Gandhi had said – ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’. We take pride in a clean house, a clean neighbourhood and a clean city. A clean home and place of work make us feel good and we enjoy spending time there. Clutter agitates us. Unattended waste can make our environment unhealthy to live in.

It’s the same with our mind. We tend to clutter our mind with unwanted harmful thoughts, feelings and emotions. And if we are not careful of attending to them on a daily basis, we run the risk of our mental trash polluting our mind, telling on our mental and physical health.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know the trash we are living with. Anger, fear, jealousy, lust, hurt, past memories we are unable to let go of, anxiety of the future, and several more. We know the problem. We need to develop a simple but effective way of dealing with this mental trash.

Three simple core practices is the answer.

Daily Reading of anything that inspires us. Just as a good cardio exercise gets the blood circulation going, twenty minutes of reading something uplifting charges up the positive and happy spirit in us.

Daily Reflection in Quiet Time is the much needed downtime for us. Saying we don’t have time for this is like saying we are so busy driving, we don’t have time to stop at the petrol pump. Quiet time not only slows down a racing, excited or agitated mind, it is the time for us to tap into our higher consciousness, seeking guidance for issues we are living with.

Daily review of the day, not just what we did but more importantly the emotions attached with our actions. When we objectively review our emotions, we prevent them from remaining unattended, erupting in an unorganised manner at a later day.

Read – Reflect – Review. The few minutes we spend on each can make all the difference. It is said that big doors swing on small hinges. The big goals we have for ourselves can be achieved if we cultivate these small daily habits.

We can hire someone to take out the trash from our home. But only we can attend to the trash in our mind. Others can help us, but we are the masters of our own minds. To have a clean and healthy mind we must remember a simple fact. We need to take out the trash, everyday!

(Picture-East coast of Scotland near Anstruther)