and happiness from the things that you can control.
Don’t overthink this tip either. I promise it’s as simple as it sounds. Below are some examples of activities you can do.
- Take a walk
- Read a book
- Exercise
- Play games with your family
- Go for a hike
- Spend some time learning a new language
And so much more.
I recommend you sit down and make a list of 5 activities that you love doing. When you have this list put it up where you can easily find it. Refer to this list whenever you find yourself feeling overwhelmed mentally or emotionally and do an activity as a self-care measure to help center yourself.
You’d be amazed with how quickly you can reset your thoughts and emotions.
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Find your go-to person
Lastly, find your person and I don’t mean this in a romantic way. We all need someone that we can confidently turn to whenever life gets hard. Whether that’s your therapist, your mom or dad, your brother or sister, boyfriend or girlfriend, wife or husband, or even your best friend.
It doesn’t matter, just find that one person who you can share your struggles and challenges with. This can help to lighten up the burden of feeling like you have to go through that challenging time by yourself. It can also help you keep your mind at ease because you’re not holding onto an overwhelming amount of negative content. You’re allowing yourself the freedom to express yourself and let that negative energy run free.
This can help relax your mind because you’re not becoming consumed by that negative energy. You are actively working through it and creating more space for positive energy to overflow in your life. Life can be overwhelming and a lot to take on at times. This is why self-care and self-awareness are so important.
There are so many things that you can do to relax your mind so that you can be present and enjoy your life now. Everything in this post is only the beginning of finding your peace of mind. There is still so much more to explore.
I hope you find these tips helpful and give them a try. Let me know how it works for you and if you have any tips to share, please do so!
-Xo
Kimora