My #1 Tool For Mental Clarity

Right away, I imagine some of you are reading through this feeling tight, anxious or nervous that I might tell you to throw your to-do list away and pour productivity out the window.

I will not be doing that.

Scheduling nothing is just that – schedule 3-5 minutes a day of nothing, every single day.

Have you ever found yourself in an arousal loop? It happens in different ways, but you might have experienced it when you’re trying to get a lot done, you have a critical timeframe coming up, or there are just mounting responsibilities hanging over your head. You might wake up with every intention of getting things done; you might even begin your day that way, even jazzing yourself up with your favourite coffee to dive in full speed! As the day progresses, though, you find yourself tuning out more and more, soothing yourself by scrolling through your phone, busying yourself with more manageable and significantly less vital tasks (like deep cleaning your bathroom).

This is one example of the hyperarousal/hypoarousal brain loop.

By the time you get to the end of the day, your internal dialogue may be crashing. Your inner critic might be at full volume, and you may feel mounting feelings of shame at not having done enough, guilt at not doing what you needed to do, and anxiety over what you have to, now, get done tomorrow.

Mentally it feels like your thoughts are in total disarray.

We’ve been there. Today, my goal is to give you one of my favourite tools to circumvent this brain loop for more sustainable mental clarity with an easy-to-apply technique that changed my relationship with my daily work experience.

Schedule nothing.

This isn’t meditation or visualization, and it’s not anything you have to do; it’s just nothing.

Here’s how I recommend doing it:

Take your phone out and put a 5-minute timer on (if this feels like a long time to you, you can start at 3, but I do recommend 5). Now place your phone out of reach and sit somewhere comfortable by a window.

Look out the window.

That’s all. 

Look out the window and notice what you see. Look as though you’re looking for the very first time – notice the colours you see, the distance between things, the way the light touches everything in the environment. Look at any textures that catch your eye, the way things move.

Just look.

The trick: try to stay with your sense of vision without getting into stories in your head – just focus on looking.

I promise you’ll feel clearer and lighter, and you may even find that the rhythm of your breath naturally lengthens and deepens.

I have SO MANY more tips, tricks and courses designed to help you find mental clarity and a peaceful state of being in the memberships! My approach is one that cultivates self-compassion and offers us grace as we move forward in our humanness and spiritual and healing journey. If you’re new to my work, please check out the Self-Study Membership on a FREE 5-Day Trial! It’ll give you access to all my meditations, visualizations and recordings as well as yoga classes, courses and workbooks – click the link above and soak up as much as you like!

With love,

Molly

xox