Profile of a couple of man and woman breathing deep fresh air together at sunset

How to calm your mind and focus?

We eat, live to breathe, and sleep stress in our day to day life every single day.  Whether it is at home or work or anywhere else, stress plays a huge part in our life.  Stress is everywhere.  When stress gets into the brain, our brain is polluted with all the garbage that it can handle.  Everything then goes haywire, and your brain becomes a bin for accumulating unwanted stress.  Get rid of it – How do we control a situation like this?

Try and put away all your negative garbage away from you.  When you come home from the office do n’t carry all that office stress to your home.  Whether it is about an office assignment deadline or whatever other lines that you may get yourself entangled with.  Get away from it – and take a brisk walk, or have a glass of water.  Take a deep breath, count to 10 very slowly and then let go… let it all go, poof! Into the atmosphere.

Breathing exercises at a time like this will help a lot.  It will help ease off all that bottled up stress you bring home.  If you don’t release it and take things easy you are liable to have an endless and sleepless night. This will lead to depression, and anxiety and severe sleep problems like insomnia and you will be really tired to face the next day.  This, in turn, will bring you poor productivity at the office. See how many things that stress can lead to.  When you relax both the mind and body is calm.  You can breathe easy, and your body will relax as your mind starts to settle down.

how to calm your mind and focus

There are many ways in which to get your mind and body to relax:

  • Listen to some soothing music, classical music is a great soother and will lull your tired brain soon to sleep.
  • Take a nice warm bath; relax your tired muscles in a good warm soak in the bath.
  • Try meditating
  • Listen to your body – how is your breathing? Slow, deep, shallow?  What do you hear?  Distract yourself from outer sound, just think now in the present and concentrate only on that particular thing.

Try doing some yoga exercises.  This will help relax the muscles in your body.  Relaxing is the main key to your sleepless nightmare.  So do relax, and gradually you will fall asleep.

  • Take a walk.  Take a look at nature’s best.  Take some time off and do some landscape painting or something else, maybe you need to plant something new in the garden.
  • Go pamper yourself and get a massage at the massage parlour. This will take loads off your back and help relax you.
  • Do not touch coffee or caffeine at night. Drink instead some herbal tea or green tea, well for your health and well being, and a good night’s sleep as well.  Or some warm milk.

At work

Try and de-stress yourself.  When you sit at your desk and stare at the computer the whole damn day for hours on end, it will be bad for your health and hey, you will have bad eyesight too.  Get up and move about, take those typed memos to the boss yourself instead of waiting for the office boy to come and collect it.  Stretch your legs, drink some water and more water, go to the washroom and splash some water on your face, make a detour around the building, yes?  Do some neck, and back exercises, otherwise you are bound to have a pain in the neck!  Give your hands and wrist rest.  Download an app that has some soothing music and listens to it.  The sound of falling rain, or nature’s sounds, listen and practice a lot of mindfulness.

Being overwhelmed by never-ending tasks and assignment at the office?

Just jot down those tasks on your note pad, and you can jolt your thinking cap for later when the mind is clear of all that fog.

If you have a problem at the office, talk it over with a friend.  Friends are great they can share your problems and give you ideas, and listen to you.  This will help you out immensely and she/he will be able to give back some of her ideas and feedback.  Two heads put together are always better than one muddled head trying to solve problems, right?

Use essential oils to calm your muddled mind down.  Lavender oil is heavenly for a headache, stress, anxiety and depression, and or muscular pain.  Lavender oil is a good stress reliever too.

how to calm your mind and focus

Ah! My most favourite part of this article – Have a pet

Pets relieve a lot of tension and stress, + they are good companions to keep you company.  They make you laugh; you can run with them while both get your exercise.  You can also go for long walks with your pet, and come back home tired but happy.  Both will have a good night’s sleep as well.  Having a pet can reduce the levels of stress-related problems.  Besides, who could resist those lovely critters?  I am sure there is plenty of strays at the office as well which you could befriend and talk to.

Be outside with nature as much as possible.  Make use of natural light.  Being outdoors is very good vitamin D which will help you concentrate more and prevent any illnesses.

Take a break from your computer and tablet.  Take a book instead and read it.  Feel the bliss of holding a real book in your hand, rather than reading from your Kindle.  Reading can relax and bring down our heart rate.

If you feel dead tired.  Just go and take a nap.  Don’t overdo things and continue to do whatever work you are doing.  Just stop it and have those forty winks.  It is the brain telling you to stop that it needs a rest.  Obey the warning signals.  I find it very refreshing when I am tired and I just go and sleep it off.  I wake up quite ready to take on the world and continue my work very much up and alive and awake.

We are the only human species on this plant that worry and suffer from our thoughts right?  We get hurt, angry when we are treated unfairly in life.  That is nature, you get damn mad, and almost out of your mind if you fall sick or if you’re loved one does.  All these things are in the mind.  If you cultivate your mind to act otherwise, what a lot of stress and strain can be avoided.  Think about something more productive and positive minded.  Anything that happens, our brain will react either negatively or positively.  So switch off that panic button in your mind and use it for something more worthwhile or you will lose precious sleep over nothing at all, and cause you much more harm than good.

If you sleep at a certain time.  Try and stick to this routine and not mess it up by doing precisely the other way around.  Don’t change it, the brain is used to this routine.  If you are worried about something just write it down.  And if it comes up again to haunt your sleep, just think ‘I wrote it down’ and that you will see to it later.

Do some deep breathing exercises and meditate.  Meditation is good for when sleep eludes you.  Start it slow.  Breath in for 5 seconds holds your breath for 3 more seconds then slowly exhale for another five seconds to centre yourself.  That is all to it.

See that your bedroom is created for ideal sleep.  No outside lights should come into your room, and no sounds.  Draw the curtains tightly shut.  And no Dusty of Fifi should disturb your sleep either.  Ask them to sleep in their own beds.  Once you have created your own oasis of heaven, you can rest assured that you will sleep in heavenly peace!

how to calm your mind and focus