Do you ever feel overwhelmed throughout the day? Like a million thoughts are going off in your mind continuously throughout the day and you have no way of controlling everything you are thinking? Maybe you have too many ideas that it ends up being too much for you to handle. Those who suffer from anxiety often go through this but it can affect anyone, especially business owners and entrepreneurs who have a lot of weight on their shoulders daily. This could lead to missed opportunities if it is in fact a really great idea, and you just don’t know how to handle everything being naturally presented to you all at one time mentally.
I have started a journal/sketching exercise called Dump Your Brain to use in order to get rid of this annoying problem and use my large variety of thoughts and ideas to my own advantage both personally and for my businesses and organizations this year. This idea was inspired by a lovely and vibrant lady by the name of Allison over at Wonderlass, along with go-getter Shay over at The Bronze Hustle. I have been subscribed to her blog for some time now but have recently began to take part in some of her techniques for managing time better, and just making things a little bit easier while on this entrepreneurship journey.
Steps For Dump Your Brain
- Materials Needed: This exercise is fairly simple when it comes to the materials you will need which include paper/journal/sketchbook, pens are preferred in different colors of at least three (3) but this is optional if you would just like to stick to one particular color, and one (1) highlighter of your choice.
Step 1: For about 3-5 minutes jot down everything that comes to your mind using your first colored pen, on your writing surface of choice. I’m using a black pen, and my art sketchbook so it will also tie into an art project for me, but your surface for writing is completely up to you. What you write down does not have to go in a specific order. It does not have to be on a specific subject. Your list will be random as these are your thoughts from your mind. While you are building your list, use no filters nor censors. What ever comes to mind, let it be written down.
Step 2: Once you have everything that you’re thinking at the moment written down, take a moment to go over your list and see what you have been thinking about for the last 3-5 minutes. Are there any similarities or differences? Were your thoughts on the same page or completely random from one another? This observation will show you where your mind is at the moment and what has your attention and focus. Take out your second colored pen of choice, mine will be a blue pen. Mark out any negative thoughts. When you do this, allow that negative energy to leave from you completely. Marking out these negative thoughts is like a mental cleanse. Once the line has been drawn through them, think of it as a representation of that negativity being slashed not only out of your mind to allow positive thoughts to enter, but also out of your life completely as well. If you have more negative thoughts slashed out in your list than anything, this will let you know that you have allowed negativity to take a hold of your mind lately.
Step 3: Use your third and final colored pen of choice for this third step. My pen of choice is red. Begin circling any thoughts that you may have written down that pertain to your career, hobbies, and or business/service. These are the thoughts you will want to focus on completely. Circling them is a representation of you accepting the thoughts into your life and mind. Once you have all that you want circled, go through with your highlighter of choice and highlight three of the main ones that you would like to focus on the most.
Step 4: Draw a horizontal line under your original list of thoughts, and write down your three main thoughts in three different columns. What we are going to do for this step is beginning organizing how you can use them to your advantage for your business or service. From there, we begin to break down all three list entries into goals towards accomplishing each one.
Step 5: For this step, we are incorporating an amazing program I have been using from The Bronze Hustle’s new site, The Action Shop, that was launched earlier this year. As you may remember, this is the same site from our previous post, Collab Don’t Compete where we spoke on the importance of collaborating with other business owners in your field instead of competing. This program is great for this particular step to help turn your thoughts into actual goals, which will in part lead to actual actions being accomplished for your business or service. What you need to do is write down three mini goals under each entry list thought column towards accomplishing that particular thing. This will serve as your first step towards acting towards a random thought you have determined to possibly be something of importance for your business or service. The Action Shop has many great resources for you to use for this step. I would highly recommend you visit their site and see what materials you can obtain for yourself to extend this step during this exercise and possibly for other projects you may have going on right now.
| Thought #1 | Thought #2 | Thought #3 |
|---|---|---|
| Mini Goal #1: | Mini Goal #1: | Mini Goal #1: |
| Mini Goal #2: | Mini Goal #2: | Mini Goal #2: |
| Mini Goal #3: | Mini Goal #3: | Mini Goal #3: |
Step 6: Once you have figured out each goal, decide on a date you would like to complete each one by. You don’t necessarily have to stop at just three (3) goals for each entry, but for this blog entry we decided to just stick with a smaller amount so it won’t be so overwhelming. Step 6 is the most important step out of the entire Dump Your Brain process because it solely depends on your own self discipline. It is up to you on whether you accomplish all of your goals by the deadlines you have set. By the time you have reached this step, I can almost gurantee that you are no longer overwhelmed with the amount of ideas and thoughts you may have swirling in that brain of yours, but instead you have begun to focus on organizing your thoughts you had before into actual goals and productivity for your business, service and even new art projects for you.
Let us know your results by tagging us on instagram using our IG name @deluxds along with hashtags #DumpYourBrain & #DE. We would love to see your progress! All resources and sources for our new exercise have been including below for you all to check out, along with some other tips on how to deal with anxiety while being a business owner. We hope these resources and materials help you on your road to success, have a great day Monday!
3 thoughts on “Dump Your Brain”