Spring Cleaning for Your Brain: 3 Tips for Mental Clarity

Winter can be a gloomy, gray time of year – and not just weather-wise. It's easy to lose focus when the sky is overcast, and the temperatures are bitingly cold. Your body’s natural response to inclement weather is to hunker down inside, throw on a mind-numbing television show, and let your brain hibernate for a while. Some people even suffer from seasonal affective disorder throughout the winter months – an affliction characterized by foggy thoughts and disruptive bouts of emotional struggle. 

There’s nothing wrong with giving your mind a break; sometimes, self-care should take a leisurely form. But it’s important not to let that cloudy mindset stretch throughout the year. 

With spring right around the corner, let’s discuss “mental spring cleaning,” a process of clearing your mind for the incoming sunny weather. Like conventional spring cleaning, mental spring cleaning requires you to take proactive steps toward self-betterment. 

Here’s how to do it. 

Adding Nootropics to Your Morning Ritual

For the unfamiliar, nootropics are a class of products that help support peak cognitive performance. While synthetic nootropics exist, let’s focus solely on natural nootropics – herbs and mushrooms that studies show can boost mental clarity. 

Most natural nootropics have a long history of use in ancient medicinal practices like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic medicine. Lion’s mane mushrooms, rhodiola, and bacopa monnieri (water hyssop) are perhaps the best-known natural nootropics, readily available online among Rritual Superfoods organic products. 

Consider stirring some lion’s mane powder into your morning coffee or tea (or hot water) to help foster peak mental performance.

Optimizing Your Sleep Routine

Sleep is essential to mental clarity. If you’ve ever been severely sleep-deprived (new parents can relate), you know how challenging it can be to stay focused. That’s because neurons need time to recuperate day-over-day, a process that sleep facilitates. When your brain’s neurons can’t recuperate, they become overburdened, firing at a sluggish pace. 

Harvard Health reports that sleep deprivation has the same effect on the brain as 0.1% blood alcohol level – above the legal limit for driving!

• As part of your mental spring-cleaning regimen, optimize your sleep schedule by: 

• Observing better sleep hygiene

• Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule

• Avoiding alcohol or large meals before bed

• Putting away your phone (or any screen) 90 minutes before bedtime. 

The goal here is to wake up refreshed each day. That way, you can brew your lion’s mane tea and greet the day with energy and intent. 

Conventional Spring Cleaning Can Help with Mental Clarity

Spring cleaning your home might actually have a profound impact on your mental spring cleaning! Psychologists have found that excess clutter can have a negative effect on mental clarity. Essentially, clutter creates excess stimuli; your brain needs to work overtime to process these stimuli, which can cause stress, distraction and general unease. 

As the old adage goes, "Mess equals stress." If you want to improve your mental focus, start by tidying your house. 

Start the spring with a clean house and a clear mind. Follow these straightforward tips to greet the sunshine with renewed mental clarity and replenished energy.