Turn Off Your Monkey Mind & Get Back To Work

Okay, I lied. You actually can’t turn off your monkey mind.

At least, it’s not as easy as flipping a switch.

But what you can do is get in the habit of challenging your monkey mind.

Your obnoxious monkey thinks he’s pretty smart, but he really isn’t. He likes to sit back and judge you. And according to him, in case you hadn’t noticed, you will never measure up. There he goes, shaking his head at you and clucking his tongue.

Monkey mind thrives on your fear, anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-doubt. And everything he says and does will trigger these things in you.

So you could be having a perfectly good day until monkey mind comes along and poops on it with his evil jaded ways.

Monkey mind is mean. He’s a Nazi-perfectionist. He’s the king of the sarcastic eye-roll.

Most things he says sounds like, “So how did you royally screw up this time?”

Don’t let him get away with it. Challenge him. Talk back. When he gives you crap, tell he him he doesn’t know everything. Maybe he doesn’t know anything.

Maybe he is just a roiling cauldron of internalized negative voices that have become much more vicious than the original voices ever were.

In that case, it’s your job to tell him that your job is holding up your end of any commitment and then letting go of the results and moving on to the next thing on your to-do list. And that’s it. So go jump off a cliff, you mean ol’ monkey.

Tell him that he over-reacts about everything. Tell him, you are not a hyper-sensitive ego-maniac like him. Tell him, you are aware that everything in the world is not all about you, and that is why you don’t totally lose your squash if you are not perfect in every moment.

You will have seemingly perfect moments in life. At least I hope you will. These are moments where all seems right with the world. Like everything, including you, is in perfect harmony. These moments are awesome. And fleeting.

So tell that damn monkey, he can think you are superhuman if he wants, but remind him that you are not. Remind him that you are merely human, just like everyone else and if he doesn’t like it, he can suck it.

In fact, the best thing you can do to immediately wrestle your monkey mind to the ground and pin him there until he says uncle is remember that you play a role in the world—one role. Not THE role, just a role like everyone else.

Monkey mind is very black and white. You are either the best ever or you are the worst ever. There is no playing one role to him.

Don’t fall for it. You are fine. When you mess up, you can own it and move on. The world will not spin or stop based on how perfect you are.

You can be a hot mess and the world will just turn, turn, turn.

The truth is that you are fundamentally okay and madly imperfect like the rest of us, and we like you this way. The rest of us are not expecting perfection from you, whereas monkey mind will NEVER let you off the hook.

So the heck with that monkey. What does he know, anyway? Who put him in charge?

You did. You put him in charge. And you can fire him, too.

So tell the monkey to take a hike and get back to the single next thing you need to do, which is likely full immersion in one task at a time until a larger job is done.

~ photo by JamesCalder