Clear Mind - Passion for Aviation and Travel

Achieving great things, handling stress, and making the right decisions all require a mind that is clear of distractions, unnecessary boundaries, and self-effacing thoughts. However, to those who overthink, keeping a clear mind is one of the hardest things to do.
- If you are ambitious and intelligent, you probably also overthink. They go hand-in-hand: Those who have the capability of thinking above and beyond in magnitude most others also have the capability of thinking above and beyond in volume.
- One of the biggest blockers stopping you from achieving everything you want is that you set boundaries on yourself (whether intentionally or unintentionally), caused by thinking too hard and too deeply about things that really don’t need to be thought about that much.
Being a “natural over-thinker” does not mean it is impossible to have a clear mind. Like anything else in life, you just have to put some hard work in to learn how to!
- Like everything else I write about, this article comes from my own life.
  - I was a textbook over-thinker for the first 21.5 years of my life. I could spend an entire day thinking about everything that I did wrong in the past, the things I want but don’t have, the problems that I would face in the future, and everything else that pulls me away from the present.
  - It didn’t help that I have a very vivid imagination, so I felt like I could “touch” everything I thought about, that it had the same importance and meaning as things that I could touch in the real world.
  - But while this was a good distraction from the challenges of the present day, not one single thought actually changed anything about my life. It might’ve led to change by forming the decisions for my actions, but ultimately, my actions were what propelled me forward.
  - I realized that the point of a clear mind is not to think. The fact is that it allows you to capture and use more energy toward your actions than toward your thoughts. The simple, and very intuitive, result was that I should spend more time DOING and not THINKING!
I want to provide a framework that can help you find your own meaning in what a clear mind can do.
- You have to realize that thoughts HAVE NO DENSITY!
  - What do I mean from that? Well, hopefully you were listening in physics or chemistry when your teacher taught you that Mass/Volume=Density.
  - If you rearrange the variables, you get Mass=Density*Volume.
  - What does this mean? Well, it simply means that if you multiply something’s volume by its density, you get the thing’s mass. For example, the density of water is about 1 kg/liter, so if you have 1 liter of water, you have a mass of 1 kg.
  - Now let’s think about thoughts. Most of us feel like thoughts have tremendous density. Most of us feel that they are substantial, like each one is a block of lead that weighs on our minds. And of course, if we are over-thinkers, then we also have a tremendous volume of thoughts at any moment. So when you take the large density and the large volume and multiply these two large numbers together, we get a humongous feeling of perceived “mass” of thoughts at all times.
    - No wonder we feel that our constant flow of thoughts takes up all the space in our heads, leaving us no room to think about what’s important!
  - Now, if you are a natural over-thinker, THE HARDEST THING to do is to reduce the volume of thoughts. You could try a million different things, and ultimately, your natural inclinations will take over, and you will always have a steady stream at most times.
  - So, what other variable can we change to reduce the perceived mass of our thoughts? Density! The biggest, and perhaps simplest, change you can make is to realize that thoughts (by themselves) weigh absolutely nothing! Because they ARE nothing but nerve impulses (yes, I know that electrons have mass, but you get my point)! They are a trillion times lighter than air and as massless as the vacuum of outer space.
    - If we set thoughts’ density to zero (or very small), then no matter what the volume is, the perceived mass will be zero!
  - It’s really that simple. Don’t make it harder than it has to be—you really just have to convince yourself that thoughts are nothing, and you can easily see that by taking a look around you.
    - Wherever you are, sitting at home or in your office or whatever, look around you. Are your thoughts changing anything? Do you see any walls being destroyed because “thought” of it? Are you beginning to fly because you can “imagine” it? No!
Now how do we put this framework into practice?
- I could give a flippant answer and just say, “Go out and do it,” but obviously, that will not help when you are just starting.
  - Though I do think that 90% of all learning comes from just “Doing it,” rather than just reading an article, so remember that for after you understand the basics.
- This may also sound flippant, but I am very serious when I say that the best and only way I’ve ever been able to keep a clear head is to constantly smile and frequently laugh.
  - Yes, I literally mean just smiling 24/7 and laughing all the time (I am smiling and laughing as I write this article!).
    - Of course, you may not be able to do this actually 24/7, but my point is more that you should keep a smile at all times, no matter how slight, whether you’re out and about, at home alone, or in any other situation. And I am also encouraging you, nay obligating you, to laugh whenever you want in any situation ever. I don’t care if it’s a giggle in the middle of a business meeting or a hearty chuckle at the gym, I am telling you that you are free to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and laughing is one of those things that you should do frequently and with great joy.
  - Why? Let’s start with laughing.
    - Do something for me. First, think of something bad that happened to you. Maybe it’s something that happened in the past or something that’s happening right now, and when you get started thinking about it, you can’t stop thinking about it. Next, maintain your usual face when you think about bad things (probably, it’s somewhere in between a frown, melancholic brooding, or, for my more stoic friends out there, a stone cold block of marble). As always happens when you think about these things, I’m sure the weight of your thoughts is pressing down on you like the heavens on Atlas, and that no matter what you try, you can’t seem to stop them.
    - Now, while still thinking about it, force yourself to laugh. Yes, actually force yourself right now. Probably, in the act of trying to force yourself (and failing), you will actually start laughing for real. Notice that when you laugh, it’s impossible to think. Don’t believe me? Keep laughing while reading. I guarantee you that you will be able to barely read this article, much less really comprehend anything written. When you stop laughing, perhaps your sorrows have gone away. More likely, they are still there, but perhaps a bit abated.
    - Why did I have you do that? Because it is vital to remember that nothing matters. Not in the sense of nihilism (like “oh, nothing matters, so what’s the point of living”). More in the sense that, as humans, our world is shaped solely by our perspective. Any action or thought can be “good” or “bad,” but our perspective is ultimately what decides that for us. And our perspective, in its turn, is shaped by how we were raised, society as a whole, our intuition and human needs and desires, and so on, which are all extremely different from person to person! Yes, I am saying I believe in something like moral relativism (and that needs a whole other article altogether!).
    - However, the point of laughing all the time is not to make everything seem “good.” It’s not for what you might expect me to say, “so that your Pavlovian response kicks in and makes something that you feel like is ‘bad’ now feel ‘good’ because your brain triggers endorphins when you laugh.” That’s a good side effect, but not my point.
    - Rather, laughing is meant to be a visceral recognition that EVERYTHING IS ARBITRARY. The whole idea of things seeming “good” or “bad” is a human concept. Who says that the only categories that govern the worth of things exist on a 2D spectrum between these two things? It could be something totally different, or more likely, NOTHING AT ALL (or at least nothing that we could ever begin to understand), and all we have to do is recognize that we don’t know and will never know.
    - When you laugh, it’s not to laugh at situations directly, but the fact that you are even trying to make sense of situations that are so out of our control and possible understanding. You’re laughing at yourself! You’re laughing at the fact that the only reason you “feel bad” or “feel good” is because your fallible human perspective leads you to understand that conclusion, when perhaps there is no conclusion to be understood! Perhaps there is no objective meaning at all, and even if our subjective views can be taken as meant toward reaching a common truth, we are likely all wrong in our subjective views of things, since it is so beyond human understanding to even put it into thoughts or imagination.
    - Thus, keeping a clear head is about remembering that thoughts don’t matter, and thus, really nothing matters (if we take a solipsistic view of things). Laughing is how you can remind yourself of that fact.
  - Now that we covered laughing, explaining why to constantly smile is easy.
    - It’s essentially the same idea (reminding you that everything is arbitrary), but it is easier to maintain throughout the day.
    - It also has numerous other benefits to you and your health, along with allowing you to more easily make new friends.
  - That’s it! I don’t care if you believe me or not, or agree with my beliefs (again, we are probably all wrong anyway, so the fact I believe in something that says that its own self is wrong is self-defeating, but it also doesn’t matter because the ideas of “wrong” or “right” only exist in our perception), but you should try laughing and smiling more.
    - It’s the easiest way to lose the burden of thoughts we are all forced to carry! You can live like Sisyphus in his classical interpretation, and torment yourself with the constant burden of a rock you have no way of escaping, or you can live like Sisyphus in Camus, who finds freedom in the fact that existential questions are ultimately pointless and everything that is, just is.