Battle the mind monsters with positive free writing
Trying to figure out how to battle the mind monsters?
Put fingertips to keyboard to inject a lil positivity.
For the past few weeks, there have been mornings where I wake up and feel exhausted, depleted, anxious and sad before I even have a chance to take my vitamins and fully wake up.
For chrissakes, can I at least have a minute of peace of mind?
It’s a constant battle, one that I didn’t realize I’d be having so much, but it, nonetheless, rears its ugly head every now and again during this time of major uncertainty with, you know, the pandemic and all.
The good news is that I’m aware that the mind demons like to creep up on me in the mornings, so I've devised a battle plan to combat these negative worry thoughts.
I free write the thoughts out of my head and onto a screen. And then I stare at them. And then I move on.
Aside from simply writing random stream of consciousness thoughts, I also have some questions that I’ve been specifically answering, as well,to inject some structure into the process.
These questions are meant to inject positive thoughts into my mind as well as get me thinking beyond the current state of the world.
Now usually, it’s thee two questions:
For what am I most grateful right now?
What are the aspects of my life that I want to improve?
Pretty standard, vanilla questions, sure.
But, they help me leverage my quiet morning time in a way that keeps me thinking forward and in a positive way.
At the end of the day, the goal of these questions are meant to stop the dreaded worry thought loops from cycling in my mind, and these two questions achieve that goal.
Perhaps these questions don’t exactly excite your creative mind, and I get it.
I felt exactly the same way a couple mornings ago and typed into Google, “free writing questions that induce positivity.”
Sure enough, a search result piqued my interest.
While this website entry was geared for kids, it immediately inspired my fingertips to jump onto the keyboard. Here are a few that could do the same for you:
Imagine your perfect day and write about what it would look like.
What is the best way to lift someone else’s spirits?
Create a morning mantra for yourself that you could use to start each day off right. Write about what it means to you.
What is your favorite thing about yourself? Write about how it impacts your life.
Make a list of positive “I am…” statements that you can read to yourself
What is one negative thing you could easily eliminate from your life?
Think of something that has bothered you lately. Do you think you will still care about it in a month? Or in a year? Why or why not?
What is the nicest thing someone has said about you? How did that make you feel
What usually happens with me is that I’ll start my free writing exercise by answering one of these questions, and it will inspire a completely different line of thinking - constructive and positive - usually centered around my work or something else in my life that I’m looking to improve.
Regardless of where I end up, the point is that my emotional level spikes back up to neutral or in some cases, north of neutral, which is the point, after all.
Take a twirl with some of these prompts the next time your morning starts off on the wrong foot. Let me know how this free writing exercise goes for you.
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