How to Clear Your Mind: 7 Effective Methods for Men

Jammed, jumbled, littered with half-finished tasks and looming responsibilities. 

Does the inside of your head ever feel like an episode of Hoarders? Mine does.

And like shaking a backpack upside down, sometimes I just want to dump everything out, reorganize it, and start anew.

But today, our focus is stretched thinner than pastry paper, making it tougher to settle into a state of tranquility and calm—even after the workday has concluded.

Here’s how to clear your mind so you can fully relax, melt into downtime, and recharge your mental output for when you need it next. 

1. Feed Your Brain Some Fuel

When your brain is firing on all cylinders, the day glides by. 

You think clearly, execute tasks efficiently, and quickly solve the myriad problems that pop up in everyday life.

To optimize your brain function, you must be sleeping, eating, and drinking loads of water. But, you might also want to try a safe and effective cognitive supplement.

A popular brand that I’ve tried and had success with is TruBrain, an unpretentious brain supplements brand from Santa Monica, California producing nootropic formulas designed by UCLA neuroscientists.

TruBrain doesn’t push one formula, but instead prompts you to try a 10-drink trial to determine which blend best feeds your unique mind.

In the trial, you’ll try six different packs: sleep, mellow, mushrooms, medium, strong, and extra strong.

I like medium, the light-blue daily pack, which is a caffeine-free mix of minerals, nutrients, and nootropics designed to “boost your mental bandwidth.”

Mushrooms, TruBrain’s newest offering, comprises superfood mushrooms, Lion’s Mane, Rhodiola, and other natural ingredients. Lately, I’ve been adding powdered mushrooms to my morning protein shake, so I’m keen to try out this new formula.

Just remember, quality cognitive supplements shouldn’t transform you into a real-life Jimmy Neutron, just to leave you cloudy and fatigued later.

A worthy brain supplement should increase your mental output and deliver a subtle boost to help you accomplish your desired function like focus, sleep, or relaxation. Stick with healthy brain supplements with transparent ingredients to avoid gnarly side effects and an unpleasant comedown. 

2. Move From Mind Into Body

Nice, this dude’s going to tell me to start doing yoga, huh? Nope (though, yoga would totally accomplish this, so consider that too).

Moving from your mind into your body is achieved by engaging in one of those calm, productive, almost mindless tasks that softens your mental load and actually bolsters creativity.

Research conducted by a University of California lab, and cited in the Association of Psychological Science, finds that “mindless tasks that allow our thoughts to roam can be catalysts for innovation.” 

This is why people really do have breakthrough ideas in the shower. Here’s a list of tasks and activities to help you move from mind into body and clear your head.

• Cooking
• Walking
• Showering
• Organizing
• Playing a game 
• Hiking 
• Sketching 
• Building 
• Gardening 

Read these next lines and as you envision each activity, picture your thoughts softening as you do it.

You’re chopping up colorful ingredients, sauteeing them in pans, and combining them into a fragrant meal. 

You’re plunging your hands down into wet soil and turning it over in your fingers. 

You’re dumping a warm stack of clean clothes onto your bed, picking up garments, tugging them over hangers.

That last one was just doing laundry, but it sounds kind of nice, right? The simplest of tasks can shift our focus away from our frenetic minds into something productive, rhythmic, and enjoyable.

3. Map Out Your Tasks

Of course you don’t like maintaining a schedule or to-do list—but your brain loves it.

Often, we can’t clear our minds because we’re worried about looming tasks and responsibilities we have yet to take care of. This hinders us from focusing on the task at hand and adds to our ballooning mental baggage.

When you create a to-do list and schedule tasks, you’re actively writing them somewhere outside of your head. This allows you to be more present and forget about pending tasks until it’s time to accomplish them.

A study completed by Wake Forest University professors found that just the act of writing down a task can expel much of the anxiety around it. The same study also noted that when you plan for a future task, you execute it more effectively, too.

The goal is to ease your mind so you can solely focus on what’s in front of you. This siloed approach to getting things done has come to be called “single tasking”, the flipside of multitasking. 

By centering all your focus on a single task, you wind up completing more tasks throughout the day rather than trying to chip away on multiple tasks at once.

To stay organized, use a digital calendar or notes app that sync across all your devices, or lean on the time-honored method of pen and paper, it doesn’t matter. 

Plan for the future to clear your mind in the present.

4. Return to Nature

To experience potent mind-clearing powers, summon the oldest healer of all, Mother Nature.

I’m not a Geologist, I’m a writer, but I’ve hiked and backpacked and laid down in enough grassy fields to be engulfed in the tranquil, calming effects of nature.

An online magazine published at the Yale School of Environment called Yale Environment 360, quotes a 20,000-participant study which concludes that people who spend two hours in green areas per week are much more likely to experience good health and psychological well-being than those who don’t.

Two hours per week is the minimum time required to notice an improvement in your mental health and mood. Yet, these two hours can be split up across the week however you see fit and achieve the same effect. That’s a little more than 15 minutes every day.

It sounds too simple and good to be true, but it’s not. The natural world has been proven to reduce stress and promote healing. So plan to get outside and into somewhere green this week. 

Of course, feel free to burst through the 120-minute mark. Your brain and body will always benefit from more time in the sun, under the clouds, surrounded by green.

5. Move and Sweat

There are so many entrepreneurs, creatives, and business executives who credit exercise with counteracting the intense pressures of their career and aiding them on their journey to success.

Exercise not only heightens your mood and enables you to shake off stress, it improves your creativity and helps unlock your creative potential.

Quite exceptionally, exercise both minimizes stress and improves your ability to cope with it. If you can cement exercise into your routine, you’ll begin to experience its deeper, lasting effects. Here’s how the time you spend exercising correlates to the benefits you experience according to the Association of Applied Sport Psychology:

• 10 minutes of low-intensity exercise like taking a stroll around the block can improve your mood and energy.
• Exercising three times weekly for half an hour or longer at moderate intensity provides you with long-term psychological benefits like reduced stress and better self-esteem.
• Exercising for 10 weeks or longer is most effective for reducing symptoms of depression.

Guys, I could pen an entire article about how integral exercise is for maintaining a healthy brain and body. 

If you want to clear your head, go pick up some weights, hit the pavement for a cycle or run, get in the pool, or find a pickup sports club near you.  

6. Find Your Mind-clearing Activities

You’ve likely already experienced natural, mind-clearing activities that you simply forget to call upon when you need them most.

Think back to a time in your life when you were tense, stressed, shell-shocked, overwhelmed, or unnerved. What cleared your head and refreshed your mind state?

Following an especially draining day, when my brain feels like a sack lunch some kid left in his locker, I have a couple of favorite mind-clearing activities I keep in my back pocket.

One activity is plopping down in the sauna at my local health club. I’ll come home from work, toss on workout clothes, grab my water bottle and tincture of eucalyptus oil, and walk a few blocks over there. 

Once I’m seated in the 180-degree heat, I dab a few drops of eucalyptus oil on my palms, close my eyes, and inhale the clean, minty vapors. 10-15 minutes later, and I’ve released much of the baggage weighing on my membrane and come down from my high-strung state.

To heighten the effect, I imagine the hot temperatures heating up all my stress and worries and gently burning them away. By the end, I’m sweaty, relaxed, and most importantly, clear-headed.

Another activity I consistently engage in? Going for a walk and noticing how things look and sound around me. When my brain is racked with stress, I don’t want to think about a single thing. So, I don’t. 

I just walk and look and listen. You’d be surprised how pleasant a gust of heavy wind sounds rustling heavy branches or how soothing it is to peer up into the sky for a couple moments with nothing to think about.

Consult the list in #2, think about your past experiences and what sounds relaxing to you, then go for it. No wrong answers, guys.

7. Increase Your Water Intake

Tom Brady once told a Forbes journalist that he drinks 2.3 gallons of water per day. That got your attention, huh?

Gents, your muscles are almost 80% water. Your skin? Over 60% water. And your brain, the engine powering the whole show, is about 75% water.

This is why you need loads of water throughout the day to keep your brain, body, and everything else lubricated and functioning.

Healthy water intake is more critical for your brain function than you might realize. Water helps your brain cells communicate with one another, which is why hydration has been linked to better focus and cognitive function 

It’s recommended that guys drink roughly 125 ounces of water per day and that women drink about 90 ounces.   

Get Your Head Clear

Those are seven effective strategies to clear your mind and get mentally back on track. Have you tried a few of those before?

When you’re in the thick of it and your brain feels like it’s about to sputter and shut down, take a moment to identify what you need. 

Can you support your mental output with a clean-burning cognitive supplement like one of TruBrain’s mushroom, nootropic, or adaptogenic drinks?

Will writing down your tasks take some pressure off? 

Can you exercise or engage in a calming, mindless activity?

Maybe you need to take a jaunt through some greenery?

The world will leave your brain jumbled from time to time, it’s up to you to clear your mind and find ways to hit reset.  

FAQs