People always talk about spring cleaning as a yearly ritual to get rid of old clothes and items in your closet that need to go, but what if we thought the same way about our mental closet? This spring, I have decided I want to do some deep cleaning in my brain, to empty out the clutter and make room for better habits.
Mental Burnout and Bad Habits Don’t Mix.
I don’t know about everyone, but for me there is a period in winter after the new year’s resolutions start to fade out and there is a sort of mental slump that hits — especially during winter quarter, feeling academic stress on top of social burnout. I feel like it’s easy at this point to fall back into old habits of doomscrolling or rotting because it seems like that is the only way to get a break from the chaos.
But these activities are counterproductive. Studies show that doomscrolling is not actually a form of rest, it just numbs your mind without recharging it and giving you the ability to get back to work. Falling into old patterns of wasting time, procrastinating and numbing your mind with social media are not good ways to use your time, yet sometimes they seem to fill all the empty gaps in the day.
Revamping Your Mental Wardrobe
In the spirit of spring cleaning beginning, I want to revamp my mental wardrobe, and focus on clearing out the clutter and embracing better forms of rest as well as challenging my brain rather than putting it on autopilot. It’s like creating a capsule wardrobe of only things you love rather than keeping old junk in your closet just because you’re used to it being there.
So, in order to make room in my mind for better things, I decided to get rid of the habits that don’t serve me or allow me to grow. Here are the steps I took to do it.
Keep Habits That “Spark Joy”, Get Rid of Ones that Don’t
You may have heard about Marie Kondo’s famous book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, where she highlights the importance of only keeping things that “spark joy.” Well I adopted this mindset towards my personal habits. If after doing something I didn’t feel refreshed or happy, I shouldn’t be doing it.
Starting off with my screen time, I decided it was time to kick TikTok out, because when I found myself scrolling for a long time, I felt like I had wasted so much time that I could be spending on something else. With that as the first thing to go, I felt I had so much more room in my mental space for new activities.
Implement Mindfulness
Now, instead of waking up and going on my phone in the mornings, I decided I wanted to implement one good thing for my mind and one for my body. So, after waking up I make my bed, get up and stretch for 5 minutes to ease my body into the day. While stretching, I will practice breathing exercises that allow my mind to peacefully wake up as well. This has made all the difference in going about the rest of my day, feeling calm and ready rather than stressed and restless.
Allow for Moments of Silence and Reflection
Another habit that I adopted is walking/biking to and from class without my earbuds. Sometimes it’s nice to pull yourself away from the real world, and immerse yourself into your favorite songs, but I realized that it made me feel distracted and detached from my surroundings.
By going outside and just listening to the sounds of nature, I felt more grounded and aware of my surroundings here at school; what better surroundings are there than UCSB?!
Taking these moments in between my day to really soak in how gorgeous our campus is and the nature surrounding it made me pause and realize how lucky and grateful I am to call this place my home.
Along with the theme of music, when I do decide to listen to something, I have decided I want to thoughtfully choose what I’m going to listen to, rather than hitting shuffle on my daylist. This act of intentionality and choice makes the music that you listen to that much better.
Stay Present
So much of my life and habits before allowed me to go on autopilot, but by adopting these new habits I feel like I have taken control of my mind and become more intentional with how I view the world around me.
Just like it is hard to say goodbye to an old favorite piece of clothing, it is hard to get rid of habits that have lingered with you for a long time. The first step is realizing what doesn’t serve you anymore, and letting go of it in order to make room for new and better things!