How Mental Clutter Erodes The Self
This is the first article of a four-part series about the Same Method, explaining how it works and why it matters. We’ll start with the foundation: the practice of denoising the mind.
Denoising the mind simply means to get rid of mental noise, or ‘mind clutter’, in order to strengthen the relation with yourself, create clarity, and lay the foundation for cultivating existential courage.
To understand why that matters, we have to start with the concept of self-concept clarity.
Mental clarity is a key factors for living a meaningful life, because it stimulates self-concept clarity. Self-concept clarity (S.C.C.), as described by Jennifer B. Campbell in 1996, references the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable.1
Since then, research has found that a higher S.C.C. increases our chances at personal meaning, fulfilment, and wellbeing.2 On the other hand, a lack of S.C.C. increases our chances at anxiety, stress, depression, and a loss of self-regulation.3
Now here’s where things get complicated: in modern society, being barraged with information has become the status-quo,4 with the spring of much of this overload being, of course, social media, which after enough exposure lowers our S.C.C. and, over time, turns us into our very own, fractured strangers.5
Tying it all together:
A lack of mental clarity erodes the quality of life, and acts as a chokepoint in the becoming of your true Self.
The Unsexy Truth: More Info Is Not Always Better
It’s clear that with the crystallising of the internet into what it is today, the floodgates of information are wide-open – encouraged by ‘social’ platforms that are addictive by design, as ruled in LA court on April 2026.6
What we are yet to catch up with, however, is the notion that more information is not always good. In fact, too much (junk)information creates mental pollution, which in turn creates a sick mind, just like how too much (junk)food creates a sick body.
On top of that, we barely take the time to digest the information that we consume, leaving our minds often scattered all over the place.
There is even a curious co-relation between modern media consumption and decision-making: The more we consume, the less we trust our own decision making and thus, procrastinate on important life decisions.7
To give a personal example: travelling through Brazil, I once met a friend who found it difficult to choose: what to eat, what to do, where to go, etc.
At the beginning, he said that he’d taken a sabbatical “to make big decisions about his life”: he had a toxic partner, wanted a career change, wanted to feel more freedom, wanted lots of things in his life to change.
But that change never came. Instead, when we weren’t travelling, he spent most of his time on his phone, every day. It seemed as if his phone was glued to his hands, having him drift in a state of continuous distraction from the present moment.
Throughout our somewhat awkward travels together, there were barely any free moments in which he didn’t consume information. (At night, he couldn’t fall asleep without listening to podcasts.)
When we split our travels, I asked if he’d thought about his life decisions. He said he hadn’t had the time to do so, quickly adding: “time flies, I think…”
By the way, if this resonates with you, we can send new thoughts and reflections straight to your inbox. Yes, send them →
Beyond The Noise
Luckily, the way back to mental clarity is something we are all capable of doing. All you need to get rid of the noise inside your head, and it starts by doing less. This is the first pillar within the Same Method: the practice of denoising the mind.
To create mental clarity, you have to get rid of all the noise in your mind first. That means: creating moments for yourself where you consume less, do less, achieve less and desire less. In other words, you need to create moments of stillness in which you can digest and are allowed to do nothing.
Think about it: What are moments in your day where you consume no information? Moments where thoughts and ideas can land, either finding a way to be a part of you, or to find their way out of your consciousness as they were never truly yours to begin with?
Just like with a picture, a video or a stills image – too much noise makes it harder to see the image clearly, thus making it hard to enjoy or inspire you. It is only after we remove that noise, that we start to gain clarity.
When we sit with ourselves and face the stillness that occurs in moments of nothingness, the noise eventually fades away. If you can create those moments for yourself, something miraculous starts to happen: we slowly but surely start to see our own image more clearly; We start to see ourselves beyond the noise.
The Practice Of Denoising
The Same Method aims to increase self-concept clarity and cultivate existential courage. To do so, we use principles of the performance art field to de-noise the mind.
We call this the practice ofDenoising: creating conscious experiences that digest the clutter in one’s mind, revitalising the richness of sensory experience, stimulating mindfulness and creating the topsoil for cultivating Presence – the second pillar in the method.
During our Panama retreats in which we teach the Same Method, exercises for denoising include blindfolded movement, gazing into another persons eyes, nature immersion, meditation inside the Papayal river, and walking backwards.
Start Denoising At Home Today
Even though we’d love to work with you here, inside the luscious nature of Panama, we moreover want you to grow as a person. So here is the good news: you can start the Same Method’s Denoising practice at home, as early as tomorrow.
The practice is simple: We’ll create a time-window that acts as a daily morning container in which nothing has to exist but the present moment.
1. Starting tomorrow, you wake up 45 minutes earlier. Within this time-window, you leave your phone off, you don’t talk, you don’t read, you don’t eat (unless you have to), you don’t write.
2. Get a glass or bottle of water, or a cup of light herbal tea.
3. Set a physical timer for 30 minutes. (Don’t use your phone.)
3. Find a comfortable place that is connected to the outside: a window, a garden, a balcony, anything.
4. Over the course of the 30 minutes, you do nothing but drink that tea, slowly.
5. After time’s up, you go back to your normal daily routine and continue as usual.
Two practical tips to make this work optimally:
Tip #1: Get a physical alarm clock: when the first thing you touch is your phone, you enforce a habit of phone usage.
Tip #2: Get a physical timer, like a kitchen’s cooking timer, in which you can set the time-container properly.
Continuing to part two: Becoming Present
Having de-noised the mind, we have covered the first of four principles of the Same Method. The second step is to foster presence, something only possible after having freed the mind of excessive noise.
Continue learning about the Same Method, below.
Footnotes
- Jennifer B. Campbell’s 1996 publication: Self Concept Clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries ↩︎
- PubMedCentral: The Relationship Between Self-Concept Clarity and Meaning in Life Among Adolescents ↩︎
- PubMedCentral: How do aspects of selfhood relate to depression and anxiety among youth? ↩︎
- Frontiers in Psychology: Dealing with information overload ↩︎
- A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development ↩︎
- The Guardian: Meta and YouTube designed addictive products that harmed young people, jury finds ↩︎
- The relationships between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles ↩︎
