Keeping a peaceful mind while chaos surrounds you

Last week, we talked about how to maintain our body's energy high. Today, in the second installment of the "avoid burnout" series, we'll talk about how to keep our minds at peace.

Words are one of the greatest and easiest ways to rewire our minds. Once we understand the magnitude of this, we see how speaking highly of ourselves is crucial.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming: What is it?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a personal development and psychotherapy method that "claims that there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and acquired behavioral patterns (programming), and that these can be changed" (Wikipedia page for NLP).

If that sounds a little complex, let's just say it's a method that studies how the words we use influence our thoughts and behaviors, and thus create our lives.

Everything we'll learn today comes back to NLP philosophies and methods.

Empty the mess, scare away the monsters

Let's say you're at a point in which you're already feeling overwhelmed, and very close to burnout.

As we learned last week, burnout is about energy management, not time management. It's about how you feel, not what you're doing. So feeling exhausted all the time, overwhelmed, and stressed, is a sure sign you need to do something differently.

The first step is to get rid of that overwhelming feeling.

The easiest way to do this with your words is by journaling.

There are many ways to do it, but for this purpose, I would recommend you do a "stream of consciousness" journaling practice. Here, you want to put out every single thought you have onto the page. It doesn't matter if they're good, bad, happy, or sad, just get them out!

This type of writing is useful when you have long days, or when you've reached a point of overwhelm that demands a release.

Don't time yourself: this can take you 15 minutes, or two hours. Both are fine, it will depend on what you need. You'll know when you're done.

There are many purposes to putting your thoughts onto the page. When you write out all your fears, doubts, and worries, you can see them. You can examine them with a newly gained perspective: they are now outside of your mind.

This is often enough to liberate ourselves from the feeling of being trapped within them. We take their power away by making them visible.

Suddenly, they're no longer monsters. Just a couple of manageable problems and feelings.

What are you feeding your mind?

Our minds are input-driven. They absorb our surroundings through our senses and then organize them to give them meaning.

Some parts of the inputs we receive are out of our control. But there are many that we control: what we see on social media, the music we listen to, and the people we choose to be around.

When was the last time you thought about how those affect your mind? If you're always seeing depressing news and self-deprecating memes on Twitter, what thought patterns do you think your mind is going to repeat? If all the music you hear is sad, what do you think will happen to your inner monologue? If you're always around people who complain a lot, do you think you'll complain more or less?

Exactly.

You don't need to delete social media, stop listening to music, or cut off all your friends, but try to remove the negative inputs from your space. Especially when you're feeling overwhelmed and burnt out: trust me when I tell you it'll just make it worse.

Just by going through these first two steps, you will start to feel everything ease up.

Limiting words create limiting beliefs

The worst part of limiting beliefs is how unconscious they often are. In some cases, we tend to say certain words or phrases because they seem like the natural response to frustration. In others, it happens because they're so programmed into our minds, it's automatic to say them when something goes wrong.

The worst of all is "I can't."

"I can't do this", "I can't learn this", "I can't be this person".

It's a core phrase we use in a frustrated state, but it only increases our frustration while decreasing our chances of surpassing the challenge.

Let me explain to you how I explain it to my 8-year-old students:

Your brain is inside your body. Your brain commands your body. And words are a way in which we do that.

When, with your words, you tell your body that "I can't", guess what your body will do? Follow your brain's orders.

Suddenly, your body won't even help you try. Because you already told it that it can't. So why should it bother?

Some good alternatives to this are: "I'm learning", "This is a challenge, but I'm finding a way", or "I'm struggling with this, but it's a matter of time until I figure it out."

I hate "I can't" so much, in all my dance classes there's a rule: you say "I can't", and you do 10 pushups. Not as a punishment, just as a reminder. As I always tell them, best case scenario, they take it out of their language. And worst case scenario, they get stronger arms!

They started out hating it, and now they cheer each other on when they have to do the pushups.

Feel free to steal this for yourself. It sounds silly but it's extremely effective.

Automatic Complaining

Automatic complaining refers to the phrases we automatically say when things don't go our way.

This is something I've been working on more consciously in the past few months: an automatic complaining phrase I use a lot is "I hate it here"

I started saying it as a joke a couple of years back, but I've been learning how it makes my entire experience worse.

Ever since it was brought to my attention, I've been working on deleting it from my language patterns.

All in all, "I hate it here" is not that harmful. I know for many people (and for me, at other points in my life), their automatic complaining phrase is "I want to kill myself" or "I want to die."

Take a moment and think about how that will rewire your brain. Do you think it'll give you a more fulfilling life, or a more miserable life? Exactly.

Do you think there's a way in which you'll feel energized and motivated if everything that goes wrong is followed by you saying you want to die?

Listen, I know what feeling suicidal is like, and it's no fun. I know that saying things like this seems like a cry for help or a way to cope, but it does you more harm than good. When you think long-term about it, there's no way you'll ever stop feeling suicidal if you keep seeing it as the default solution for everything that doesn't go your way.

I recommend you take a long, hard look at your language patterns during the next couple of days, and find your Automatic Complaining phrases. Awareness is the first step. And then, you can work on substituting them with more empowering ones.

Output channels

When I talk about the importance of the words you use, it doesn't only apply to the things you say out loud. It applies to

• the things you say to yourself

• your posts on social media

• your replies to a "how are you?"

• what you say in conversation

The Transformation

If you transform both the inputs and the outputs, you'll see the world as a much more welcoming place.

You'll see your work as a meaningful endeavor.

You'll see problems as learning opportunities.

None of this is meant to be a quick fix. It takes time to recreate all your language and thought patterns. But if you want a burnout-free life, it's a must. It'll help you transform your perspective about any experience that you have. And even the biggest challenges will become manageable.

Sure, but I'm already way too close to burnout, what do I do?

For the short term, focus on the first steps: empty your mind through journaling, remove the negative inputs, and stop saying "I can't".

Then you can slowly add more and more awareness to your language patterns, and restructure your mind through them.

It's easier said than done. I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a challenge. But it's extremely worth the effort.

Art Recs

1. Book, poem, and music: Correspondence by Levi the Poet. This is one of my absolute favorite pieces of art. It's a series of poems that tells the stories of two lovers, in 12 chapters that are uploaded to Spotify as spoken word poems that sound nearly like music. I recommend you read as you listen for the best possible understanding.

2. Painting: Judging Eye, Inner Child, and Mask of Control by Eileen Kohler. Eileen is a wonderful Guatemalan artist who I am also lucky enough to call a friend. This triptych is one of my favorite works of her, as it shows how opening space for our inner child to flourish allows us to free ourselves from external judgement and control. You can follow her work at @arteesencial on Instagram. I assure you, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

3. Poem: The Orange by Wendy Cope. This wholesome poem was first shown to me by my friend Nina. Recently I had the chance to share it with more friends as we, indeed, shared oranges. It's heartwarming and sweet, so I chose to leave it as today's last Art Rec, so we can end on a good note.

I hope the rest of your week feels like sharing an orange with your friends, like waking up without an alarm clock, like seeing your dreams begin to materialize.

See you next Wednesday to learn how to use our brain's focus capacity to avoid burnout!

-Vale, The Friendly Artist.