“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.” — Chuck Palahniuk, Freelance Journalist, American author, and Author of Fight Club
Today’s society has something that jumbles everything up and causes panic, fear, anxiety, and overall unhappiness. That something is Media. Television, the internet, the news, phones, laptops, tablets, different branding, advertisements, huge billboards to look at while we’re driving, radios, even other people who won’t stop talking about a product or brand. We’re constantly bombarded with an excess of information, and it breeds fear. People will begin worrying about what’s happening in celebrities’ personal lives or what their favorite brand is going to release next (There are some things that we all should worry about and unite for or against, but this blog isn’t about politics). The result? People lose track of what’s going on right in front of their face. They begin to worry so much about other people and things that they forget to worry about the things that are happening in their own personal lives. Suddenly those things build up. The bills suddenly stack up, work becomes too difficult, family members become too stressful to be around. Things become difficult.
The number one way to combat this is to live in the moment. No, I don’t mean love the moment you’re in. I mean be present in the moment and your surroundings. Don’t think about that embarrassing thing you did in highschool when you’re at work; think about how to get your job done quickly and efficiently. Don’t think about your job when you’re spending time with family; think about the conversation you’re having with them and how you can bond with them. Eventually things will become so mixed up that you start thinking about everything BUT what’s right in front of you, and you never catch up.
The best way to get yourself back into the moment is to promise yourself to think about your problems later, during a time you specifically set aside to reflect and react to your problems. That way your mind will understand that you hear what it’s telling you, and instead will focus on the job that needs to get done in the present moment. This is why it’s important to give yourself alone time to meditate and just think. You’re essentially teaching your mind how to do good time management.
After you spend time thinking about your problems, you need to come up with a general plan of action. It’s important to not get into too much detail, because then you’ll start stressing yourself out even more than you were in the first place. Coming up with a plan of action helps because then you have an end goal and you know what you’re working towards, even when you’re in stressful situations. In fact, some people even write down their plans of action so that they remember what they came up with to combat their problems.
The second steps in changing your negatives into positives go as follows: learn to live in the moment, but set aside time to prepare yourself for action. These steps allow for clarity in thought, and that’s the best thing to have for yourself when everything around you seems like it’s crashing down.
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How do you combat stress? Do you meditate? Talk about it with others? Or do you write down your thoughts? I’d love to hear different approaches to mental clarity; the possibilities are vast and endless. Feel free to let me know in the comments down below. It would also help me out quite a bit if you shared this with your friends and family on social media. They might find this information useful! Stay tuned for future blog posts every Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday around noon, and try to be the reason someone smiles today.
— Chris