Fall Reflections: Making "Room" in Your Brain by Letting Go of What Doesn't Matter Enough

Maybe it's just the effect of fall being around the corner and the seasons changing, but lately I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on "things" and trying to find enthusiasm about doing specific "things."

Sound vague and weird enough for you?

Holding On...

We build these lives we're living and they're filled with all sorts of dreams and aspirations and hopes and various other things. There are projects we want to undertake, mountains we want to climb — both real and metaphorical — we have dreams of things we want to do; things we want to accomplish; milestones we want to reach.

Some of us, alas, end up with a little too much on our plates. And, as time progresses, we end up in a place where we have to face the inevitable and somewhat challenging reality that there is way more stuff on the plate than we can realistically hope to tend to within a reasonable time frame, let alone within the remaining years we have on this planet.

The danger — if you want to call it that — is that we end up sitting there, spinning our wheels and not doing anything at all because we're simply overwhelmed by all the possibilities and so we get bogged down in weighing our options rather than taking action.

This is something that is often an issue for polymaths, especially if the "Too Many Interests Syndrome" is also married to ADHD-ish tendencies. Which, for me, it is.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is not so much to "pick a lane and stay in it," as to sit down and take a long hard look at all the things that are on our lists and decide which dreams we need to just cut free because the chances of getting to everything grow slimmer and slimmer by the day.

It's really not as doomsday-ish a process as it might sound and this is far from a negative process — it's about getting unstuck by creating free space in your heart and soul and brain (and sometimes your workspace!) so you can actually focus on things that matter.

Busy Bees

Freeing Up Some Space: Pick Three Things!

Some months back I briefly touched on the concept of choosing three things to focus on, something that I had a long talk with somebody about. We humans seem to have an ability to actively stay focused and successfully engaged in three primary things concurrently... after which we tend to become somewhat scattered and ineffectual.

If we try to take on more than that, we essentially end up working super hard and running super fast, but the quality of the overall experience of what we're doing starts to decline. We might think that we're doing great but we end up with a situation where our mind is often partly off what we're currently working on because we're thinking about the next thing we need to get to and so on and so forth.

If we just stick to three primary things — and this is not to say that we can't occasionally take a sidetrack to explore something because it seems fun — then we are generally able to apply ourselves pretty fully to all three.

Now, I'm sure there are people who are going to come back to me and say "yeah, but I can manage five things!" so let's just cut that off at the pass and say that in general those of us with a lot of interests and a lot going on in our heads are best served by sticking to three things! If you can manage five things well, bully for you! However that isn't very useful for my example right here.

And hey, this is my blog! And this is my opportunity to potentially create a teaching moment!

A few days back, I touched on the topic of "things not chosen." That's part of the process. By committing to something, we may also have to unchoose other things. But it's not enough to simply not choose something you also have to let go of the idea. Or, at least let go of the idea sufficiently that it isn't invading your current brain space.

Let's Be Honest!

Many of us have an entire freaking warehouse sitting in our brain space that includes such things as "one day I'd like to learn to make pottery," and then "I really want to publish a book," and "I want to take up painting," and "I want to learn archery," and these are all fine and good things to have. But we can't allow them to occupy enough space in our head that thinking about when we're going to find time to do them is actively diverting attention from what we're doing right now.

And — much as we don't really like to admit it — many of us do precisely that. It's not a bad thing! It just means we have very active minds and hearts but we also can become terribly scattered and unfocused... and the danger is that we end up just "dabbling" everywhere but never really going in depth with anything.

Painful Loss of Dreams...

Lately, I've been getting into the part of the process that involves actively cutting things out of my brain space. And these are, indeed, old dreams and things I once upon a time really thought I would end up doing. It's not that I'm cutting them off completely, but I am putting them in a place where they're no longer represent a "noisy what if" spot in the middle of what I'm currently working on.

It's not always an easy process because in letting go of these things we may feel like we are saying goodbye to favorite dreams and we're actually allowing a loss of sorts to happen. And losses carry their own kind of pain.

It's something particularly often happens to people in middle age when we become aware that we have grown "too old" to attempt certain things.

Once Upon A time, I was a prolific blogger and I maintained many blogs and websites relating to being an HSP and to the psychology of Sensory Processing Sensitivity. In some senses of the word I was perhaps a bit of an expert in the field and what some would have considered a teacher. It's one of the things I'm gradually learning to let go of. So I've been handing off my online groups to more energetic and engaged younger generations, and have started to post farewell posts and some of my blogs.

Not exactly shutting them down — because the information there is still useful to some people — but just putting up a "final post" to let the world know that there are not going to be any more updates.

I've learned what I needed to learn, and I have probably taught what I needed to teach, and because I haven't had the bandwidth to maintain things... well, let's get back to the "three things" idea, here!

To keep current in this particular field of psychology, it's one of those things where it would take too much energy to get back up to speed and it would also mean that I would have to take away time from the three things that I have decided are most important to me.

There is beauty in simplicity. And also a sense of relief!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-09-19 00:13 PDT
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