Nearly everyone has suffered a day of foggy thinking and mental mush and heard that awful dragging sound behind them (meaning, your tail is dragging). For some of us, those days are often. Thankfully, there are a few simple things you can do to clear away the mental cobwebs and help your mind to function a little more clearly. When you need a mental boost, try these six mental clarity tips to bring your life into focus.
Cognitive and Mental Clarity Tips
Many Americans complain about distractibility, trouble concentrating, or feeling mentally overwhelmed – and this is no shocker. Just think of all the sensory input our bodies and minds have to process in this modern society we live in. Television and the internet alone are enough to boggle the mind. On top of that, we have careers, family, and a whole laundry list of things we need to get done each day.
You know that better mental clarity and focus could help you get back to enjoying life and tackle each task at hand with confidence. Learning new skills would be easier. Job performance would improve. But how can you make these improvements?
What are some focus and mental clarity tips that can improve your mental functions?
Let’s talk about what you can do to improve your focus, mental clarity, cognitive fitness, and concentration. Today we’ll cover six mental clarity tips to help you clear away the brain fog and get yourself a little mental clarity. When you do these things regularly, along with a healthy diet and lifestyle, you can keep your mind working as optimally as possible.
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See Your Doctor or Healthcare Professionals
Many things can affect your mental clarity, including some things that need to be addressed by a medical professional. Mental illness, learning challenges, conditions, or disease can affect your mind, making it harder for you to think and concentrate – but you won’t know the diagnosis or how to manage it unless you make that appointment with your doctor, and go have a talk with them, face to face.
Here at cbdMD, we hope to encourage you and remind you that concerns with both mental health and physical health care are important to your quality of life, and no matter how differently your mind works, knowledge is empowering. Everyone deserves to feel and function at their best!
We are all “wired” a little differently, and there are biological influences on how our minds work. Hormones and hormonal shifts, anxiety or depression, even physical and mental traumas that cloud our minds – these are all things that need to be addressed by a licensed medical professional.
While your doctor may have some of the same kinds of focus and mental clarity advice we do for clearing away mental fog, we defer to the medical professionals for mental health or medical concerns that need to be addressed.
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Catch Some Regular ZZZ’s
Up next on our list of mental clarity tips is this – get some sleep! If you’re having trouble thinking straight, often a lack of sleep can be blamed.
Sleep affects our entire bodies and when we don’t get enough of it, our minds slip into the foggy thinking thing that makes you make mistakes, have mood swings, feel drowsy during the day, and have a really hard time concentrating on the task at hand.
Sleep Affects Your Mind in Many Ways
- Mental clarity and sharpness
- Cognitive performance
- Memory formation and recollection
- Mood regulation
If you have trouble getting sleepy in the evenings, try taking a warm bath, turning off the electronic devices, reading for a few minutes before bed, or taking CBD with melatonin. Practice calming self-care in the evenings that helps you relax and wind down from your day.
Set a daily bedtime and stick to it. Likewise, set a wake time that allows you at least seven or eight hours of sleep. You can adjust this based on how well your body and mind function with a certain amount of sleep.
You may find, for example, that with seven hours you feel thick-headed and groggy, but with seven and a half hours of sleep you feel alert, energized, clear-minded, and ready for your day. Yes, even that extra half-hour makes a big cognitive difference!
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Eliminate Stress
No mental clarity tips list would be complete without addressing your stress levels. Did you know that chronic stress can kill brain cells and affect the way you make decisions or perform problem-solving tasks? Which is why you need to get your stress under control.
Stress can make your mind feel stretched too thin, and make it difficult to concentrate. This is because your mind is responding to the stress triggers, rather than that task you have on your to-do list.
Eliminate chronic stressors. For example, your work commute may be 30 minutes faster on the interstate, but if the longer drive through the quieter back roads is far more pleasant, why not take the extra time?
Now, by reducing stress, we don’t mean completely hiding from it. Some stress is normal and healthy for our minds. While throwing yourself into a 72-hour Netflix binge or vegging out on social media might feel good, it may be more cognitively productive to learn some healthy coping strategies that keep your mind sharp. (In fact, this is so crucial, that we’ve made it #4 on our mental clarity tips list.)
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Add Productive Calming Strategies to Your Life
Think about how eliminating a stressor (for example, that job you loathed) feels like a veil of heavy confusion has been lifted from you. Suddenly, the world is more clear and easier for you to process.
A similar thing happens when you practice stress-releasing activities that help to clear the mind and keep those mental cobwebs swept away. Here are a few that the experts rally behind:
- Deep breathing exercises
- Meditation or yoga
- Spend time in nature – taking walks, resting with a bit of sunshine, getting some fresh air, etc.
- Use auditory relaxation. Classical music can help concentration. Some find that nature sounds can help relax the mind for more focused thinking.
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Get a Wellness Mental Boost
Some types of vitamins, plant-based sources, nutrients, or other substances may help people to regulate their moods and keep their minds sharp and clear. Your doctor or medical professional, or a licensed dietician, can help you to vet some of these substances. Check for the current research studies available as well, so you can see what the science says about how they affect your cognitive health. Vitamin B12, Omega-3’s, and CBD have all gotten a lot of attention for how they may offer support for your mind.
Here are a few you might want to keep your eye on:
- B vitamins
- Omega-3’s
- L-theanine
- Magtein (Magnesium L-threonate)
- Ginkgo biloba
- enXtra (Alpinia galanga extract)
- Green oat
- Bacopa monnieri
- Huperzia serrata extract
- CBD and other cannabinoid extracts
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Take Care of Your Whole Body with Diet and Regular Exercise
Exercise helps your body produce certain chemicals in the brain, some of which help your memory, an important component of mental clarity. Also, a healthy diet helps to feed your brain with crucial nutrients for brain health and improve your mental health. Get a mental boost with a healthy diet and regular exercise for your body and mind:
Diet for Mental Clarity
Eat brain-healthy foods such as:
- Fatty fishes or plant-based sources of Omega-3’s. Nuts, walnuts, salmon, cod.
- Green leafy vegetables provide vitamin K, lutein, and folate. Spinach, kale, collards, broccoli.
- Berries provide helpful flavonoids. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries.
Exercises for Mental Clarity
- Regular exercise and physical activity can help you to feel more energized and clear-minded. Take the kids to the park and instead of playing on your phone while they play – play with them! Take the dog out for a walk. Go for a hike or hit the gym!
- Brain “exercises” such as brain puzzles (yes Wordle counts!), reading a book, or practicing memory techniques can all help to keep the mind sharp and slow memory and cognitive decline. Improve your cognitive fitness with some word puzzles, some shapes or spatial puzzles, and some with numbers or mathematical operations.
Mental Clarity Tips Are a Good Start
We hope you’ve made some mental notes (or physical ones) of these mental clarity tips and advice for improving your cognitive function to help you to clear away that brain fog. Give yourself a mental boost today with a healthy diet, exercise for your mind and body, and improved sleep and stress management. Your cognitive health, ability to focus, and concentration are all aspects of your physical and mental health that you can work to improve and make a priority. We are here in support!
Take care of yourself and follow our blog for more health and wellness tips.