The Benefits of a Mental Clean Slate

College life can be difficult. Being 20-something in today’s society, and being immersed in our super competitive life at USC, leaves a lot of room for stress. The pressure that many of us feel to constantly succeed can sometimes get the best of us.

However, thinking about how we deal with stress may alleviate negative feelings in our lives. For example, I am a visual thinker. This means that I imagine most things I think about  as something physical. When I think about the word “stress,” I imagine a million Brittanys running around like a crazy lunatic. I imagine the word “god” as a large gust of wind with an old man’s face and long beard inside of it. I visualize words as colors and like to pair a certain image with my emotions.

Call it a special characteristic or gift, but I have found that clear visualization in my life leads me to greater success. I would like to share a few of my tactics for visualizing, and how it helps me let go of life’s anxieties.

I am often described as high energy and high functioning by the people I hold close. This has a positive impact on me, but at times it causes heightened emotions — most commonly — heightened anxiety.

When I am anxious, I visualize my list of worries as a physical “slate.” I see a shiny, flat surface, filled with my worries of the week or month. I find that when I take this “slate” and physically write all of my worries down on a piece of paper, it makes them seem so much less consequential. I feel my mind becoming clearer as I write down my stresses. After I visualize my “mental slate,” I feel clear and more relaxed.

I try to participate in this type of meditation at least once a week. Each Sunday I open to a blank piece of a journal and title the page “Worries.” From there, I write down anything that comes to mind. If you decide to try this method of distressing, don’t filter or judge yourself for feeling anxious about particular things. Let everything out on the page. Let it exit your mind through your hands as your write. Your worries can be anything from writing a 10-page research paper to trying to get rid of the enormous bags that have camped out under your eyes this week.

Now, look at your list of worries. Seeing your stressors physically written out leaves room for mental clarification. According to Psychology Today, thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Imagining, visualizing and utilizing mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning and memory. This means that visualization trains the brain for actual performance and mental relaxation . Visualizing the things that cause stress in your life, make it easier to cope.Grab a piece of paper. Do it with an “umph” as you move away from your worries.

After, write on the next page “Happiness.” This is my favorite part. Amongst the stressors, anxieties, worries and craziness that I feel in life, there is still so much good in the world, and so much to be happy about. Write down some of the things that make you happy and visualize them. They look pretty good don’t they? These things can be as small as hearing your favorite song on the radio, or sharing a memory with a friend; they can be things that made you happy last week, or things you have to look forward to in the future.

According to Greatist, an online health publication, research shows that actually physically tossing your worries away can lessen their hold on you. Similarly, if you document your positive experiences you are more likely to feel happier in life.

My little sister and I have a tradition where we write down good things that happen to us, write them down, fold it them, and put it in a mason jar. What we call our “Jar of Good Things”  contains notes about anything that makes us happy, anything we are grateful for — big or small. On Jan. 1 of each year, we get to reopen our notes and read each other’s “good things” aloud. I love recounting the good times from my year. It’s especially great because there are so many things you forget as time goes on, but when you read a note out loud, it takes you right back to that place and time, and the feelings you felt. This jar allows us to go through the year,reliving the good times as if we were never apart.

I encourage you all to write down your good things and collect them into a jar that you can look back on. Share your happy memories with someone you love. This, along with the exercise of jotting down your worries, will aid gratefully in the development of your mental clean slate.