(first appeared in the Spring 2005 Wild Mountain Yoga Center Newsletter)

Every day and in every conversation we share our stories with each other. When our minds are clear, we more readily tell rich stories of inspiration, good-will, ideas and plans from the heart. When we have a lot on our mind, we tend to ‘process’ out loud.

I choose a series of stories for this lifetime. Chapters and volumes begin and end. Each one is characterized by lessons learned, contributions made, experiences to draw from later, and clues gathered to direct my path. The common thread of my current volume is helping people be their best. As a spiritual being in a human body, this drive is simple and community oriented—one of many doing her part. As a human in a spiritual community, the choices for supporting storylines are endless.

Supporting storyline: Clearing out mental clutter. My intention for mind clearing is to remove all that detracts or distracts us from feeling as divinely as we desire.

Goal: a mind that is open, relaxed, engaged, appropriately responsive, gently focused and free for quiet time, big picture planning, or idea development.

The primary culprit of the cluttered mind: using it as a Storage Space. We store lists, ToDo’s, reminders, phone numbers, upcoming appointments, projects to do, places to go, things to get… It takes a lot of energy to constantly feed these memory burners.

Fed up with extraneous thoughts? Here is a great exercise to relieve the cluttered mind. You’ll want a notebook or several pieces of paper and a pen. Then, it’s List Mania time. Your goal is to get everything out of your head and on to paper. EVERYTHING. Either just start writing, or if spontaneous categorizing is easy for you, label a page and flow into a list for that subject. Examples: calls to make, emails to write, out of balance relationships to be resolved, long term projects, desired travel destinations, marketing ideas, problems to solve, groceries to get, health issues to address, etc. Keep the notebook handy throughout the day. Deep, long-forgotten ideas will be triggered by seemingly unrelated situations. The items on the lists can be prioritized, identified for release, or tagged for an undetermined time in the future. Additional systems for information flow, scheduling, managing your addresses, files etc. can assist you in working with your lists and maintaining your clutter-free mind.

Once you release it all, take a deep breath and feel the difference in your body and mind. Observe how your story changes. :)

Shawn Tuttle’s current life chapter is about growing a business called Project Simplify, dedicated to developing and sharing tools to help entrepreneurs and ‘creatives’ flow through their days more easily.