Posted on:Jan 18 2021
Have you heard about this thing called the monkey mind?
Chances are good you have one.
And if you know a little, or even a lot, about the monkey mind, chances are also good you wish you had a better relationship with it.
Welcome to the longest-running, never-ending WIP.
Monkey mind is a Buddhist term that means “unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable.”
Ho-kay, wow. How's that for a dodgeball list of adjectives only the Dalai Lama could withstand?!
I’ve most often heard the monkey mind described as worried, unsettled mental chatter. I like the image conjured by author Elizabeth Gilbert’s description: “The thoughts swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit, and howl.”
See if this sounds familiar : It starts with recalling some regrettable thing you said yesterday that’s still bugging you. Then the nightly train blasts its whistle and you wish you didn’t live so close to the tracks. Then you remember you really need to get that worrisome spot on your skin checked. Then you go a few rounds with yourself for not taking your daily walk, and for eating too much ice cream, and for forgetting to pick up eggs again, and for missing that project deadline. Then you wonder if any of this even matters because we’re destroying our planet and what’s the point of being “happy” anyway.
When we’re caught in monkey mind, each thought presents itself as a new and urgent concern. Research suggests, however, that most thoughts are repeats from the day before ! What’s more, because of our negativity bias - brain wiring designed to keep us safe from threats - most of these thoughts swinging around in our mind have a negative focus.
This hamster wheel of negative thinking is not a fun experience, but what makes monkey mind its own particular kind of menace is the toll it takes on our well-being. It’d be one thing if we could put monkey mind back in a nice little box and get on with the day, all good, until the next time monkey mind busts out for a swing in the trees.
It just doesn’t work that way. Negative thinking spills over and affects perceptions and moods, and low mood can make everyday difficulties all the more challenging, and this keeps the nervous system elevated. (Like a car sitting at high idle.)
And in this high-idle, low-mood state, the stories we tell ourselves often predict failure, humiliation, even catastrophe, which in turn affects heart health, immunity, the endocrine system, and digestion, and all of it contributes to anxiety and depression.
No thanks to the pandemic, your monkey mind might feel like it's juiced by some form of performance-enhancing drug, ugh !
Going toe-to-toe and scratchingspittinghowling back at monkey mind just doesn’t work.
Neither does ignoring it. It’s so annoying - “I’m baaaack.”
The good news is we can do something to quiet this swinging scratching spitting howling monkey mind - it’s called mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of standing back to witness thoughts without trying to rein them in, and, yes, I highly recommend starting a practice if you don't already have one.
Mindfulness helps us truly see that thoughts are just thoughts.
Mindfulness shows us that we do not have to be a hot mess of monkey mind thoughts.
Mindfulness is essentially the practice of building a better relationship with our thoughts.
To illustrate, let’s take a little mental trip to a monkey park, say in Japan, and follow the visitor guidelines.
Rule One : Don’t stare at the monkeys. Staring can be a very threatening behavior and trigger a defensive aggressive reaction. In a fight with a wild monkey, the monkey will win.
Likewise with your monkey mind - fighting it only invites escalation and the monkey mind will fiercely defend its territory.
So, in our mindfulness practice, we learn to “watch” the thoughts without staring, without fixating on any one thought. We develop an “observing self” who can be curious without getting caught up in the antics of the thinking mind. If it helps, visualize your thoughts as leaves tumbling by on a fast-flowing river, flowing downriver, passing quickly out of awareness...because here comes the next one...
Rule Two : Don’t take pictures of the monkeys. I know, it’s so tempting to want to capture the experience of walking among the wild monkeys. But to a curious monkey, a camera can be an object of fascination and trigger an attack.
Likewise, holding on to thoughts, particularly negative ones, as if they’re worthy of memorializing just gives them too much power. Taking a snapshot of a thought or story and focusing on it endlessly is called ruminating, and it’s not something we want to be good at - it’s a setup for fearful or depressed moods, for draining energy.
Better to stay on the riverbank, sans camera, not inviting an attack of rumination that literally drags us under. Let those leaves float on by...
Rule Three : Don’t feed the monkeys. Monkeys naturally eat a healthy diet of forest food, but when given enough treats, they’ll learn to prefer handouts from humans and stop looking for their own food. And they can double in size! Which means more conflict between monkeys and more aggressive behavior all around.
Likewise when we feed our monkey mind - those swinging scratching spitting howling monkey mind thoughts thrive on attention. And what we pay attention to grows. Essentially, we become what we pay attention to, which crowds out the space reserved for creativity or for thinking of others or for enjoying the present moment. Feeding the darker thoughts of the monkey mind only leads to more of them.
Practice just noticing the darker thoughts. From your seat on the riverbank, let them bob and bounce and tumble on down the river...if we can learn to stop paying sticky attention to them, they will diminish.
Meet you on the riverbank. 5 minutes. Every day.
