When experiencing mental illness symptoms, your mind might be chatting away in negative or anxious thought patterns. You may get caught up in your mind and feed into these thoughts easily. You can learn to get out of your head and get back into your life! You might need something new to find your focus. When you engage in new activities, you can transfer your mental energy into the real world. You might need to give yourself time to get into something new to overcome your mind’s initial resistance.
By getting into a new hobby or other activity, you can create a diversion for your mind. You can focus easily on new tasks when you lower your expectations for participating. For example, if you are interested in learning a musical instrument yet cannot get started due to feeling overwhelmed, set your goal to practice for only two minutes per day. When you lower your expectations, you can trick your brain into thinking the new task is easy.
Often, when you start an activity, you stay focused for longer than two minutes. However, most people struggle to get started, thinking of total time commitment. When you try to do something new or challenging, tell yourself that you will only spend two minutes on the activity. You can convince yourself to get started more easily than thinking of being busy for hours. You also take some pressure off of yourself and, if you are struggling to focus after two minutes, you have at least achieved your outcome. You can get the ball rolling for yourself: two minutes at a time.
If you are struggling with a mental illness, you might struggle to focus on new activities. When you are dealing with overwhelming thoughts and feelings, getting out of your head can be difficult. You may need to trick your brain to get started with new tasks or activities, even if they are goals you want to accomplish. When dealing with a mental illness, you might benefit from trying new things to divert your thinking from the thoughts inside your head. You can try to start new things slowly. Allow yourself to lower your expectations to spend only two minutes on new or challenging tasks. When you do this, you can overcome the mental block of feeling burdened by long time constraints. Your mind will often want to continue once you start. Getting started is often the biggest challenge; however, you can trick your brain! If you have a mental health issue that is feeling overwhelming, you deserve to get your life back. Alta Loma Transformational Services can help you. Call us at (866) 457-3843.
