How to create more mental space?
Mental fatigue can be physically paralyzing. It feels like you're tired, but you know you slept. It's like you can faceplant on a tiled floor and sleep for days like you are thinking of everything, yet nothing all at once. Mental fatigue can have you feeling like you're stuck yet spinning out of control.
So much of our mental fatigue is created by the massive amounts of "invisible labor" that we do all day, every day. What is invisible labor, you ask? It's ruminating on all the things you have to do and carrying that mental load with you daily.
Invisible labor is thinking of everything you must do, like "I need to go grocery shopping; what did my son say he needs for school? What about that birthday party, did I get a gift? I should reach out to the mom and see what he likes. Ok, kid 1 has this karate, and kid 2 has dance class at the same time; how do I be in two places at once? The husband said he would make dinner tonight, but what will everyone want to eat? I have to go to the store and get XYZ. If I go here at this time, I can make it back to finish work at this time. Oh, I need to make the doctor's appointments, and I still need to send those emails."
The consistent replaying of thoughts such as these is invisible labor and takes a MASSIVE amount of cognitive energy every. single. day. It always leads to mental fatigue, which can look like:
Brain fog
Unexplained exhaustion
Feeling overwhelmed
Feeling paralyzed
Zoning out/disassociating
Beating yourself up for not completing tasks even though you're doing all the things
Many of my clients come to me feeling this way, wanting to connect more deeply with themselves and their intuition or spirit team but feel that they can't find a second in the day for it! They feel overwhelmed by the already neverending list of to-do's and can't see how they could possibly add one more thing, much less something that is "not productive."
Let me tell you a secret I learned a long time ago; meditation is productive because it clears and creates mental space to focus on what needs to come next and allows for creative solutions to FIND YOU!
I help my clients identify where their burnout is coming from, and how to do a "brain dump" to get things off of their mental plate and create more mental space.
After this, we work through their schedule together to find space for self-care and spiritual development. It can be done, but first we need to learn how to create the mental space to allow us to receive!
In today's Spirited Life Podcast Episode, I talk about how to create a "results list" instead of a to-do list and how to create an effective "brain dump" to create more mental space and eliminate mental fatigue and spiritual burnout!