When life is making you feel overwhelmed with depression, stress and worry, then it’s helpful to strip back to the basics.

A mind which feels like stodgy porridge needs to be diluted in order to see with more clarity. Your head space needs to be reclaimed so that you can practise courage and make productive decisions.

When you are feeling stressed and your anxieties are peaking, often complacency creeps in to hinder you further! This in itself is a symptom of your overloaded head and thoughts. So, it’s important to strip back to the basics. They provide some stepping stones to clarity and offer a crutch towards a healthier state of wellbeing.

It’s helpful to liken our state of mind to learning to drive a car. We’d start with the fundamental basics:  mirror, signal, manoeuvre. We wouldn’t simply jump in the car and race down the road. We get so familiar with the basics, and they soon become second nature. Yet, once we pass our tests we’re likely to “forget” the simple actions required to drive a car safely.

When you are suffering with head fog, even carrying out simple tasks can render us inactive or cause us to break down. All sensibility seems to fly away!

This is when focusing on the basics is so important.

For me, because I forget to eat well or get sufficient sleep, I keep a written tally of my quantity of fresh fruit and vegetables – and also the hours I sleep. This might sound trivial, but it is surprising how helpful it is to help me feel grounded. Becoming brilliant at mastering the basics – good sleep habits, eating well, exercising etc – provides you with a good foundation and will help you towards achieving a clearer mind.

Try applying this to your cluttered minds, because these little nuggets of help will install some sense of valuable structure, which you can always add to when you’re feeling better.