50+ community Check-in July 26-29, 2021
Hello lovelies in the 50+ community, it’s Monday again and I hope this will be a good week for everyone 
Cluttered Mind 
When your mind gets cluttered you feel stressed and this can come in the form of feeling tense, tired, overwhelmed, irritable. Not only can this affect you negatively but it can also affect your relationships with the people most important to you. If your mind is overloaded. you can become emotionally unavailable and not fully engaged with the people around you.
So today I like to share this link to a video I find quite helpful to clear the mind:
Short Calming Guided Meditation to Clear the Clutter in your Mind https://youtu.be/UYsHCyN1TcU
How do you declutter your mind and are you doing it on a daily basis?
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How do you declutter your mind and are you doing it on a daily basis?I read a book.
@Offmytrack
Nice that reading helps you to clear your mind.
@amiablePeace77
hey Peace,
yet another wonderful query.
I declutter almost regularly and subconsciously by :
watching vlogs
good movies/series
reading
gardening
photography
walking
meditation and yoga
any one of the above and I am empty and hollow and cleansed of all clutter.
@RideaRainbow
Great toolbox to clear the mind!
Thanks so much. Yes all these help me steer through life.
I can distract myself during the day. It’s very difficult to clear my mind at night though - especially when I’m trying to sleep.
@UberRuminator
Sorry to hear you're having difficulties to clear the mind at night, not being able to find sleep is rough. I find thoughts become stronger at night since there is less distraction. I hope the video will help.
Thanks for the video...... That is something I do not do maybe because I don't recognize that my mind is cluttered until I am in overload. I will try to practice this regularly.
@scarletPear1945
Awesome scarletPear, would love to hear whether it helps
@amiablePeace7
I was scared as heck, but I felt somewhat less stressed after my first one or two responses. The thread moves so fast I find it hard to keep up or type fast enough. I tickled myself trying to type fast to give a reply. I felt good that I was not alone
. I was proud of myself.
Thank you for asking and following up with me. I am A work in progress
@scarletPear1945
Glad you had a good experience!
@amiablePeace77
I have been decluttering my brain and yes, oh my God it helps
@scarletPear1945
Great job 👍😀
@amiablePeace77 How do you declutter your mind and are you doing it on a daily basis?
Well I do the let it settle method, do not stir up the thoughts. Focus on something else until a sense of calm returns. Do not focus solely on myself but have compassion for others.
I think it is necessary to do every day or I feel the stress building up.
@soulsings
Great practise soul!
@amiablePeace77
My mind does not declutter. It keeps it all inside, keeps a life time burried within me, and other parts of my life are lost to memory gaps with years of my childhood lost at home during tons of abuse. I have what I can have access to remembering all burried as deep as I can keep it all the time. It is very hard, distressing, awful, and horrible when some of it does come up. I wish I knew the best words to describe this well. There is just so much in there that it is almost on constant over load, in a way. I do the best I can with so much in there that my alters do not hold in their own memories. There is just years and years of such very awful things...decades is more accurate. There is no way to declutter all this. It is all very real, such a huge pile, and covers so much of my life. Maybe this is why I can not yet grasp the mindfulness, even though I keep coming and trying. I want to learn to get it. I really do. There is just so much inside that I have to deal with that lots of other things seem to be blocked from coming in. I do not even know what to do anymore. It gets me sometimes where I can not even follow a sentence and know what was at the beginning of it by the middle of the sentence, much less by the end of the sentence. I can not handle hardly any mid to loud sound anymore either. I can not get rid of all of this and it has grown so big and is creating so many problems for me, even more now as I am older. It just never seems to end creating more problems to deal with from it all. There is no way to suck it all out.
@Amelia2324
I wish I could give you a solution or just make you feel better. Carrying all the pains which you suffered in your life without ever having released anything but just having kept going is a huge burden. It will take time and good support to help to free you from this burden step by step. Please don't give up on mindfulness, it might seem that nothing changes and I can understand it's frustrating for you but at the end it will help along with good support
Thank you very much ami.
Your kindness and understanding has touched me deeply.
I love the guided meditations. They help me get centered and calm the loud noises in my head. But, sometimes there isn't time. Or my head gets so loud, I just forget. Another thing I like to do is breathing. 4 counts in, hold 4 counts, exhale 6 counts. It helps me keep in the present.
@PurpledPeach
It's always good to have different coping tools, I personally find breathing like you mentioned is very helpful. How does grounding work for you to connect to the present moment, to get out of your head?
Hi @ami, Mine is extremely similar to @Amelia. I try to do videos, and I have gained so much in life to support me, yet I feel disconnected because I have name but no being/identity to connect with the video's. I have never been given/grown into identity as a child to adult. I am living mask to fit in with life.
@Cazzy8752
Cazzy, I want you to know that you're very appreciated here, you're an amazing kind person. I'm really sorry to hear that you never had the chance to develop your true identity as a child, this is something very important. I hope coming here will help you to truly find the beautiful person you are
@amiablePeace77
This is an exercise I have used for many years. I do a meditation before bed each night. As part of this meditation, I run the events of my day backwards from the most recent to when I awoke that morning. I observe the negative events with love and without judgement and send them into the light for healing and I express gratitude and joy for the positive events that have taken place. Then I envision clearing my mind and preparing it for a new day of exploration and learning. Sometimes events from previous days will appear again in my meditation and then I know it is time to investigate further by praying, journaling or talking to my therapist about the situation. This has always helped me keep things from building up and allowed me to address things as they happen. I am not always as successful as I would like to be but I keep trying each day to do the best I can.
@SoulfulCat22
I love this strategy of healing by observing everything you experienced during the day with a kind heart and acknowleding the good of the day.
